We’re finishing up the first of the three acts of “AXIS”. The first “ACTIS” if you will. I am a writer.
As always we’ll do a spoiler-free review followed by a full recap with spoilers. Read on below!
Review
Written by Rick Remender
Illustrated by Francis Leinil Yu• With the heroes lost, the world’s fate lies in the hands of the vilest syndicate known to man.
• Scarlet Witch is forced to join Dr. Doom, the man who unleashed her power to cause M-Day, or she will watch those she loves most die.
• The return of one of the Marvel Universe’s great villains!
• An Avenger quits, a heart is broken, and the world as we know it is gone.
You know that one friend who’s really “funny”? They’re always cracking jokes and put themselves at the center of the party but you still feel a little uneasy around them? Like there’s a dark side bubbling underneath them, and if somebody doesn’t sit them down this person may have an actual breakdown?
I just described “AXIS” #3. As someone who is a huge fan of “Deadly Class” and considers Remender to be one of the only people I want to see writing Deadpool, I find his writing on “AXIS” to be insanely uncomfortable.
On the surface level it’s still working really well as a blockbuster. Hell, this issue’s premise of super villains coming in to save the heroes’ butts is exactly the type of crossover I’d like to see. And yet, “AXIS” continues to be like one of those “funny people” doing cool tricks and yelling out one-liners even though they could have a genuine breakdown at any moment. Unlike Remender’s other books, the dialogue in “AXIS” is just weird; it’s like if a really bad improv troupe were given Yu’s pages and asked to make up the dialogue on the fly. And after reading Carnage’s interpretation as good ol’ Southern boy, I think I may be right.
Then again, it may just be the delivery of Remender’s dialogue that’s leading to “AXIS” feeling so weird. Francis Leinil Yu’s art is great for a blockbuster comic like this considering he can draw gigantic displays of carnage in ways that are both exciting and kind of beautiful. At the same time, his characters’ facial expressions range from “pensive” to “pensive with a tiny smile” which doesn’t vibe well with the allegedly emotional story of “AXIS”. The fights scenes are illustrated wonderfully, no doubt, but it’s so hard to empathize with characters who already sound like a Mad Lib filled out by a dude who loves Austin Powers quotes in 2014.
Of course, this wouldn’t be too much of a problem if “AXIS” had some dramatic moments that landed but there’s hardly any consequence. Oh, these heroes are mad at each other? What is this, any comic from 2014? The inversion that’s going to be driving the direction of the series is already my least favorite thing to write about because it provides an excuse for all the cynical writing that’s already choked “AXIS”. Is Tony really going to be evil now? Now? Not when he did a Jeffrey Dahmer monologue about how he keeps notes on how to kill his friends because they’re better than him?
Don’t get me wrong, the inversion works great for certain characters (read: villains) but none of the heroes are acting like dicks. They’re acting like Rick Remender characters.
Final Verdict: 4.3 – There’s some fun to be had with “AXIS” but it’s slowly turning into a distillation of everything wrong with superhero comics. This might be another case of “Secret Invasion” syndrome where the tie-ins are a thousand times better than the storyline; just read “AXIS: Hobgoblin”.
Recap
Last time on “AXIS”: everyone is horrible except Magneto who has to live with being a murderer even though the person he killed was literally the Red Skull, who immediately came back with tentacles anyway. I’ve seen enough hentai to know where this is going.
After “running” away from the giant skull monster and his two robots (that Iron Man made in the first place), Magneto returns to the battle with an army of notable villains and Jack O’Lantern. I like to imagine that Magneto was just going through every villain he could until he found someone who could take on giant metal robots before finding a trading card with his powers listed on it and went “Oh, doy!”
Continued belowWhile everyone’s off fighting Red Onslaught, Deadpool is carrying a battered Iron Man away to charge him up and and be sort of annoying. Even he admits there’s no reason to be here as he points towards Hobgoblin and Carnage, the stars of two new AXIS miniseries (in stores now!). Also, someone told Rick Remender Carnage’s first name was Cletus and as a result he immediately turned Carnage into the Simpsons character.
Hey Carnage, what do you think about hybrid cars?
Hey Carnage, what do you think about gun control?
Hey Carnage, what do you think about urban cities?
I swear to shit, Remender turned Carnage into Kenneth Parcell from 30 Rock. Seriously, go back and try and read Carnage’s dialogue like he isn’t played by Jack McBrayer. You can’t do it. I honestly am unable to tell if I hate this. I mean, I’m angry, but in a very cathartic way.
Hobgoblin talks about how they could all be on Oprah for being heroes and honestly, a sincere “fuck you” to everyone involved with the production of this comic for not googling whether or not Oprah had been cancelled for three years. Why did I have to do that for them? Why did I waste three minutes of my life on top of the hour it takes to write this column? Why isn’t Hobgoblin an Ellen DeGeneres fan? She’s hilarious!
Also, Enchantress mentions fondue parties out of nowhere so anyone who’s buying this comic can pull a Steve Rogers and yell “I got that reference.”
Everyone else just sort of stands around and says things while the others are fighting robots. I can’t believe I’m saying this but aside from some funny signs of mutual respect, Dr. Doom and Loki broing out and killing Nazis is doing nothing for me.
It feels like filler. It’s almost as if someone realized this is the type of comic that could be told in six issues but no one takes an event seriously if it has less than seven issues. Even Mystique shows up as Steve Rogers, and when questioned by Red Skull she says “I’m just the distraction”, so at least they’re owing up to it. Also of note, Red Skull expresses his hope that Steve Rogers is still Captain America and not Sam. Considering he’s also a monster made of tentacles and fascist tendencies, I think he might be 4chan.
Also Kid Apocalypse and Quentin Quire are still alive so at least I’m happy.
Back at the battle with Red Onslaught, Enchantress attacks Skull with a plan that, I shit you not, involves using magic to be the Red Skull’s femdom. Normally I’d write this off as just being a happenstance and not a weird Remenderism but Lu drawing Enchantress in a straight-up look-at-this-bod pose while she yells “YOU WILL LOVE ME” is less subtle than the Nazi tentacles. Even in a comic where some background characters lose their facial features, Yu makes sure to draw an outline of Enchantress’s ass, even when it’s a wide shot from a distance. What else could crack the Red Skull?
Thankfully, this weird detour from the plot is resolved when a Sentinel being attacked by Carnage and Absorbing Man breaks Enchantress’s focus and Skull crushes her. Speaking of which, how are those two good ol’ boys getting along?
…
Well, now…
Thank you, Kenneth. That will be all.
Quinten Quire, who had been using his telepathy to block Skull from going godmode and just mind controlling everybody, waivers which causes Skull to regain control. Also Evan looks like he’s in love with him for one panel and I feel like all my head canons have been proven right.
With Onslaught back on the offensive, Strange and Wanda decide to go back to their inversion spell which makes no damn sense and swap Red Skull’s personality for Xavier’s. At this point, sure, whatever. Unfortunately, Skull’s powers lead to everyone attacking Strange and Wanda, and Strange just giving up to Red Skull and walking away from the spell. Honestly, I don’t even think he was mind controlled. I think Strange just looked at what he was doing and remembered he’s better than this.
Continued belowOver on the other side of the map, Deadpool agrees to charge up Iron Man in exchange for becoming an official Avenger, a title that means nothing when Cannonball is a long-time member and Havok is the leader for one of the teams. With Onslaught close to winning, there’s only one hope left: the power of song!
No really, Deadpool sings an “I’m an Avenger!” version of “I’m a Believer” by The Monkees which is the number one way to get me to dig a song. Moved by Davey Jones’ lyrical genius, Red Skull is vulnerable to attack by Iron Man which incapacitates the Nazi long enough for some very uncomfortable scenes to occur.
I’m beyond happy that Deadpool didn’t remind Evan he’s like an uncle to him. The final scene between Evan and Wade in “Uncanny X-Force” is one of the best scenes Remender’s written but this follow up… well, it leaves a lot to be desired. Also, someone should really pick up Sabretooth’s face.
With Strange gone, Victor Von Doom offers to help Wanda perform the spell since he has a doctorate as well. This is the worst idea since Doom once kidnapped Wanda and tried to make her his bride which was tangled up in the dissembling of the Avengers, the death of two Young Avengers, “House of M”, and literally everything else from the 2000’s. If Wanda straight up shanked Doom, I would break into the Eisner warehouse and get everyone involved an Eisner.
Since this is an event comic, everyone goes through with the spell and… it works? There’s just a four page spread sequence of an explosion followed by an all-black panel of someone screaming “What happened? Where the HELL is Doom?” which is a pretty concise summary of Jonathan Hickman’s run on “Fantastic Four”. Also, a literal storyline that happened with Mark Waid.
Like insects, the Marvel heroes crawl from under the wreckage, upset that the villains came and did a better job than they did. They find an unconscious Skull who may or may not now be Xavier (why would he be?) and proceed to immediately fight over who gets to take Schmidt home. The X-Men want to take Skull because he might have the personality of Xavier (again, what?) and the Avengers want to keep him since the X-Men can’t be trusted to not kill their own mentors and blindly assume they’ll just come back in the form of a monster Nazi.
Old Man Rogers comes down to tell everyone to calm down and let the Avengers imprison the dude who successfully started a movement actually called World War Hate. Thankfully, Evan has a pretty solid opinion on the whole debate and HOLY SHIT, EVAN.
This is four years of build-up. The saga of Genesis and whether he’d grow up to fill the role of Apocalypse has been the unsung story of the X-Men comics for years now. And here it occurs by everyone turning around to come face to face with ACTUAL APOCALYPSE and then decide to turn back around and focus on what Havok’s doing. Even if Deadpool isn’t too upset that the very mission that resulted in countless deaths and some of the best Remender comics ever now means nothing since Apocalypse is standing in front of him, but at least he freaking notices. Even when Evan cryptically notes that Xavier is dead and they need another answer to their problems (all the while doing everything but pointing at a sign he made that says “Evolve or Die”), everyone acts like Havok quitting the Uncanny Avengers is the big shock of the issue.
I hope we keep doing what we’ve been doing with Evan since “Uncanny X-Force” ended and just let him gradually evolve in the background while no one notices. Never bring up that he turned into Apocalypse ever again. Four years from now, he’ll put on the armor and expect everyone to freak out only to find his peers distracted by Maggott quitting the Astonishing Champions.
I know everyone ignoring Apocalypse is meant to be a sign of how the inversion is turning them bad but, really, they’re acting exactly like they would have anyway. It’s hard to notice if anyone’s being turned into a huge ass since they were already acting like they were being written by Rick Remender in the first place.This doesn’t feel like a compelling story. It feels like a chance to just let heroes be cocks for the sake of being cocks. And frankly…
Continued belowNext time on “AXIS”: Kluh the inverted Hulk shows up. All negativity aside, we are beyond stoked for him.
