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Axistential Crisis: “Avengers & X-Men: AXIS” #6 [Review/Recap]

By | November 21st, 2014
Posted in Columns | 14 Comments

Welcome back to Axistential Crisis, Multiversity’s ongoing attempt to chronicle Marvel’s latest crossover, “Avengers & X-Men: AXIS.” This week brings us nothing. Absolutely nothing. We’re going to do a spoler-free review followed by a recap that’s technically filled with spoilers but it’s hard to spoil a comic where nothing happened. That said, you still need something to lazily read during your lunch break so read on anyway.

Review

Written by Rick Remender
Illustrated by Terry Dodson

ACT II: INVERSION
• The Axis of Evil have won, who is left to stop them?
• Rogue and Nightcrawler vs Mystique!
• Thor vs Loki!
• Magneto and Quicksilver vs The Scarlet Witch!
• This is it, the face of the new world disorder–The Astonishing Avengers are formed!

At this point, I have no idea what the point of “AXIS” is now. The past few issues have been nothing short of maniacal but at least they were reaching some sort of endpoint. An apocalyptic battle with the Red Skull? Great. A resurrection of the actual Apocalypse? Weird, but that could go somewhere. Country Carnage? Give it to me. In spite of how absolutely insane “AXIS” has been as a comic, at least things are happening in it. Or they were until this issue dropped at least.

In case you weren’t aware, “AXIS” revolves (heh) around most of Marvel’s heroes being turned into unrepentant dickbags through ~magic~. For the none of you who like to jump into crossover comics two thirds of the way in, “AXIS” #6 serves as a gentle landing point because the issue is nothing but heroes cursing each other out while the villains just sort of chill. Ignoring how there’s roughly a hundred tie-in comics shining a light on how terrible everyone’s being to each other already, rendering much of this issue’s content moot, a slow expository issue like this one just kills the book’s pacing. The comic goes from vignette to vignette of what everyone’s up to and no one gets enough time to establish why they matter. Scarlet Witch is in Latveria because whatever, the X-Men are probably evil, and Loki confronting Thor in a casino is a tie-in that takes up two separate issues in one week. The Marvel version of Intervention‘s shortest episode takes up space in two issues this week (“AXIS” and “Agent of Asgard) and possibly a third with the next issue of “AoA”. Meanwhile, no one has even vaguely explained what’s going on with Red Skull, save for this week’s issue of “Magneto”.

Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that none of the characters in “AXIS” are truly likable or relatable. They’re either out of character for magic reasons or because this is an event comic and characterization has never mattered in crossovers. Terry Dodson does his best to breathe some life into this affair and the art thankfully looks much more refined and detailed than the admittedly rushed look of his work on “AXIS” #5. That said, there are still some hiccups. Flying characters look like they’re just being held in place and I swear to god Tony Stark makes an evil Bilbo Baggins face at one point. Though Dodson’s vibrant art does sort of redeem this issue, that doesn’t matter much when, again, nothing happens.

Final Verdict: 4.2 – I don’t want to say “Don’t buy this issue” but for five dollars you could probably buy a really nice luxury hot chocolate. “AXIS” is definitely not the high points of Remender or Dodson’s careers and we’re now only a month out from forgetting this ever happened. Try again next week when maybe something will happen.

Recap

Last time on “AXIS”, the X-Men took Manhattan like the Muppets and Captain Falcon, Marvel’s most high profile new(ish) character, cry-jerked while screaming about how he’s a tyrant and then tied his best friend and teammate to a chair so he could steal her Pym particles. Also, Hobgoblin wrote a self-help book.

How’s that takeover of Manhattan going by the way, X-Men?

Continued below

Fuck me on seven levels. Not only have the Evil X-Men become so powerful that they effortlessly took over Manhattan – which as a fairly apathetic New Yorker, seems pretty probable – but Apocalypse learned how to pronounce his own font. In fact, the whole first page of this comic is just a few black panels with Apocalypse broadcasting a televised message to all of New York. At least it’s not Time Warner Cable. Okay, that’s my last New York joke.

Either way, it’s still astounding that the X-Men didn’t put any sort of image up for the broadcast. They could have put up an X logo or anything but nope. Just four panels of nothing. If this were a blank page, I’d sort of get it but having actual panels just makes me think there’s some missing artwork. It certainly would have been within the X-Men’s (*cough*andMarvel’s*cough*) budget to put something up for the first page considering they found a way to straight up bring Apocalypse’s whole Akkaba clan with them. A week ago, Evan was just a small boy and thanks to one transformation he now has an army of insane cultists, a space-ship, and Cyclops at his disposal. I’ve heard of worse ways to go through puberty.

Anyway, the Akkaba are working on a gene bomb because, hey, the Terrigenesis bomb from “Infinity” had a real lasting effect on the Marvel Universe, didn’t it? The X-Men are interrupted by Mystique, one of the deadliest and most brilliant villains in the Marvel universe, whose grand plan was to walk through the front door and ask for help from her estranged children, both of whom she had abandoned in dangerous circumstances when they were young.

Naturally, they punch her through the roof. After getting the snot beat out of her by Rouge, Dumb Mystique is saved by Good Sabretooth who grabs her and escapes her kids by going through a nearby Morlock tunnel which is funny because Sabretooth previously massacred the Morlocks in a storyline you may or may not have heard of. Or at least Rogue thinks it’s funny.

The next four pages should have been Nightcrawler telling Rogue to stop. Just stop.

Over in San Francisco, Superior Tony Stark is at yet another pool party with models which seems to be the only thing he’s ever done since turning evil. Daredevil, still upset by Tony crashing the World Series and also releasing an Extremis app that’s turned everyone in San Francisco into hot sexy maniacs who are committing a massive crime wave so they can afford the Extremis app. Stark tells Murdock that this is all something Karl Marx talked about, how great products cause the lower-class commit crimes so they can buy them, which is the worst defense of capitalism I’ve seen. And I’ve read a quarter of an Ayn Rand novel.

Not content with this admittedly awful answer, Daredevil attacks Iron Man only to have his ass kicked. Then, Tony throws Matt out with the best line of the series.

There’s no way I’m not using this in my everyday life.

Over in Latveria, Doom tells his subjects that this country will now be a democracy. If the next page had revealed a parliament full of Doombots, I would have labeled this the comic of the year. Instead, Scarlet Witch attacks Doom in retaliation for the events of “Children’s Crusade” which is less “evil” and more “completely justified”. After plowing Doom into the dirt, Scarlet Witch turns around for a second so Quicksilver and Magneto can steal Doom’s unconscious body. Magneto says they can’t let Wanda kill Doom because she’d never get over it which is pretty likely considering comic book writers haven’t let Wanda get over anything from the past ten years. Anyway, this segment ends with Scarlet Witch using her evil magic to levitate the trio. Presumably, the next issue is just her lifting them up and down until someone gets dizzy.

Over in Las Vegas, the Unworthy Thor is gambling about in a Las Vegas casino with money he stole from the casino’s own vault. Inverted Loki swings by to get Thor to calm down and drink a warm glass of milk and there is literally no point for this scene to be happening. The only point of the segment seems to be when Loki says he’s trying to help Thor because he loves him which leads to the Odinson making this fucking face.

Continued below

Before anyone can make a fan fiction joke, Spider-Man shows up and grabs Loki, leaving Thor to his debauchery. Spidey, along with Steve Rogers and Nomad, take Loki to their headquarters where they reveal this week’s big shocking splash page.

A team of villains formed to stop the other bad guys? That’s… That’s exactly what happened like three issues ago. I think the only shock here is that everyone looked at Jack O’Lantern and agreed to bring him back for a second round. At the very least, Country Carnage is present so I’m sure the remaining issues will be full of recipes for grits or something. Especially since Sabretooth has also grown a Southern accent. I swear to shit, if the next three issues involve a scene where Sabretooth or Carnage kick someone in the nuts and scream “The South will rise again!” I am this era’s Nostradamus.

Southertooth reveals that the gene bomb seen at the beginning of the issue is going to kill everyone on Earth who doesn’t have an X-gene. The mutant gene, not the X chromosome that everyone has. And not only are the X-Men going to kill every non-mutant on Earth but they’re going to do it within the next hour.

How long did Sabretooth wait on forming this damn team? Did they seriously wait for Loki and Spidey to make the four hour flight from Vegas before beginning the counter attack? What could they have possibly brought to the operation that would have made everyone stall the plan for so long besides their powerful yaoi capabilities.

And with that, we’re at the end of another “AXIS”. To recap every new development:

– The X-Men have a gene bomb.
– Buy the tie-ins where most of the events in this issue will get resolved.
– Fart noises.

We’ll be back in two weeks for the beginning of the third act of “AXIS”, where we’ll hopefully see the return of the maniacal energy that made me fall in love with this miniseries in the first place. Namely, if Kluh doesn’t show up again, we riot.


//TAGS | Axistential Crisis

James Johnston

James Johnston is a grizzled post-millenial. Follow him on Twitter to challenge him to a fight.

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