With Act III: New World Disorder, we are now officially in the home stretch of “AXIS”! As always we’e going to do a spoiler-free review followed by a spoiler-filled recap!
Review
Written by Rick Remender
Illustrated by Adam KubertACT III: NEW WORLD DISORDER
THIS IS IT! THE BATLE ROYALE OF YOUR DREAMS–THE ASTONISHING AVENGERS VS THE UNCANNY X-MEN FOR THE FATE OF NEW YORK!
After a second act that was mostly just set up and the establishment of the new status quo, brother, “AXIS” #7 wastes absolutely no time in going back to the valley of madness that defined our initial love-hate relationship with the series. But as “AXIS” #7 continued, it became more evident that the love part of this relationship was one-sided. Without going into hyperbole, “AXIS” #7 seems like the type of comic Marvel published because they fucking hate us.
I’ve honestly been trying to find something to like about “AXIS” that I would recommend to another human being and there’s absolutely nothing. Sure, I’ve mentioned that Country Carnage and Kluh are the character finds of 2014 but that’s because they make my job of lampooning “AXIS” so much easier. When characters aren’t saying the clumsiest “jokes”, they’re flying headfirst into gross characterizations that would alienate anyone who actually cares about the cast of “AXIS”.
And at times, it feels like the creative team doesn’t care much for “AXIS” either. Even developments that are clearly the products of Marvel Studios (Sup, Maximoffs?) are done with an overwhelming sense of apathy. Hell, when Remender is concluding stories that have been years in the making, they’re done with such a whimper that they hardly register. Plus, someone needs to send Adam Kubert a script earlier than the week before “AXIS”‘s deadline because he can be pretty great when he has the time to be. Here, backgrounds give way to blank white spaces and art that could best be defined as rushed. Not sloppy, Kubert is hardly a sloppy artist. But the dissonance in the quality between “key” scenes and the rest of the book is quite noticeable.
And by “key” scenes, we mostly mean the big ol’ blood bath at the end which ultimately serves no point. Sure, they can retcon it later on and say it matters for arbitrary reasons, as they’ve already done in this same exact issue, but that’s not so much good story telling as it is exhausting. And honestly, that’s the best description I have for “AXIS” as a whole.
Final Verdict: 2.1 – Exhausting.
Now let’s move on to that recap, shall we?
Recap
Last time on “AXIS”, everyone had their alignments swapped through arbitrary spell stuff and now heroes are bad, villains are good, and Boston is the best city in the world. The X-Men, led by Apocalypse – because why not go all out on the evil thing, right? – are preparing to detonate a gene bomb that would kill all humans. They also rescued Wasp from the Avengers. Unfortunately, Wasp is a human which leads to her boyfriend/future husband Havok having the most Summers Family conversation with his brother, Cyclops.
Hoo boy. I get that it must be hard to arrange Thanksgivings when your family is composed of two fuckboys, a genocidal space warlord, and a space pirate with a thing for furries but has Alex talked to Scott even once? Scott answers a firm “YES.” and asks “Can YOU?” because females in Remender Marvel comics aren’t allow to decide their own fate.
Before the Summers can continue to talk about how noble murdering women is, Nightcrawler barges into the treehouse to reveal that Old Man Rogers has sent an army after them. Outside, the villains assembled by Steve Rogers are attacking the X-Men, including old favorite Country Carnage and Zenpool from the “Deadpool” tie-ins who, I swear to shit, talks like he’s Dude Love.
In the Duggan, Posehn, and Hawthorne series, Zenpool has more or less been the pacifist opposite of our regular Deadpool. Sure he’s a little into meditation but he’s also just another facet of Wade Wilson, more or less, and ended up being rather charming. Here, he’s been transformed into a lazy person’s idea of a hippie. You know something’s up when the line “We just need to teach him to strive for less Age of Apocalypse and more Age of Aquarius” is a line someone actually published.
Continued belowHonest question: has Rick Rememnder read another Marvel comic since 2002? “AXIS” feels so widely removed from everything going on at Marvel, including the event’s own tie-ins. You’d think there’d be some back and forth between the different creators working on “AXIS” but there really doesn’t seem to be any. Magneto is a force of goddamn nature under Cullen Bunn but here he’s just an utter wimp. Spider-Man’s a hero under Slott and here he’s just another catchphrase machine. While in Carnage’s current miniseries he’s an antihero fighting his natural violent tendencies while here…
Never mind. Ol’ Papa Carnage will always be my everything.
Anyway, while the X-Men and Ex-Villains are fighting to the tune of Deadpool singing “Get Together” by The Youngbloods (seriously), Scarlet Witch is tearing apart Latveria. On one hand, this is awesome because Doom ruined Wanda’s life and the lives of all mutants for eight whole years. For some dumb reason, Magneto and Quicksilver, two of the most aggressively pro-mutant characters ever, show up to tell Wanda not to kill Doom because the lesson of “AXIS” is that maniacal eugenicists and Nazis are people too. Somehow, this scene manages to outstupid that lesson by having Wanda talk like a 14 year old Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master overdosing on PCP. There’s a part where she straight up says “What trickery is this?” and yeah I feel pretty confident saying no one cared about this comic’s creation.
In response to her brother and father pretty much siding with the guy who mind-controlled their relative into marrying him, Wanda casts a curse on all of her family which causes Quicksilver to fall to the floor and faint. Magneto, shockingly, isn’t affected for some reason.
This is stupid on eight levels but here’s the main two: 1) between Kubert’s frantic panel layout and Wanda talking like a Shakespearean actor being held at gunpoint, it took me three tries to get what was happening. For a second, I thought she just waved her hands and made Magneto not her dad which honestly makes more sense than whatever happened here. 2) What the hell do you mean, Magneto isn’t their dad?
I’m not one of those people who believed comics should never be retconned but in an issue where Kluh exists how did this scene manage to be the hottest pile of garbage? I get that Marvel needs the Maximoffs to not be Magneto’s kids because they’re in a pissing contest with Fox but could they have at least done this not-stupidly? It feels like Kevin Feige just snorted cocaine off the first draft and then screamed “PUBLISH IT!” at a nearby pool full of dead hookers. If Wanda had just said “By the way, you’re not my dad.” at least it would have felt like Marvel respected its readers enough to not act like this was anything more than a corporate clean-up. That said, I can’t wait to see Marvel’s future plans for Wanda and Pietro: turning them into Inhumans, recruiting them to the Guardians of the Galaxy, and then giving them the identities of Captain Marvel and Black Panther, respectively.
All that said, the absolute highlight of this issue is Dr. Doom just checking out and walking through a conveniently located portal. Doom is honestly above all this.
Back in San Francisco, the remaining evil Avengers hold a meeting.
Kluh, my man. I have no idea what he’s doing here since I didn’t read the “Nova” tie-in. That said, I’m going to assume he skinned Sam Alexander into a confederate mudflap and pummeled him into the liquid everyone’s drinking.
After the Avengers reminded themselves they were in this story, the action cuts back to Manhattan where Remender got tired of the Dude Love voice just in time to remind us that Deadpool and Evan share a very important father-son relationship. Wade even gives a nice monologue that, though nowhere near the speech in “Uncanny X-Force” #35, is rather sweet. I wonder what type of impact it made on Evan.
Cool.
So the final page of “AXIS” #7 is Deadpool getting decapitated? That’s the big cliffhanger? Deadpool’s been decapitated a dozen times before. It’s how he introduces himself at parties. Yet here it is presented as some status quo altering game changer. And considering Wanda just waved her hands a few minutes ago and said Magneto isn’t her dad anymore, it wouldn’t surprise me if they just genuinely killed off Deadpool. Even though Duggan and Posehn have been writing the best “Deadpool” in forever, Wade Wilson’s going to die at the hands of his best friend in a comic that has nothing to do with his current direction. Of course, this could just all be a huge misdirection before he resurrects himself with his newly awakened Inhuman powers.
And with that, we only have two issues of “AXIS” let. Tune in next week to see if I can do it. Spoilers: I can’t.
