For the past few months, I’ve been reviewing this summer’s big Marvel crossover,Original Sin and calling it the craziest Marvel crossover ever. Today, “Original Sin” may have finally met its match as Marvel unveiled a wave of new details regarding the upcoming “Avengers & X-Men: AXIS” crossover miniseries coming out this September. And even though “Original Sin” still has two issues left, “AXIS” might just be in the running to beat it to become Marvel’s most insane crossover of 2014.
“AXIS” will involve Red Skull, in his Onslaught armor following up on his plans that’ve been seen in “Uncanny Avengers” of doing something awful with a group of villains which will invert the morality of Marvel’s heroes and villains, leading into some of the changes we’ve heard about lately. Odinson (which seems to officially be Thor’s post-Mjolinir name) becoming unworthy of Mjolinir will lead to the new female Thor and the inversion will lead to Tony Stark becoming the Superior Iron Man, which is a persona allegedly similar to Tony’s old pre-Iron Man days as a self-absorbed narcissist. Conversely, Sabretooth, Hobgoblin, and Carnage will also get new heroic roles in the wake of “AXIS”, with one character shaped up to gain a bigger portion of the spotlight when all’s said and down.
This change doesn’t seem to be completely binary, as the ambiguity revolving around everyone’s new roles seems to be a large part of the story. As Remender said about the new Sabretooth, “Who he is as a human, his character, is aligned in a different way. He’s no longer capable of killing the way he used to. Imagine you’re a serial killer who wakes up with the moral compass of a superhero, but everything else about you is the same.”
Over on the heroes side, don’t expect the new Captain America to play completely nice. Sam Wilson is going to clash with some X-Men but, really, misunderstood superhero fights are just some of the duties that come with wielding the shield. Sam’ll be fine in a week.
The Inversion™ storyline seems like a cool idea, albeit one that’s been done before to some extent. Marvel doesn’t exactly have the most morally straight-laced heroes so seeing many of them go evil will be sort of old hat. I mean, one famous Marvel character literally committed interplanetary genocide in “New Avengers” last week with the help of Reed “I’m Pretty Flexible for a Piece of Cardboard” Richards. How much more evil can you get when half of Marvel’s most popular characters are in a group unironically named The Illuminati. That said, Luke Cage is going to be leading a team straight up called “The Axis of Evil” because the first victim of the crossover crossfire was subtlety.
Further evidence Subtlety will be shot in the throat on the first page? The “Doc Green” persona meant to debut in Gerry Duggan’s upcoming run on “Hulk” will actually be named “KLUH”, in all caps.
The first comic with the phrase “HSAMS KLUH” wins an Eisner, and an Oscar. Also, I really hope KLUH joins Agents of SMASH while he’s at it.
Silly names aside, Remender also talked about the meat of the story but still didn’t make anything very clear – which is great because if KLUH accomplished anything it was making me buy this crossover, as will Remender returning to Deadpool. Apparently, Magneto and Scarlet Witch (who’s alive after “Uncanny Avengers”, uh, happened at her) will serve as the “b-plot” to the main story which will have major implications for the Avengers and X-Men brands, not the least of which will be the return of En Sabah Nur: Apocalypse.
After being resurrected as a boy and raised by Fantomex in “Uncanny X-Force”, the original mutant will make his big return to Marvel in the pages of “Axis”, possibly coming after his young clone, Evan Genesis and tying up a loose thread of a storyline that’s been around for years.
Speaking of which, don’t expect this Inversion™ business to immediately go away when the series is done with. Apparently, it’s an issue many characters will have to deal with even after Red Onslaught is (presumably) defeated. Considering Tom Taylor and Yildiray Cinar are doubling down on “Superior Iron Man”, this isn’t too much of a shock.
Since we have Apocalypse, Red Skull/Onslaught, Magneto, Loki, Deadpool and KLUH as major power players, this sounds like the most jam-packed crossover yet. Could it be an over-crowded mess? Possibly. Personally, I’m just hoping the series follows the “Original Sin” model of being a jam-packed mess and completely owning up to it through sheer radness.
“Avengers & X-Men: AXIS” #1 by Rick Remender and Adam Kubert drops this September, as will the assumedly dozens of tie-ins required to contain a story like this. Keep checking Multiversity Comics for more news regarding “AXIS” and all of Marvel’s other major crossovers.
