The “AvX: Versus” miniseries gave everything you could want if you’re a fan of beat-’em-up comics that don’t go any deeper than the paper they’re printed on. That said, anyone looking for absolutely anything more than explosions & punching must have felt like they were turned upside-down and had the $3.99 shaken out of their pockets. That was then and this is now, so can a similar title go just a little bit further to give us fun in the vein of “Marvel Team-Up”, instead of nothing but fantasy brawls?
Written by Dan Slott & Jeph Loeb
Illustrated by Ron Garney & Dale KeownSpinning directly out of AVX! Like AVX: VS., this book brings you two stories every month by the industry’s top creators! This issue features a Wolverine/Hulk story by Jeph Loeb (WOLVERINE) and Hulk-legend Dale Keown and a Captain America/Cable story by Dan Slott (AMAZING SPIDER-MAN) and Ron Garney (WOLVERINE)!
Much ado was made about how “Avengers Vs. X-Men” was a “Marvel architect” project. Meanwhile, Dan Slott was smack dab in the middle of an excellent run on “Amazing Spider-Man”, keeping one of comics’ most popular characters growing & changing, whilst staying true to what Stan Lee and Steve Ditko started all those years ago. He’s not an “architect”, but his is some of the strongest work in Marvel’s recent years with one of Marvel’s most important properties. This says volumes about how useful the idea of naming “architects” is, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s about time he joined the fray, making his Marvel NOW! debut and getting to play with a couple of non-Spidey characters in Captain America and Cable.
And what fun Dan Slott has. By placing the setting in the 1940’s, Slott has the ability to play fast and loose with timelines, emphasizing a book that actually tells you on the very first page to ignore continuity. That’s good advice for most comic books, but especially one like this. “A+X” is already a better concept than “AvX: Versus” by placing our characters in a robust setting and playing off of it. Instead of character A vs. character B in a fight, we get an old-school Cap allying with a time-traveling Cable to stop a potential threat to the future of the X-Men. The concept just affords you so much more story, even when it’s only 10 pages.
Slott applies the two things that have made him such a boon to the Spider-Man franchise: a sense of humor and a reverence for Marvel lore. The way he mixes the mutant threat and the World War II setting is too much fun to spoil here. The way that Slott gets the characters right and packs so much into 10 pages has me wishing that he lands a big Avengers or X-Men book in the future.
Unfortunately, Jeph Loeb’s half of the book is, well, way dumber. In a way, Loeb has his cake and eats it too, because his Wolverine + Hulk segment is actually a Wolverine + Hulk vs. Wolverine + Hulk segment. Also, cake is literally a centerpiece of the story, although my pun was not intended. Anyway, there’s a twist behind the team-up vs. team-up situation which might have been fairly interesting, but ends up being an excuse for 8 out of 10 pages consisting of jumping around, punching, and yelling. In the end, Loeb’s piece acts as the set-up to a story that has no indication of where or when it’s finishing and doesn’t give the reader enough to chew on to begin with. Dan Slott just gave you a full tale in 10 pages. I’m not sure what Loeb gave you. “Previews” of some story that may or may not resolve itself somewhere down the road isn’t going to cut it for very long in a book that purports to consist of 10 page mini-team-ups.
The art fares well across the board. Slott’s segment is drawn by Ron Garney, who is always a solid choice for rousing superhero adventures. He’s got a classic knack for drawing square-jawed heroes running into duty, but is underrated in his ability to sell the big moments. He doesn’t wow with a signature style or any layout/panel trickery, but when asked to draw one or two big spreads in this story, the moments stand out. Especially good is the first appearance of Cable in the issue and the reveal of a very specific 1940’s version of a major piece of X-Men lore.
Continued belowDale Keown draws the brawl that is the Loeb segment with more detail than it deserved and all the gusto of a Michael Bay film. A pervasive reliance on line blurring techniques to highlight the speed of the characters could have and should have been very indulgent with how frequently it’s used here, but it actually fits the white-knuckle pace of a story that’s basically all fight between some very hasty competitors. If I have any criticisms at all, it’s that his characters are pretty ugly men whose expressions span the specific range from grimacing to screaming.
And there is the rub with these pseudo-anthology books. It’s tough to get a variety of writers to deliver a message or a mission statement that’s consistent, much less maintain a consistent quality of storytelling. I could take or leave a one-and-done story that I didn’t care for and leave it at that, but I feel ripped off if I’m given 10 pages of a story that has barely gotten started. What is “A+X” trying to accomplish by doing that? I want to recommend Dan Slott’s terrific half of the book, but unfortunately you can’t fork over $1.99 for those 10 pages. You can’t walk up to your LCS, rip out the last 10 pages, and say, “Sir or Madame, may I buy this damaged copy of “A+X” for half price?” Were it that you could, but unless you can figure something like that out, I can’t recommend you having to take the bad with the good.
Final Verdict: 6.0 – Read Dan Slott’s “Captain America + Cable” half of the book.
