Posted in: Comics | Tagged: avengers, Comics, marvel, uncanny, vs, x-men

Avengers Vs X-Men – From Ruby Quartz To Ruby Ridge

Uncanny X-Men #10 and AVX: Versus #1 are both published today. And both books seem to have a similar take on, basically Avengers Vs X-Men #1 and #2.

Marvel have promoted Versus as having no plot, simply expanding battles from the original series. And that's what we get, Iron Man Vs Magneto and Thing Vs Namor. Iron Man and Magneto giving us inner caption box monologue, detailing their plans, strategies and, um, in some cases somehow channelling Jupiter's magnetic field instantaneously via satellite. Not… exactly sure how that works. But it does. But Thing Vs Namor, heading underwater goes to the thought bubbles. It's a strange inter-book conflict of styles.

Then Uncanny X-Men gives us three mutant points of view of the battle, the ever-amusing Namor who is much more entertaining in this book, Hope being as forward thinking and Machiavellian as ever, and Colossus abandoning himself to the beast.

And basically there's just as little plot as Versus, bundled with a lot more character revelation. On the surface at least. And then something happens. There's a small thread teased through the book, that then explodes at the very end and gives the book it's direction. It's logical, it's surprising, it twists off at a new angle, and Cyclops is lucky that it was so well written by Kieron Gillen.

Ruby Ridge is a situation known to most Americans, in which the US authorities held siege around a cabin in the Idaho mountains to capture one Randy Weaver, ostensibly over a no-show at court. Both sides seem to present plenty of evidence that they were in the right, but people died, the media furore was insane, and it is still a hot button topic today. I nicked it for my Avatar comic, Holed Up as well. This comic is not quite as silly though.

And it seems that despite the fluster and the bluster, the wit and the whimsy, Uncanny X-Men is taking the Palestine/Israel and Waco allegories and moving it on, yet again.

In other AVX news, Secret Avengers has a massive plot twist just waiting to be spoiled (not by me) and a Beast that for some reason is drawn in his pre-Frank Quitely appearance, while New Avengers gives Iron Fist a rather big retcon…

Comics courtesy of Orbital Comics of London. Their Roger Langridge signing is on Saturday, as well as their new Roger Langridge gallery exhibition into May.

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