Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Angel And Faith, Avengers vs. X-Men, avx, Comics, uncanny x-men

Last Week's Comics In Nineteen Panels

By Dr Manolis Vamvounis.

I think we might need a separate column just to keep up with the AvX tie-ins every week.

In AVX AVENGERS VS X-MEN: VS #1 (that's what they're going with?) Jason Aaron extracts and expands upon the two-panel Magneto vs Iron Man battle from the main series and attempts to balance the odds, by copping out and having Iron Man's armour be made of carbon nanotubes composites, while at the same time unnecessarily amping up Magneto's power levels to a greater scale than ever before. And for what?

Much like the second slugfest of the issue (Namor vs the Thing underwater), these battles, much like the entire crossover, reeks of pointlessness. These heroes battle each other with unjustified fervor just enough for the ten pages of story to get used up, and then they simply part ways, both returning to the larger battle on the Utopia beachfront, where they'll presumably find a different one-on-one sparring partner and continue on to round two, three, four, etc. Where is the planning? Where is the strategy? Where's the bleeding point?

It only takes one Greg Land in UNCANNY X-MEN #11 to really ramp up the absurdity of all the finger-pointing going on in Utopia, as the entirety of AvX #2 is re-enacted from the POV of the mutants. And they still come off as unlikeable and oversensitive. "Oh noes, the most trusted and respected hero of our country wants to take our potentially genocidal teenager into protective custody, let's declare war on the United States". The press release at the end of the issue really drives the mass paranoia point home.

(you gotta love my segue up there)

In FF #17, Spidey and Torch are forced (?) to room together. Hilarity and almost all related Hollywood comedy plots ensue. A fun done-in-one that includes Peter making out with a blue alien chick, horse-on-horse romance and gratuitous Annihilus nudity. WHY would the Torch need to stay with Peter though? Falling on hard times?

I wouldn't have minded some more of this type of action from CAPTAIN AMERICA AND HAWKEYE #629 in the Avengers movie. BTW, what is up with the numbering in Marvel's titles? Have they completely given up on coherency now? I pity the comic book historians who will have to one day unravel the mess that is Marvel's 10s publishing strategy.

The hardest part of writing this column each week is picking up just one moment to feature from each issue of Christos Gage's X-MEN LEGACY. #265 is once again full of these wonderful personal revelations. Gage has shown a certain knack for utilising the uncanny powers and convoluted history of long established characters to reveal their most intimate fears and make them terribly real. Mimic, Rogue, Toad, Chamber, even the reviled Weapon Omega (the human mess of a plot device that Bendis introduced in New Avengers and then abandoned for other writers to untangle) get their shining moments in this unexpectedly emotional issue about the search for personal identity and the power of friendship.

ANGEL & FAITH #9 works great, for the same reasons as above. Faith is a hard character to write in a relatable manner while taking her long and controversial history into account. Gage uses a guilt-eating demon to examine the significance of memory and remorse in shaping these two companions and bonding them together. He makes it look so easy.

In THE GOON #39, Eric Powell hilariously sells out to every. single. one. of the most reviled (and yet sales-bumping) mainstream superhero modern tropes. Clunky at times, yet all-together an eye-opener and a balls-grabber of a bold statement. It's funny because it's sad because it's true.

TEEN TITANS #8 tackles an old favourite plot decide, the villain who reveals the dark twisty secrets of each character, and Scott Lobdell teases the heck out of some of them. I'm enjoying these new kids a lot, the Titans haven't had a roster this fun since Geoff Johns left the book. I do wish we would see the end of this tedious N.O.W.H.E.R.E. storyline sometime soon and get the teens out in the real world, having some fun times instead of this constant anguish.

Peter Milligan bids JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK goodbye with this week's #8 and he's taking his baby (Shade the Changing Man) with him. This forced crossover with I, VAMPIRE (also out this week) was a terrible way for him to go. The two casts of characters co-existed in the same plot and appeared in each others' books, but never really interacted or justified the need for this waste of Milligan's last two issues on the book. Can you really blame him for jumping ship? It's a matter of quality over cleavage (see poor Kathy, above). Some characters are too cherished too be defiled by mainstream superhero comics tropes, and their throwaway artists.

Mind the SPOILERS:

In BATTLE SCARS #6, Marvel figures out the best way to have a movie audience-friendly BLACK Nick Fury ("Black Fury", how 70s) running around the mainstream Marvel Universe, short of actually performing a potentially controversial race-change operation (referred to as "a reverse Jackson" in some parts) on the original: introduce Fury's long lost black son and in the span of 6 issues proceed to gauge his eye out, make him a SHIELD agent and actually go as far as to legally change his name to "Nick Fury". Hey, the movie version never served in WWII either… That was a decidedly loooong mini-series just as an excuse for this last page twist. And hey, there's AGENT COULSON too! How long before Marvel realises the amazing fan-appeal that Coulson has in the movie (or WILL have, in the case of you guys in the U.S.) has everything to do with Whedon's writing, but nothing to do with the guy's name?

ASTONISHING X-MEN #49 opens with a flash-forward of the "deaths" of two out of the three gay characters on the book. We know to rarely trust these teasers, or any Marvel death in general, but it still kinda stings. Don't even get me started on the ironic audacity of Karma's cause of death. You figure it out. On the plus side, once the pointless/awkward Marauders reunion is quickly introduced and wrapped up, Marjorie Liu decides to play to her strengths and shifts her focus on the still-happy couple of Northstar and Kyle for a well-written lead-up to the hush-hush wedding – and hey, she gets even gets Jean-Paul's name right this time!

NEW AVENGERS #25 delivers the first interesting development of the AvX crossover, with a potentially significant retcon linking the Phoenix and Iron Fist legacies. They both carry a proud tradition of flowing gold sashes and green/gold or white/gold colour schemes, but other than that? The Iron Phoenix? BTW, Bendis, way to decompress a plot into nothingness, with the exact same splash page repeated twice in the issue, and once more layered across a double spread. Still, WHOA.

Similarly, SECRET AVENGERS #22 sees seven of the Avengers' big guns out in space actually confronting the Phoenix Force with a plan to stop it, while the bulk of the Earth's heroes is trading pointless punches back at Utopia. Oh yeah, and a cult of Kree technopriests commits ritual Phoenix suicide to resurrect the body of the original Captain Mar-Vell! This felt more like the cherished classic crossovers of old, complete with some trademarked Remender super-soap character interaction. The guy really has a thing against Captain Britain, but it does flesh Braddock out for the first time in decades.

GOREWATCH!

So, there's this one scene in SUPERCROOKS #2, taking place in a super-villain fighting match, where two brothers with a healing factor are fighting Doctor Octopus and Robocop. Right after Robocop fries one brother's nuts, the other one chops his own screaming brother's leg off and proceeds to exact revenge on their opponents with it. Yeah, it's Millar being all five year old and calling attention to himself ("Look mommy, bad man lost his peepee"), but it IS what he does best. Here, he's actually back on his A-game, balancing the delicious over-the-topness within the formative Heist Movie infrastructure of his plot.

REBEL BLOOD #2 sees another zombie vestige of good taste get torn down, or rather run down with a speeding car, as the protagonist of this horrifyingly emotionally numb take on the zombie genre encounters a living dead pregnant woman… hitch hiking?

WOLVERINE #305 opens up with an inside look at a hollowed out human skull and ends with a doctor wearing a leather apron made of tanned human skin, including a visible face. In-between, you get Wolvie clawing away at mutated killer brains, (there's a smart pun screaming to be formed in there) and loads of beautiful Paul Pelletier art that goes some way towards mitigating the excessiveness of the subject matter. Plus, Doop is reading Crossgen:

Kinda appropriate.

To wrap things up, X-MEN LEGACY #265 is the book to beat this week, while AVX VERSUS #1 is the uncontested winner for "waste of perfectly good talent".

What lessons do we take home with us from comics this week?

There's good and bad ways to do crossovers. Sometimes, like this week, we get to see both in the SAME ONE.

Stretching credibility to fill your quota for fisticuffs? Poor.

Ignoring characters' personal histories to enable said fisticuffs? Unbecoming.

Churning out book after book rehashing the same inane fisticuffs from endless viewpoints? Insulting (to our wallet and our intelligence)

Surprising the reader with unexpected character connections? That's more like it.

Focusing on the characters caught in the midst the worlds-shattering event? There you go.

Christos Gage? Always awesome.

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