Avengers & X-Men: Axis #3 – Review

Okay, first impression– Again with the quips!?? I mean, Deadpool’s humor actually works and comes from a character known for non-sequiturs and hyperbolic randomness with liberal dashes of pop culture. Ditto, to some extent, for Loki. But when nearly every other new character shows up with the same attempt at one-liners, such as the Enchantress remarking about fondue parties, it comes across as bland NOT distinctive. At worse, various characters lose their individuality– no matter how many times Carnage can drop a “yo!” in his dialogue (get it? he’s *redneck* you see), it’s too distracting to see him playing well with others and even joking about “courtesy” with the Absorbing Man.

This lack of distinction highlights the fact that really the choices of the villain-team seem arbitrary to the point of meaninglessness. There’s no reason why Magneto should have sought out Carnage or Hobgoblin or any of them, specifically. Perhaps he did in fact track down, say, the Melter, who is infinitely a better choice than Sabretooth when fighting giant robots, but, you know. Even Mystique, whose face-shifting powers could conceivably confuse a specifically hero-hunting Sentinel, is set against the Red Skull during the fight. Strategize, Magneto. Strategize.

(The exception here seems to be the Enchantress. Despite my quibble with the assumption here that her powers are basically nothing but “love magic,” she actually succeeds in taking down the Red Onslaught, if you think about it. However, her usefulness done, she’s scuttled to the side so the Scarlet Witch can take the stage and cast the “inversion” spell and change the world, as she so often does. Why the heck couldn’t the Enchantress have done that?)

The lack of distinction of the villains, in turn, also highlights the gross oversimplification that Tony Stark programmed his Sentinels specifically to be “hero”-killing robots. At first, I wasn’t sure why, exactly, Magneto recruited his last-minute team for his splash-page cliffhanger in #2, but here’s it’s quite explicit that the whole reason the team is effective is precisely because the robots target “heroes.” Sure, that’s convenient for this publishing event. But if you really stop to think about it, it’s such an illogical design feature for all other intents and purposes that it’s really quite ludicrous. It’s a plot element better suited for the old Marvel’s Super Hero Squad kiddie TV show. Like the forced humor, like the arbitrary character choices, it comes across as unsophisticated.

Hey, the opportunity is wide open here for some interesting thematic discussion about the definition of “to be a hero,” but that’s not really entertained. We instead keep the quite binary and elementary notion of the hero/villain dichotomy, which is curious because that always seemed more of a DC universe thing. It’s “either-or” mentality extends to the very end of the issue, with Havok and Steve Rogers taking polarizing views over the final fate of the Red Skull. It’s the exact same mentality that causes a split between the teams, and most poignantly, between Havok and the Wasp, seemingly ending (hopefully just speed-bumping?) what has been building for a couple of years.      

Evan/Genesis/Apocalypse becomes a key player, which is quite a curve ball since it’s never been set up from the beginning– good thing he was in the background in issue #2 or his progression would have been even further from left field. One minute, he’s a teenager at the mercy of Sabretooth, and the next he’s towering over the heroes offering ominous opinions as if he’s on peer with Havok or Captain America. So, too, are the lost heroes recovered without any real explanation. The next minute they’re just standing around the Sentinel’s carcass. Of course, one minute the Red Skull is all Onslaughty and tentactled, with presumably a head more pulp than skull, and then he’s fully formed once again. There’s obviously more to the story (being issue #3 after all) so it’s good to see one act of the story definitively end as we segue into the next, but I’d rather not have things taken so much for granted.

There might have been better continuity if the same artist could have delivered this mid-way chapter and the new one picking up at issue #4, but in fact Yu’s pencils are not that much different, stylistically. His line work is a bit more fine and the figures pose a bit more flowingly, but the thing I appreciate are some dynamic poses when characters battle. There was some great battle action with all our players, even if the big explosive ending meant we never see half the cast again. Some of the facial expressions are a bit bland, actually, and I wish there could be a bit more exaggeration in mouths and eyes. Yu’s characters’ eyes always seem a bit too dark/bland for me. The colorist could help with that, though. The page when Evan sees an image of the Skull causes his eyes to brighten and they look so much more expressive.

-Danny Wall