Another week and another journey into the mystery that is ‘Avengers and X-Men: AXIS’ where we see bad doing good, good doing bad, and a few likely suspects do what they would normally be doing! This is it folks, the last issue before this oh so long winded and unnecessary due to a badly flowing overall storyline finally concludes. Who will end up good? Who will end up evil? Who will live? Who will die? None of those questions are answered here but even though events are clearly coming to a conclusion of epic proportions and, of course, a huge battle needs to occur and we’re right in the middle of it.
How does the penultimate issue stack up for the event that I wanted to love and have been cringing through each issue?
Well for starters, we’re 8 issues in and about to come to a close and I feel that Remender has finally hit his stride. Now, when you consider that it has taken a slew of tie-in issues to get here, the event is about to end, and that there is more fighting and action than character development in this issue, that really isn’t a good thing. Still, the focus on Apocalypse vs Thor, how the villains factor in, Spidey working with Carnage, Avengers vs X-Men, and what Steve Rogers is up to by the issue’s end really plays well off of each other here. Of course, the lazy writing with how Doctor Doom handles his situation where it is all done off panel and not even previously hinted at is cause for some cringing.
The majority of this book is a fight scene and while that usually would bother me, I happen to love how Leinil Francis Yu illustrates all of these characters going at one another this time around. It really outshines his previous work on the series. Well, aside from some over use of adding muscles to a few of the characters. Still, the fights themselves are larger than life and really stand out on each page so illustration wise you can overlook the extra muscles that are randomly popping up on peoples chests, arms, etc.
Overall the issue reads as another disappointment in a full line of them on this ‘Axis’ run. There was a lot of potential here to reshape some core characters and it increasingly looks as if the majority shall return to status quo as the event comes to a close. While the forward moving plot elements in this book were sound, they were too few and far between with poor writing to allow me to put a higher level review on the book. I’d love to see this event close with a bang but don’t expect more more than a whimper as things go back to normal and everyone conveniently forgets the majority of actions that the X-Men and Avengers have committed.
AVENGERS & X-MEN: AXIS #8
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Leinil Francis Yu
