It has all been building up to this, the event that throws the Marvel Universe on its ‘AXIS.’ Has the (severe lack of a) buildup been worth it? Has each of these painful issues built to something amazing that will change the Marvel Universe as we know it? Read on True Believers and find out what I thought about the largest Marvel Event (of the month) and what kind of a note the company was able to close out the year on!
I won’t lie and tell you that the entire book or event was a pure on suck fest. To be fair, Rick Remender does a great job at certain aspects of the book though there is so much that just felt disjointed. The focus on how Sabertooth, compared to who he has turned into, was a great job but this is something we needed to feel from every character during the event and it just didn’t get there. Characters basically saying that they want to do good and feel bad about the horrors they’ve committed didn’t show the feeling that he gave us in Creed. The oki/Thor sequence felt rushed even with this week’s ‘Loki: Agent of AXIS.’ The Iron Man sequence felt a little off beat and Havok joining Cyclops and the ‘Uncanny X-Men’ just felt out of place with how it went down.
I don’t even want to touch upon how badly Apocalypse was dealt with here.
If Wade was able to talk him into switching sides, that means he was good at the end so when the inversion happened he should have continued to be Apocalypse and not Evan. I’m sure they are trying to say that there is just a nugget of evil in Evan (as there was a nugget of good in Apocalypse) but the entire scene was handled poorly after he was committed to reign down genocide on humanity.
Once again we have an issue where the saving grace is the art and Jim Cheung was really able to bring out a big win here. That being said, the writing and the art should compliment one another, they shouldn’t have to be saving one other. Cheung’s figures, action scenes, and attention to detail really make this issue visually stand up above the rest. Well, that is until the last couple of pages where he either phoned it in or they had an intern finish up for him.
With a fight scene that took over 80% of the issue, we barely had enough page room to show how things actually turned out and the hints at what is to come for the Marvel Universe from this were too vague to have me interested. Also, the way they wrapped it up so that the public would conveniently not blame the heroes for everything they just did? Painful at best.
When the dust settled and all was said and done, Remender gave us a story that actually made a couple of changes to Marvel characters though clearly none that will have any lasting effect in the long run. Pointless fighting, bad dialogue and pacing make this the least fun Marvel Event of the year. I would go so far as to say it was worse than last year’s ‘Battle of the Atom’ and ‘Age of Ultron’ events. Way to not make mine Marvel guys.
AVENGERS & X-MEN: AXIS #9
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Jim Cheung
