book provides some insight into the reasoning or total lack of reasoning that goes on in the minds of self entitled Elitist Oligarchical decision making for the general population, as two groups of 'Good Guys' go to war over who will direct the future of mankind, while destroying the lives of those they say they are doing it all for, who do not have any voice at all in the narative.
Oh boy oh boy where do I even begin
This was a mess,
Reading everything I actually liked it and how the big crossover tied some loose ends together, Mostly satisfied about Hope and Wanda's part in this and how they developed and things made more sense,
But the first half, . . I seriously considered to put it down and not finish it at several points,
Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE was acting like stupid, immature, triggerhappy douchebags,
When things were actually quite simple to solve, just through talking, Captain America and Cyclops seemed like small boys fighting over the same toy it's only solution being violence.
"I WANT TO BE IN CHARGE AND I DECIDE HOW THINGS SHOULD BE" "NO YOU DON'T, I DO, OR ELSE, . . " epic fights all over the place and no one really knows why
Then the Phoenix comes and things change completely, I will not spoil how but things work out, everything is perfect but nooooo
"THEY CAN'T HAVE THIS AMOUNT OF POWER, WE NEED TO TAKE THEM DOWN FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON OTHER THAN THAT WE ARE BORED.
"
And of course thing escalate to catastrophic levels in no time, everyone's mind being to easily corrupted by power och pure stupidity,
This totally makes me sound like a nice pacifist and I actually know that they could solve this easily by just talking through it calmly.
But what story would that make
You go Marvel, get rid of everyone's common sense, put in some violence, pure STUPID and a Cosmic Great Power we have a story, folks.
Going to take a break in my Marvelcomics now for a while until everything with the reboot is settled, Even though this could open up for a totally new and exciting era for the XMen, But so close to the reboot, I doubt it, Why the heck would two superhero teams that fight for good and justice pit themselves head to head in an ultimate showdown of epic proportions Why Hope and the Phoenix of course!
What I love about this book is how they take all your favorite superheroes and you get a taste of them all.
You get Spiderman's antics, Cyclops's angst, Iceman's shirtless body, You get the picture. There is something for everyone here!
The second thing I enjoy is the story creates an interesting dilemma in which I'm unsure who to root for.
Usually I just side with the good side, but who is good in this case The Xmen have the belief that Hope is the savior of mutantkind, The Avengers believe that she will cause the destruction of the entire planet, In the end, I just enjoy the ride, piecing together the plot as it comes,
I strongly recommend reading the hardcover edition because it includes some extra issues that flesh out the story, Point One gives you some interesting backstory, Vs gives some delicious fight scenes, which add both humor and gravitas to the story, What seems to be the overall theme is no matter who wins, both teams lose in the end, It makes you question what it is we're fighting for, and how we're just pawns in a greater cosmic picture,
Notable fights for me are Spiderman vs, Colossus and Captain America vs, Gambit. It may be cliche, but Spiderman is always a favorite to watch battle because of his witticism, The Cap and Gambit because they're in my topof favorite Marvel superheroes, The other notable fight for me is between Black Widow and Magik, I never knew Black Widow spoke Russian, so it took me by surprise when the two have a têteàtête порусски, The fact they include Cyrillic without translations also makes me super giddy, Puts thoseyears of Russian class to good use! It's interesting what they're saying because the dialogue is actually really cheeky and clever, which I felt added an extra dimension to the fight no pun intended them fighting in Limbo and all.
Overall, I strongly recommend reading this compilation if you haven't already, If you're a fan of Marvel, this story arc is really pivotal to what happens next, It's pretty much the bridge to the new Uncanny XMen, which I'm super excited to delve into,
My only complaints to the authors is why the heck did you leave SheHulk out of the fight scenes Isn't she the strongest female on the planet Seems kind of pivotal to the team if you ask me.
. . Also, I think you broke some cardinal rule by having Iron Man win against Magneto, That's just ridiculous! Me encantooooooo
Scoot paso de un demente a criminal
Pobres de Ororo y T'challa y no olvidemos a Wanda y Vision, . . mis bebés!!! It was an ambitious story that was done pretty well, Just not well enough. There are some really good parts I liked a lot, But a complete cohesive story, . . not so much. These stories are practically destined to be OK or just plain bad, They rely on a shallow concept and then try to shoehorn a story in somehow, But I'm enough of an old school XMan fan to care : Not really worth all the effort I think, So glad I did not buy each issue, The whole story could have been compressed into just a couple of issues, I dont mind being pandered to, in fact I enjoy it heh, but this crossover event takes the worst excesses of super heroonsuper hero dust ups and just relentlessly chews them up and spits them out over and over again.
"Here you go, kids, super heroes punch each other for pages and pages and pages, . . "
The basic story is the Phoenix Force is comin to town and it doesnt care whether youve been naughty or nice earthlings, youre gonna burn, Its alleged target: Hope, a mutant, The XMen have her the Avengers want her, so let the brawling commence,
This one starts off “simply” enough, but the plot quickly gets away from some of Marvels more talented writers at the time Bendis, Brubaker, Aaron reducing the story to X on A action, Cyclops at his most petulant I mean, dude, just shut the hell up already and I lost count at how many times Wolverine had his Canadian bacon char broiled by the evil folks at Phoenix Force and had to regeneratestuff.
This one set the table for another crappy crossover event: Axis,
Easily, at the bottom of the list for comic companywide cross over events, Any company
Bottom Line : If Marvels marketing research says that fans cant get enough of Aunt May baking wheat cakes in a swim dress are they going to turn that into a crossover event too So, I had to jump on the crossover madness, and even though I've often been a fan of Bendis, there was just too much going on for me to care.
I was slightly interested in the phoenix storyline because I've never read any of the previous incarnations, but it was such a mess that I wondered what I was doing in this little sidequest of a comic.
I could have been reading Hulk or more WolverineProfX, both of which I was really getting into, Call this a learning experience, Move on. Blech. I can't believe I read the whole thing,
The underlying plot was a good idea, but it turned into a really goofy slugfest,
Hope is the first mutant born since Wanda's 'No More Mutants' thing, and the Phoenix is on the way to use her for something, Is that a good thing, or is it an EndOfTheWorld thing
pages later, . . and I don't care.
This could have perhaps been a better read if the VS stuff hadn't been displayed so prominently, It's a comic, so of course I wanna see some fighting, but this Whatever this was just flatout sucked,
The 'extra' battle scenes at the end of the book were awful, Saying they were campy would be a compliment,
They were stupid.
The most annoying, in my opinion, was Black Widow vs Magik, Part of the dialogue was in Russian, and in order to read it you needed to download an app on your phone,
What!
Yeah, cause I like to fiddle with my phone like a teenager while I'm reading,
Idiots.
There were a few fun moments in this train wreck, but not enough to make me want to recommend this to anyone,
Skip it. It looks like the reviews of this are pretty mixed, but I thought it was actually really fun, It felt sprawling and epic, the characters had interesting things to do, the stakes were high, and the art was excellent, Jason Aaron's chapterwas written extremely poorly, and there was a giant timejump in the middle that felt like something was missing, but those gripes didn't complicate the rest of the story.
It did feel a bit choppy at times, and I could definitely see where pieces that probably took place in other titles were impacting the text in small ways, but overall this felt cohesive and final a crossover that built on the last several years' worth of crossovers, without being too steeped in continuity for the uninitiated as I know, since I haven't read at least half of the books that led up to this one.
An event that delivers what it promises, and is a good meaty read of ridiculous proportions, I plan on picking up sitelinkVs, next, just to revel in more indepth exploration of the punching that went into this story, The Avengers and the XMen the two most popular superhero teams in history go to war! This landmark popculture event brings together Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, SpiderMan, Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Magneto and more in the story that changes them forever! And in AVX: Vs.
, experience the largerthanlife battles too big for any other comic to contain! Iron Man vs, Magneto! SpiderMan vs. Colossus! Captain America vs. Gambit! And more! Plus: For the first time ever in print, Marvel's groundbreaking Infinite Comics are collected, revealing key events through the eyes of Marvel's major players, It's Marvel's biggest event ever but will the Avengers or the XMen emerge triumphant
Collecting: Avengers vs, XMen, AVX: VS, Avengers vs, XMen: Infinite,,, amp materiel from Point One Phoenix the fiery and allpowerful being that possessed Jean Grey in the “Dark Phoenix Saga” is returning to Earth because the “creative” directors at Marvel have run out of ideas and are desperately ransacking past, greater storylines for their new books.
The vessel Phoenix is going to choose, everyone thinks, will be Hope, the first and only mutant born after Scarlet Witchs “No More Mutants” curse, Captain America and co. remember the devastation brought about by Phoenix the last time it visited Earth and bonded with Jean Grey, so they are understandably terrified of this happening again, If Hope is to be the new Phoenix, she must die, But Cyclops and co. believe Phoenixs return will signal the rebirth of the mutant race and undo the damage caused by Scarlet Witch, If Hope is to be the new Phoenix, she must live, And so we have Avengers Vs, XMen, a massive Royal Rumble of superheroes sparked by an argument about a being nobody fully understands and a possibility nobody knows will happen for sure,
I did actually find the first cycle of fighting exciting and thought that with the fighting out of the way so early, maybe this predictable scenario would take a different turn However, that initial burst of interest was long eclipsed by the sheer banality of the rest of the story and unrelenting tedium of the endless fighting.
Superhero comics are more than just fighting but thats all this superhero book is: fight fight fight, And despite having a massive cast of characters, all of whom have decades of defined personalities, this book essentially wipes away all traces of them
so theyre all monotone dullards.
Spiderman in his brief appearances doesnt crack jokes or say anything witty or interesting because all this fighting is all so serious, Iron Man is basically relegated to the sidelines to scientifically figure out how to beat Phoenix by the way, wheres Reed Richards so when he appears hes talking boring science crap his charming, roguish personality is entirely absent.
Instead, arguably the two most boring characters in the Marvel U are given centre stage: Cyclops and Captain America, Cap is whiter than white bread and with his nononsense manner of speaking is about as interesting: he is practical, dull, and unimaginative, repeatedly yelling “Avengers Assemble!” way too many times.
Cyclops has the personality of a brick, When hes not being told what to do by his girlfriend, hes whining about mutants being an endangered species for the billionth time, wittering on like a fussy hen and glumly looking into the middle distance.
These have got to be the most tedious men to ever headline a superhero comic, Long before this book was over I wanted both of these dudes dead, never to return,
Then there's Scarlet Witch, I hate this character because she is a literary device personified: she is deus ex machina, It doesn't have to make sense, whatever she says goes, "No More Mutants" Done. "No More Phoenix" Done. Rubbish! It's too convenient, too easy, and is just lazy writing,
My edition was the mammothpage hardback, After the Avengers Vs. XMenmain issue story arc comes theAVX issues which are just fights, At least with the main storyline there are respites from the fighting to attempt including some sorely needed elements like dialogue, ideas, character and plot development despite none of these things being effectively pulled off with AVX, its just fighting.
So we get some arbitrary fights with Iron Man Vs Magneto, Magik Vs Black Widow, Namor Vs Thing, and so on, These are fights that are supposed to be happening in the main story but were separate to keep that story from slowing down, It was with AVX that I realised why Marvel had asked a WWE wrestler to intro this book these fights were the comic book equivalent of WWE wrestling: staged, colourful, and meaningless.
The wrestler is CM Punk who incorrectly calls his foreword to the book a “forward” yep, thats the level of intelligence this book elicits,
Finishing off this book is Infinite Comics,and, Infinite was created for the sole purpose of reading comics digitally on tablets, which is a great idea, Contentwise, these comics rehash the events already gone over in the main story arc but with added pages that dont improve the story, Consequently, like AVX, Infinite feels like an unnecessary addon,
And speaking of unnecessary addons, you may be wondering what the “AR” boxes appearing on every other page in the book mean “Augmented Reality” is another innovative feature by Marvel to integrate interactive content into their comics.
Because when I read comics, I always think, this is good but what I really want when reading is to watch video, Its a strange idea to insert video of artists informing the reader how they came up with a particular design choice for the panel but how interested are you in hearing about that really It depends on the reader but Im not one of those who needs to know everything about the creation of a comic.
Also, I read to read Im not some ADHD kid who needs to flick from reading to watching video and back again every few panels,
Some of the best comics writers working today worked on this book, Jason Aaron, one of my favourite comics writers, has written a great run on Wolverine and is working on the even better Wolverine amp the XMen title Ed Brubaker wrote one of the most acclaimed Captain America books ever Jonathan Hickmans doing stellar work on FF and Fantastic Four and Brian Michael Bendis, whose work on Ultimate Spiderman, Marvels flagship character, speaks for itself:years of first class writing and counting, his stewardship of that character has been invaluable to Marvel and readers alike.
And yet, all of them worked on this book and all of them failed to create an interesting story, Too many cooks in the kitchen maybe But it makes me think that maybe its not just the writers who should be blamed for this awful book but the dodgy creative direction at Marvel who steered this book into such unfathomably crap waters.
Either way, despite this book having enormous talent attached, it is a massive artistic failure,
So another year, another lacklustre Marvel Comics event, “Avengers Vs XMen” is for those who enjoy WWE wrestling and like to play with gadgets and watch videos rather than read a comic straight through, This book is dumber than Lou Ferrignos pants, Its also for people who dont care much about anything related to good storytelling, like character development, memorable scenes and dialogue, and good writing just superheroes punching one another.
This review is already too long so I wont go into the many plot holes the flimsy premise of this book rests upon but suffice it to say “Avengers Vs XMen” is a cynical, contrived, bloated mess of a book that, despite its immense bluster, is ultimately a very small, piecemeal story with forgettable moments offering nothing of substance.
If someone tells you this is a good book and is worth reading, be very suspicious, Chances are theyre waiting for you to fall asleep somewhere around theth page and umpteenth consequencefree fight, then steal your kidneys, But Id wake up! you say, Oh no reading this boring book is far more potent than camphor, You wont awaken until its all over, To reiterate: read this and you will lose your kidneys to the black market and die, To avoid this inevitable fate, stay far away from “Avengers Vs, XMen”. But who wins you ask, the Avengers or the XMen Nobody wins, you poor soul, We all lose by reading this,
If you want to know the spoilers but don't want to read the book, they are:
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