Remender, Rick
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
3.3 out of 5
(4 books)
TOP PICK:
Uncanny Avengers: The Red Shadow
Avengers & X-Men: Axis
(Art by Adam Kubert, Leinil Francis Yu, Terry Dodson and Jim Cheung)
The Red Skull, having stolen the powers of Charles Xavier from his corpse, is transformed into the Red Onslaught and threatens all of humanity. The Avengers and X-Men unite to battle him but it is the intervention of a team of supervillains which turns the tide. However, when a spell cast by Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch goes awry, the heroes find their darker sides brought to the fore and the villains become heroic in their place.
I'd enjoyed the build-up to this story, with the Red Skull's genocidal plots and near-unlimited psychic power making him feel like a real threat. I even like the idea of the Red Onslaught (I was/am a big fan of the Onslaught crossover from the 90s), not to mention the Stark Sentinels that serve him. All pieces were in place for an epic crossover.
Unfortunately, what we get is just plain stupid. The fight with Red Onslaught more or less devolves into the heroes and villains punching either kaiju-sized Onslaught or the giant robots. Not very clever or inspiring. Then, the big switch where the heroes become villains and the villains become heroes happens and... it's so dumb. Beyond 'what if the heroes were jerks now and the villains are nice' no thought or development goes into the idea at all and it's more or less just a waiting game until things get switched back to the status quo (admittedly, with a couple of exceptions).
The one redeeming factor for me was seeing how Spider-Man, unaffected by the good/evil swap, struggles to process fighting alongside a heroic version of Carnage.
2 out of 5
Uncanny Avengers: Avenge The Earth
(Art by Daniel Acuna)
Book 4. Six years have passed since the Earth was destroyed by the Celestials and mutantkind is living in the Promised Land of Planet X. However, Havok and Beast, along with the last surviving human, the Wasp, work to undo the damage done by the Apocalypse Twins. Unlikely help arrives in the form of Kang the Conqueror and his Chrono Corps, who offer Havok, Wasp, Sunfire and Wolverine the chance to return through time to the moment of their greatest failure in order to change events and save Earth.
We've often seen Marvel stories where the heroes are living in a dark future and have to mount a desperate mission through time to change the course of events but, despite being overly familiar, there is still plenty of drama to be extracted from that set-up and this book does a good job of doing it. The twist to things here is that for most mutants, Planet X is the world they've always dreamed of. The question, however, is what price are they willing to pay for their dreams and just how trustworthy is their benevolent leader Eimin.
What follows is a really enjoyable all-hands-on-deck mission to save Earth and put right the timeline, with Kang's Chrono Corps (drawn from various dark futures), Immortus' Infinity Watch, the X-Men and, of course, the Avengers all pooling their efforts to defeat Eimin and fight off the planet-killing god Exitar the Executioner. All the disparate plots from across the series up to this point have a role to play and we're given scenes such as the resurrected Sentry catching Exitar's descending foot, reconciliation between Havok and Cyclops (well, a version of him at least) and the satisfying consequences of Kang's megalomaniacal hubris.
There is a big downside to this book, however. It takes place across what would've been just five (short) comic book issues and, for the cast of characters and epic stakes involved, that just doesn't feel like enough. You're left with a feeling that these events have been a bit rushed and would have perhaps been better served with a bit more room to breathe.
3 out of 5
Uncanny Avengers: Ragnarok Now
(Art by Salvador Larroca, Daniel Acuna, Steve McNiven, John Dell, Jay Leisten and Dexter Vines)
Book 3. The Apocalypse Twins move forward with their plans to use the combined power of Scarlet Witch and Wonder Man to rapture the entirety of mutantkind off of Earth and to a new world. As the Avengers attempt to stop the twins, a new threat emerges when it becomes clear that their manipulations have earned Earth judgement at the hands of the Celestial Exitar the Executioner.
This book does a great job of making the stakes at play both huge in scale (end of the world sized) and at the same time immensely personal. The personal failures and guilt of Wolverine, Thor and Scarlet Witch at the key catalysts around which all of the other events revolve. I particularly liked the fact that there is a moment when the threat to Earth is so great that all of the other concerns fall away and the Avengers break free of their angst to do what the Avengers do. It reminded me of a Captain America line from the 90s Onslaught event where he's warned that he may die and replies "I recognise that the world is at stake. Don't bother me with details".
I also have to credit Remender with just how far down a dark path he takes this story, with some genuinely shocking and impactful losses for the Avengers. It felt as if, unlike so many other books of the era, that this story genuinely carried weight for the Marvel Universe as a whole.
4 out of 5
Uncanny Avengers: The Red Shadow
(Art by John Cassaday, Olivier Coipel and Mark Morales)
Book 1. In the wake of 'Avengers Vs X-Men' (reviewed here), Captain America decides to create a new Avengers team to bridge the gap between humans and mutants. The X-Men, reeling from the death of Charles Xavier at the hands of Cyclops, are struggling to find their moral centre in this new world, so Alex Summers AKA Havok, reluctantly accepts Cap's offer of becoming the leader of this new team. However, the reborn Red Skull is determined to drive the wedge further between humans and mutants, using the deceased brain of Professor X for those ends.
I have always been a big X-Men fan, not least because they serve as an allegory for race relations in America. Here that allegory is dialled up by the fact that the mutants have just shown the ability and desire to dominate the planet, and by the return of the Red Skull with his Nazi beliefs about racial purity. It provides some genuine existential tension that the new team has to confront and overcome if they're to stay together. Things are further complicated by the inclusion of two former members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Rogue and Scarlet Witch, the latter of whom almost wiped out mutants herself.
I've felt like the Avengers have been stagnating for a long time, perhaps since the original introduction of Brian Michael Bendis' New Avengers, but folding the narratives of the Avengers and the X-Men into one another in this new series really got my interest engaged in a way it hasn't been for a while. I look forward to reading more.
4 out of 5
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Marvel Comics (here)