"Avengers Vs. X-Men" #1: What'd You Think?

Marvel’s big crossover has officially started, and, since it’s a Marvel crossover, is going to take six freaking months to wrap up, and we’re sure there will be lots of other ancillary series, like the book that consists of nothing but fights, that will take the better part of a year.

First things first: don’t bother with the “Infinite” side story. It’s not a magic advance in the art of comics: it’s another frickin’ “motion comic”, and the technology is actually a bit spotty. It’s a huge waste of Mark Waid and Stuart Immonen, who frankly should be the ones in charge of the main book, since that’s kind of a mess.

Here’s a quick plot recap: Hope Summers has finally been pinged by the Phoenix Force, which is coming to Earth. Because every Marvel crossover these days is built around alleged heroes and master strategists being morons, Captain America shows up to take Hope away and chuck her in “protective custody”. Cyclops, convinced she’s finally going to live up to that whole “Messiah” thing and bring back mutantkind, isn’t going to let that happen. Cue eye-blasts.

In other words, we’re back in “Civil War” territory, where the writing staff is trying to convince us that both sides are in a morally gray area and instead they just come off like idiots. For one thing, why, exactly, does Cap think he needs to take Hope away from the one super-team on the planet who has actually dealt with the Phoenix Force before? Wouldn’t it make more sense to say “Hey, you’re about to have a big, potentially world-killing problem on your hands! Why don’t we work together on this one?” Meanwhile, Cyclops is so over the edge Magneto jokes that Scott is starting to sound like him, because Bendis likes to try and paper over the flaws in his writing by having metajokes about them instead of actually fixing them.

In short, to us at least, this is not a promising start. At least the art looks good.

How about you? What’d you think?

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