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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It could have been really funny, or really dramatic, but ended up being neither. I spent the second half of the book waiting for Cap and Cyclops to get into a sissy slap fight, which at least would have lived up to the silly premise.
Instead we got Cyclops beating a girl.
About a week ago it seemed odd to me that I would’ve agreed with every word of your I Am Alive review, Dan.
Apparently there’s a law of equilibrium in place or something because I disagree with most of the sentiments here. I thought Infinite was cool. Admittedly I probably would’ve been angry if it was $3. But for $1 it was an interesting delivery.
As far as the book itself, this entire thing hinges on Summers. He’s terrible and getting worse. Bendis has the ability to write around the awfulness of that character. You may have some awesome reasons for thinking Bendis has the substantial flaws in his writing that you’ve mentioned, but honestly I’ve never seen any of them. I really like him.
In any event, it’ll be better than Brightest Day so there’s that.
That’s…not setting the bar very high.
Bendis has his strengths as a writer, but pacing and characterization can be spotty depending on the book.
100% agree. the only thing that gives me hope (which is also a source of some issues) is that the rotating teams won’t give bendis any more chances to throw a clunker like this.
When bendis gets to play with his own toys in his own sandbox, he’s pretty great. See: Ultimate Spidey and Ultimate Ultimate Spidey. Sure, his tics are there, but he’s also much better at conveying their motivations and personalities. Miles and Ganke are two different people, even though they’re clearly written by bendis.
When he’s not working in his own universe, we get cyclops shooting cap because the plot says it has to happen, and we get Magneto screaming “EVERYONE PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS METAPHOR.”
Seems to me that for the last decade, people have only been writing cyclops as the dickhead leader and nothing else.
I haven’t looked at Romita’s art since maybe World War Hulk, which was pretty good, but I find it a little underwhelming in Avengers vs. X-men. Maybe once things ramp up, he’ll have more room to flex his abilities.
Overall, I agree with you Dan that the basic premise of this book doesn’t make much sense. “Phoenix is coming, we have no time…so let’s fight it out?”
So which major character will die and then return in 7 months?
Logically? Hope. Seems if you’re going to make her a Messiah then you have to raise her from the dead.
But we’re probably talking about what Marvel usually does, which is to pick an ancillary character with a niche audience and kill them off and pretend it’s huge and dramatic when it’s basically just gratuitous and kind of mean to that niche group.
So… Maybe Namor. Or one of the minor X-team members.
Ten bucks says Colosssus gets paved again.
It’ll never happen, but I’d actually be a little bit please with Cyclops going down this time.
I say Colossus as well.
i honestly like scotts characterization…since morrison got his hands on him in “Astonishing” he has been through a lot…considering he was trained to be a leader/soldier to defend his whole race, he would come off as a angst version of cap. and writers are writing him like that, an forced leader in a position he doesnt really want, but he understands what needs to be done.
i like that both wolverine, and now emma and magento, are questioning where his head is at.
and i think cyclops might die at the end of it
Am I the only one who immediately wondered where the characters that are/were both X-Men and Avengers are aligned? Beast is usually comic relief, Quicksilver is lame, but Wanda always has the potential to go off the deep end and waste most all of these characters. Including Daddy Magneto.
Well, Wolverine has a brief, badly written, cameo in the first issue, but I’m sure he’ll show up to kick some ass.