AVENGERS
vs X-MEN recap #0-9
The X-men and Avengers
have declared war on each other and the world as we know it is under
threat of total destruction by an all powerful cosmic threat. It's a
Marvel event, alright!
“Our people are on the
brink of extinction.” Huh? None of them are actually dead, Cyclops,
you bell end! To me, a mutant having their powers taken away just
seems the same as taking an assault rifle away from a small child.
Sure the kid really likes his assault rifle and the edge it gives him
over all the other kids in the playground but he doesn't need it and
he sure as shit doesn't deserve it. “Boo-hoo, I've lost these
powers I never earned or worked for in the first place. Guess now
I'll have to stop moping around complaining about how hated and
feared I am and get a job like everyone else..... but how do I get a
job? I have no useful qualifications or life skills whatsoever.
WAAAAHHHH!”
Luckily, the heroic and
far more switched on Avengers are on the case. They get wind of this
and decide to make the X-men reconsider, by force if necessary. Thank
God for a bit of common sense! In case you couldn't tell, I am firmly
in the Avengers' corner for this one.
#0:
On Utopia, Cyclops continues with his
senseless master plan to have the whole world and everyone he's ever
known turned to ash in the blink of an eye. Today's part of the plan
involves him beating up a teenage girl for a prolonged period of
time. Hope accidentally releases a huge and powerful looking blast of
phoenix energy. Turns out to be completely harmless, though, and
barely even singes Scott's clothes even though he was stood right
next to her.
The Avengers, lots of them armed with
large clubs, attack Utopia! Unfortunately it looks like most of the
Avengers must have gone out the previous night and come to work with
really bad hangovers or something since the fight lasts a lot longer
than 10 seconds and none of the X-men get killed or paralysed.
Cyclops must have a magic head as well as eyes because he takes a
direct hit to the side of the nut from Cap's shield and just shakes
it off.
#3:
Wandering Antarctica, Wolverine has
already murdered a polar bear and turned it in to a coat. Seriously,
the guy can't step one foot in to the wilderness without having a
major impact on the local wildlife population. Are Polar Bears
endangered? Anyway, he finds Hope who's come round to Cyclops' way of
thinking. Believing that the world is far too boring when
everything's not on fire, she now wants to embrace the phoenix and
revel in it's powerful, fiery seduction! Wolverine agrees to partner
up with her so that he can be on hand to administer a fatal stabbing
when it all goes horribly wrong.
Tony Stark waps the Phoenix with his
newly created ultimate Phoenix disruptor blaster suit but instead of
killing the Phoenix, it splinters it, causing it to take control of
Cyclops, Namor, Colossus,White Queen, and Magik but NOT Hope. Vowing
to change the world for the better and take Hope home to ready her,
the 5 newly empowered ticking time bombs blast off towards Earth.
The Phoenix five set about improving
the planet by turning the island of Utopia into a vast technological
paradise and eradicating drought, famine, war and the need for fossil
fuels. Charles Xavier doesn't like it. Seems great now but he knows
it's only a matter of time before they completely lose control and
cities start getting flattened. Not happy with this either, the
Avengers launch a daring raid to capture Hope from the X-men in the
hopes that she can help them put an end to the Phoenix threat.
Unfortunately they get rumbled within about 10 seconds of arriving on
Utopia, and drubbed senseless by Cyclops and White Queen. Scarlet
Witch, who's just had a vision of the Avengers dying in flames,
arrives just in time to rescue them all along with Hope. Hope leaves
with the Avengers willingly. She can obviously see how out of control
her fellow X-men are getting. A pissed off Scott concludes that the
Avengers need to be gotten out of the way. “No more Avengers.”
At the Avengers' new temporary hideout
in Wakanda, Iron Fist arrives with Lei Kung to take Hope back to K'un
Lun where she can be trained for what she must do to defeat the
Phoenix. A plan is drawn up for the Avengers to fall back to the
mystical city as it is believed that it will be out of reach of the
Phoenix and X-men. Before they can leave, though, Namor shows up
riding the crest of a tidal wave with his huge and smelly army of
fish people to attack Wakanda!
#8:
#9:
Writers: Brian Michael
Bendis, Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker, Jonothan Hickman and Matt Fraction
Art: Frank Cho, John
Romita Jr, Olivier Coipel and Adam Kubert
Published by Marvel Comics
Article by Stewart Loud
The
Plot:
The Phoenix is returning.
The X-men know it's coming and they know it's intended host is Hope
Summers. Despite all the death, destruction and mess it usually
causes, the X-men, in particular Cyclops, have decided this is a
wonderful thing that could possibly bring back all the mutants again
so the world can return to being the ultra dangerous and chaotic
place it used to be, where any halfwit or psychotic murderer can be
born with the powers to murder more people than they ever could have
hoped for otherwise, before most of them were de-powered during House
Of M.
“Our people are on the
brink of extinction.” Huh? None of them are actually dead, Cyclops,
you bell end! To me, a mutant having their powers taken away just
seems the same as taking an assault rifle away from a small child.
Sure the kid really likes his assault rifle and the edge it gives him
over all the other kids in the playground but he doesn't need it and
he sure as shit doesn't deserve it. “Boo-hoo, I've lost these
powers I never earned or worked for in the first place. Guess now
I'll have to stop moping around complaining about how hated and
feared I am and get a job like everyone else..... but how do I get a
job? I have no useful qualifications or life skills whatsoever.
WAAAAHHHH!”
Yep, these selfish idiots
have decided to embrace the Phoenix upon it's arrival, and have begun
preparing Hope to receive the terrible world destroyer.....preparing
her.....preparing a teenage girl to control the most destructive
force in the known Universe. A force that even Jean Grey could never
control. Of course no one has actually told Hope what all the
preparation is for because she seems a lot smarter than every other
Mutant in Utopia so she'd easily spot what a ridiculous idea this is
and leave. It's almost as if, deep down, Cyclops knows how asinine
his plan is. Used to read mountains of X-men comics in the 90's, and
I honestly never disliked Cyclops' character until I started reading
this.
Luckily, the heroic and
far more switched on Avengers are on the case. They get wind of this
and decide to make the X-men reconsider, by force if necessary. Thank
God for a bit of common sense! In case you couldn't tell, I am firmly
in the Avengers' corner for this one.
I'm enjoying it so far.
It's certainly been running for a lot longer than I expected (issue 9
out now. 12 issues in total) when the Phoenix actually arrived, the
story took a turn I didn't see coming that goes a long way to making
it believable that the Avengers wouldn't just massacre all the X-men
inside of 10 minutes.
Romita Jr and Coipel
provide the brilliant artwork, giving the comics all the visual flash
and bang you'd expect from a Marvel event and there's been a few epic
showdowns between the opposing sides. No actual casualties on either
side yet but there's bound to be at least one big death towards the
end. Usually is in a Marvel event. Cap at the end of Civil War, Aries
during Siege and didn't Wasp die at the end of Secret Invasion?
If I had to guess what's
gonna happen at the end?: In the Earth's darkest hour, when
everything looks lost and all 6 billion of the worlds inhabitants are
poised and ready to accept oblivion.....everything turns out ok when
one character, possibly Hope, makes the supreme sacrifice for the
good of the world.
What I'd like to happen:
The Phoenix is defeated and never ever comes back. All the X-men are
rounded up and gassed. They kill Cyclops last and make him watch the
deaths of all his fellow mutants after he led them on his fools
mission. Maybe he shouts something like “What was I thinking? Was I
even thinking? I'M SUCH A DOUCHE!!!!” just before they set a pack
of wild boars on him.
What I seriously hope does
not happen: All the ex mutants get their powers back and we're
treated to a 3 or 4 page montage of panels showing mutants all around
the world dancing with glee as they rediscover the magic of the
special powers they should never have been given, and it's presented
to the reader as a good thing.
Issue 9 is out now and
issue 10 is due out on the 15th of August. Missed any of
the previous issues? Here's a selection of brief recaps of each one.
Just a warning. I am a little bias towards the Avengers in my
interpretation of the events.
With the help of Miss Marvel and
Spiderwoman, Scarlet Witch beats the hell out of M.O.D.O.K. and
returns to Avengers Mansion where Vision, still sore from the whole
Wanda tried to kill them all during Avengers Disassembled thing,
tells her to clear off and not come back!
Meanwhile on the island of Utopia,
Cyclops confronts a rebellious Hope Summers, about to go out for the
night using a jet pack. Hope begs him to tell her why she's so
important and what the phoenix has to do with her but naturally,
Scott is too much of a dick to tell her. The way he probably sees it,
if he told her his plan that'd be one more person in the world who
knows how stupid he is, and that, he could never allow.
Then Hope flies off to blow of some
steam by hospitalising every single member of the Serpent Society.
Later she seems to learn about the Phoenix all on her own.
Far from Earth, the phoenix approaches.
#1:
Nova crash lands in to New York City
from outer space, expertly taking out a large commercial air craft
full of passengers and the Empire State building on the way down,
bringing with him a grim message: “It's....It's coming.”
On Utopia, Cyclops continues with his
senseless master plan to have the whole world and everyone he's ever
known turned to ash in the blink of an eye. Today's part of the plan
involves him beating up a teenage girl for a prolonged period of
time. Hope accidentally releases a huge and powerful looking blast of
phoenix energy. Turns out to be completely harmless, though, and
barely even singes Scott's clothes even though he was stood right
next to her.
The Avengers work out what's going on
with the phoenix and Hope, and instantly decide that something needs
to be done. Captain America flies to Utopia in a futile attempt to
reason with the demented Cyclops. Scott refuses to hand over Hope
because he's fully willing gamble the lives of the entire planet on
the slim chance that Hope will be able to make it so there's hundreds
of thousands of mutants again because that never caused any problems
in the past.
When Scott eye blasts him in to the
see, Cap realises the incomparable level of foolishness he's dealing
with and has no choice but to call in the other Avengers to bring
about a final solution to the X-men menace.
#2:
Hope throws a tantrum, incapacitates a
handful of Avengers and X-men alike, using her now growing Phoenix
powers, and escapes the island during the confusion, making good on
her fiery feet running across the water.
Meanwhile in space, a separate team of
Avengers including Thor, Nova, Beast and War Machine prepare to face
the Phoenix in an attempt to stop it or at least slow it down.
The battle is over and the X-men are
all rounded up and captured. Sadly, the self absorbed, slippery
terrorists all manage to teleport away to safety before they can be
executed.
Hope Summers is on the run from both
groups now, using a scrambling device that splits her energy
signature into several different places at once, making her difficult
to track using Cerebra, and forcing the X-men and Avengers to split
into groups to search the various global locations.
Cap recognises the threat she poses but
believes she can be captured and contained. When Wolverine makes it
clear that the only solution to the problem he can see is to stab
Hope to death as soon as they find her, Cap has Giant Man kick him
out of a Quin jet at high altitude in to the snow on their way to the
Savage Land.
#4:
Wandering Antarctica, Wolverine has
already murdered a polar bear and turned it in to a coat. Seriously,
the guy can't step one foot in to the wilderness without having a
major impact on the local wildlife population. Are Polar Bears
endangered? Anyway, he finds Hope who's come round to Cyclops' way of
thinking. Believing that the world is far too boring when
everything's not on fire, she now wants to embrace the phoenix and
revel in it's powerful, fiery seduction! Wolverine agrees to partner
up with her so that he can be on hand to administer a fatal stabbing
when it all goes horribly wrong.
The Avengers interstellar Phoenix
intercept force get beaten into unconsciousness by the fiery bird in
question, and the issue ends with the Avengers, X-men and Hope all
gathered in the breathable “Blue Area” of the Moon (An artificial
environment created by the Skrulls) about to commence face punching
again, when Thor crashes on to the Moon's surface. Both groups look
up to the stars. The Phoenix has arrived!
#5:
Reason does an energetic triple back
flip out of the window as both sides ignore Hope and the Phoenix, and
attack each other with full force. As the Phoenix entity begins to
take hold of Hope, she realises the true extent of it's destructive
power and that she has no chance of controlling it. Turning to
Wolverine, she asks him to make good on their previous death pact.
Never having been one to turn down the opportunity to put 6 identical
holes in someone, Wolverine gives it a go but is stopped by Cyclops
who by now has completely lost it. Ranting and raving about his race
being snuffed out, even though none of them are actually dead.
#6:
The Phoenix five set about improving
the planet by turning the island of Utopia into a vast technological
paradise and eradicating drought, famine, war and the need for fossil
fuels. Charles Xavier doesn't like it. Seems great now but he knows
it's only a matter of time before they completely lose control and
cities start getting flattened. Not happy with this either, the
Avengers launch a daring raid to capture Hope from the X-men in the
hopes that she can help them put an end to the Phoenix threat.
Unfortunately they get rumbled within about 10 seconds of arriving on
Utopia, and drubbed senseless by Cyclops and White Queen. Scarlet
Witch, who's just had a vision of the Avengers dying in flames,
arrives just in time to rescue them all along with Hope. Hope leaves
with the Avengers willingly. She can obviously see how out of control
her fellow X-men are getting. A pissed off Scott concludes that the
Avengers need to be gotten out of the way. “No more Avengers.”
Elsewhere in the mystical city of K'un
Lun, Lei Kung consults the ancient “Book Of The Fallen” to see
what happened last time the Phoenix came to Earth looking for
trouble, and discovers that the power of the Iron Fist may hold the
key to victory.
#7:
The power mad Phoenix quintet have
declared the Avengers global terrorists. They now lead the rest of
the X-men in an aggressive campaign to capture them all and close
down their various operations. Stark Tower, Avengers Academy and the
Avengers mansion are all quickly overrun, and Hawkeye gets a severe
toasting and is captured.
To hold the X-men at bay while they
look for a better way to fight them, the Avengers decide to use
Scarlet Witch, the only person they fear due to her outstanding
victory against Mutantkind during the House Of M storyline. Dr
Strange issues a few Avengers with the enchantments of Ikonn:
Powerful charms that allow the wearer to take on the appearance of
the Scarlet Witch, and hopefully scare the X-men off. This plan works
a treat. Turns out the X-men are as yellow as the Phoeinx's flames,
and when faced with a fight they may actually lose, they poop their
knickers and run like the self important crybabies they are.
Thousands die cursing Namor's name as
Wakanda is scrubbed from the map (told you this would start happening
sooner or later). Regardless of how technologically advanced Wakanda
may be, their defences are no match for a tidal wave.
Pretty much all of the Avengers attack
Namor at once, giving him the kind of frenzied kicking you might
witness in the centre of town on a Saturday night. Thor, Wanda,
Thing, Spider-man, Red Hulk and the rest of the gang hit him with
everything they have in a spectacular battle but still only just
manage to bring him down. His portion of the Phoenix energy leaves
him and is divide equally among the arriving other four Phoenix
empowered mutants, making them even more powerful, as he falls to the
ground.
The battle weary Avengers beat a hasty
retreat through a portal to the safety of K'un Lun to plan their next
move.
My word, things are getting bad now.
Eight days after the fall of Wakanda, The Avengers are well and truly
on the ropes with most of their number either captured or injured.
Many mutants have begun to leave Utopia as the realisation dawns on
them that they are in fact the bad guys and the shame of how arrogant
they've been begins to set in. Even the remaining four X-men with
Phoenix powers are admitting to each other that their steadily
declining control over their actions is frightening them.
During an Avenger rescue mission in to
an X-men Hell dimension volcano holding facility where most of the
captured Avengers (including Thor!) are being held, Spider-man
manages to trick Colossus and Magik into defeating each other using
no more psychology than you'd need to start a fight between two small
children. They may be all powerful but they're still the same petty
halfwits they were in the first place. Their portion of Phoenix
energy leaves them, making White Queen (who has now just taken to
going round random peoples houses to murder them by making their
brains ooze out of their ears in front of their families) and
Cyclops.
Armed with the knowledge of where
Hope is, a now almost unimaginably powerful Cyclops kicks down the
dimensional doors of K'un Lun, determined to bring her back to
Utopia.
 |
| The Phoenix Five |
No comments:
Post a Comment