Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Avengers vs X-Men #5

Okay, this is supposedly the big one, so I figured I'd give it a read and review while eating my dinner before I head of to work. Here's hoping this issue lives up to Marvel's hype.

Avengers vs X-Men #5(of 12):

Summary: With the Phoenix looming and Hope losing control with a devastating pyrokinetic blast, she begs Wolverine to kill her to end this since she no longer wanted to join with the Phoenix. Wolverine decides she was right and moves in for the kill, but is stopped by an optic blast from Lord Summers. Once again, Captain America attempts to reason with Lord Summers, but he is too far gone in the throes of madness to listen and simply attacks Cap and Wolvie. However, Iron Man and Hank Pym have one last ditch plan, to attack the Phoenix Force with some gigantic Iron Man suit that had been supplied with the data the Avengers Space team had collected. Iron Man heads up for what seems to be a suicide run and blasts the Force into nothingness(!!!)... Or so it seems... In actuality, the Phoenix Force has bonded with Lord Summers, Namor, Emma Frost, Colossus and Magik, and has decided to wait for Hope to be recovered enough to accept the Force into herself, even though she had decided she no longer wanted to take that path. Cap tries to talk the Phoenix Brotherhood into giving Hope up once more, but they simply laugh at him, take Hope and head towards the Earth, ending this one.

Thoughts: Um, so the Phoenix Force didn't actually bond with one person in this issue, as expected, it bonded with the entire Brotherhood... That was a swerve that I didn't see coming, and one that I didn't necessarily like. I guess that leaves the Force more beatable, since it spread it's powers out, but why does the Force have to “prepare” Hope to take it? Why not just possess her and be done with it? On the plus side, the X-Men have now officially gone to the dark side, so we seem to have clear cut lines coming out of this issue, the Avengers are the good guys, the Phoenix possessed X-Men are the bad guys. You can tell by the insane way they were talking and their, as Cap put it, “scary voices.” Also, the X-Men can be redeemed after this, as whatever evil actions they do going forward can be blamed on the Phoenix Force. It'll be interesting to see what Lord Summers meant when he said he was now more than a mutant and was bringing “tomorrow”. Even though I didn't love this issue, I'm still looking forward to the next issue in two weeks.

Score: 8 out of 10.
avengers vs x-men #5
Oh no, it's the Dark Phoenix Corps!

18 comments:

  1. i didnt think it was possible for them to give Emma Frost a sexier outfit, but well here we are.
    here is some olivier coipel art from the next issue, witch is in my book a vast inprovment from jrjr
    http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m57xkjPcG61qdodo2o1_1280.jpg

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  2. I'm Following this event trought the tien ins and I have some question.. Were is the X-Force team I mean AOA Nightcrawler, Fantomex, Deathpool, Deathlocke? wouldn't they be some good heavy hitters to have in the battle (wheter they side with avengers or the X-men) Personally I think if the idea for Wolverine was to kill Hope who else more suitable for the Job than Fantomex he already killed a potentialy evil Child.

    and talking about heavy hitters, were is the now healthy Cable?

    And since I'm kind of new with the X-men, I heard about a kind of Pheonix Corps once, it is a real thing ? where are they?

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    1. Ha, I had the same thought about Fantomex before too. If the Phoenix Corps are the ones who hunt potential Phoenix hosts then they showed up in the last issue of Wolverine and the X-men.

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    2. No, I think I mixing some stuff from Morrison's run in the X-Men but he didn't explained and maybe isn't cannon.

      At the end of the last arc "Here comes tomorrow" 150 years in the future Jean Grey is aproached for a bunch of people dressed as Pheonix host's (one seems to be Quentin Quire) who gave her the instructions to use the Pheonix Force to "Fix what is damaged" so she sacrifice herself and restores the timeline so Cyclops continues with the School along with Emma frost after the debacle with Magneto/Xorn

      So I believed that the guys dressed as Pheonix, were a kind of Pheonix Corps.. but i'm not versed in Pheonix matters more than what Morrison wrotte about it...

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  3. X my love! I am here and able to comment on the first day! Lol. Me and JT sat on the porch enjoyed some sun and read our comics. So I really enjoyed this issue. BUT I was a little let down to see the Phoenix entity did NOT take on Hope as the host. I Really wanted to see if she could handle it or would it be another Jean Grey incident. The more I read AvsX the more I find myself searching for more Marvel comics to read.

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  4. Yea, I had much of the same reaction. The unstable entity takes probably the four most unstable X-Men as its host. After seeing that I thought "Eh, maybe I would rather have Hope be the host." I am not really sure why I had the "meh" reaction to this but I am not really fans of the Extinction Squad being the hosts.

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  5. Same reaction from me as you guys, It was very Meh to me, I just turned the page like, oh so their all the Phoenix? Whatever. As if Colossus needed to be EVEN MORE POWERFUL! Meh, the one good thing that came outta this was the awesome costumes for Cyclops and Emma.

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  6. Yeah, this was a weird one... It's the first issue of this event where I wasn't REALLY excited for the next issue. I mean I'm looking forward to it and all, and I'm sure it'll be my Pick of the Litter, but this issue wasn't as awesome as the prior ones... And like you guys, I can't put my finger on why... I guess it was the Phoenix Force taking over the X-Men. I'd have actually preferred ANY of the other characters we saw glimpses of in this issue to what we actually got. But I'm still hopeful this will lead to something interesting.

    The Fantomex thing is actually a great point, Alien. It seriously is. Wolverine doesn't really want to kill Hope BECAUSE he sees her as a child. We already know that Fantomex WOULD kill Hope if worse came to worse due to the stuff with Kid Apocalypse. He's actually the perfect character to do the deed. I never thought about that.

    "As if Colossus needed to be EVEN MORE POWERFUL!" Speaking of good points, RIGHT JT?! Seriously, what is up with Colossus and the upgrades lately?!

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  7. You know I'm starting to feel bad for Cyttorak he just keeps losing his Juggernauts to a better divinity for the serpent now the phoenix, he just can't seem to hold on to prime juggernaut soul.
    Also Wolverine changes his mind more than a teenage couple, first he's all like "Im gonna do whatever it takes to kill hope" then he's like "I could never kill children" and now he's all "Im actually okay with killing you" this is confusing why can't he just retire already and let daken kill hope it would be much simpler to follow.

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  8. Well,...I can see why the Phoenix, once dispersed, chose the X-men. After all, they are the "Extinction" team.....meaning they all have dark edges to why they do things even if it can been seen for the greater good to some extent. That type of malevolence is something that the Pheonix Force readily seems to latch onto. But that team I feel will soon betray each other when they don't see eye to eye...something that has already happened mildly in the past between them. All that is needed is a conflict like Namor hitting on Scott's girl, Magik doing something that Scott dislikes, Coloseonix angrily disagreeing with Scott usually in regards his sister. But for now, Scott may have a chance to actually deal with the Scarlett Witch for her error regarding No More Mutants as well as reshape the earth in rebirth of mutantkind in his image and....the bad news....Captain America and company, the Avengers, can do little to stop him. But I know a few who possibly can.....my bet is on Cable primarily after Xavier, Legion, Scarlett Witch, and even Hope (yes Hope...remember..she's scared of the Pheonix possession, yet can mimic the power) make a stand. Once the 5 Pheonix' are divided for selfish reasons on top of those powerhitters swinging the bat on them, then big Cable comes in with the finisher. After the Pheonix clan is defeated, then the Avengers can once again become Earth's Mightiest Heroes because as of right now, they aren't. It would make sense why Scott would proclaim "No More Avenger!" I'm wondering though.....how is Iron Fist's significance gonna add to the story! Also,when is Bishop gonna make an appearance and in what way! This is what I speculate may happen, but of course, I'm probably way off. Haha.

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    1. wait wait what makes you think bishop is going to show up, last we saw him he was millions of years in the past and literally disarmed things were looking most definitively not good for him, anyway I think that in this particular theater there is no space for Bishop especially now all the power levels are way above his capacities and theres already alot of players in this.

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  9. That's a lot of good ideas there, RadT. With the Phoenix dispersed like that, you'd have to think that it's less powerful right now, while Hope would still be AS powerful as the full Phoenix due to her being able to dupe it's powers. Maybe a Hope/Cable team up after the Dark Phoenix Corps falls into disarray would be able to halt them enough for Prof. X, Legion, the Scarlet Witch, the good mutants and the Avengers to stop them. The one thing that bothers me is that this all seems to be leading down the road of "And now mutants are even MORE feared and hated!!!" You KNOW the DPF is going to do something terrible upon arriving on Earth, and with Scott setting himself up as the god/face of mutantkind, it stands to reason that by the end of this one mutantkind will be in an even worse position, even if Scott and company do manage to restart the dormant x-gene. As for Bishop, I doubt we'll see him. I wish we would though, just so he could point and say, "I told you all!!"

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  10. My thoughts exactly with Bishop, X75...now that Hope has evolved in her powers, I seriously doubt Bishop would be a threat to Hope and her mimic abilities and survival tactics, however, gloating he was right would be so worth his return. Secondly, it appears Xavier has been training with Legion on how to control his powerset...so nothing like Age of X or worse will repeat. I believe Xavier feels somewhat responsible for not tutoring his son on his powers that have such a huge magnitude. This pairing could be quite interesting. Look forward to seeing what Xavier and Legion can do together as a Dynamic Duo. So looking forward to that!

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  11. I think I can see why I am uneasy about this issue. We had the Avengers being too militant and the X-Men being too cultish. There wasn't really a good guy and a bad guy. There was differing perspectives. The story was becoming quite interesting. But, as always, the story always has fall into the good guys/bad guys dilemma. Now The evil PF has to take over the X-Men and make them force the PF onto Hope. The Avengers, on the other hand, must valiantly go in and save Hope from the evil PF. Worst off, the X-Men will be the victims while the weird ambiguous entity from space will be the villain. Hopefully I am wrong but if it goes this route I might be disappointed with this series.

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  12. Legion and Xavier are an interesting pairing for sure, RadT. I have to admit that I've never been a huge fan of Legion(although I'll always be grateful for him causing the AOA!), but here's hoping this events ends up with Prof. X back as the leader of the X-Men. It's been way too long since the Prof was at his rightful position.

    Yup, I guess Marvel didn't want the event to be too shades of gray, so they went the black and white route instead... Now the Phoenix-possessed X-Men are the established bad guys(although they always had been the bad guys imo) and the Avengers are the good guys, period, end of story. And agreed, in the end the X-Men should come across as victims(to the readers, I figure the greater Marvel U will hate and fear them even more now), with all of us fans hopefully forgetting that this was pretty much what the X-Men wanted, a mutant imbued with the PF. The one thing that SHOULD be interesting is to see just how bad Marvel allows the X-characters to get...

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  13. Judging from the comments I guess I'm the only one really thrilled about Cyclops with Phoenix Force eh? Ah well, Cyclops has just been one of my favorite Marvel characters. I've personally loved him during the event, because I feel he's finally acting more like a leader. Compared to stuff like the Wolverine and the Xmen tv show and older comics it's been refreshing to see him back in buisness. I guess we'll hopefully see him fight with his new powers in an issue or two

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  14. Well at first, according to interviews I read on the internet, Cyclops and company will actually do good regarding the earth and mutantkind....however, things change when absolute power corrupts between the 5 Pheonixes. So Cyclops will be doing quite alot of good, especially after he fixes the problem regarding the Scarlett Witch. Scott has a punishment for her and with his abilities...it seems he will force activate her powers to undue that spell of No More Mutants (if not by himself without Wanda and/or with aid of the other 4 Pheonixes wielding such a power now) without the used to be Earth's Mightiest Heroes interfering. So I believe you will be thrill about the good Cyclops will unleash...at first anyway Dreager1.

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  15. Can someone explain to me what the deal with the Scarlet Witch was in this issue? I didn't understand why her powers were freaking out here. Was that explained anywhere?

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