Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Uncanny Avengers #1

Okay, this review is being put up later than I usually do, but what can I say, sometimes life happens.  Anyway, due to my 3 and a half hour lateness, I'm gonna skip the intro and dig right in.

Uncanny Avengers #1

Summary: This one kicks off with somebody apparently cutting into the brain of Avalanche, before setting him loose.  From there we head to X-Mansion/the Jean Grey School where Wolverine says a eulogy for Professor X...  And does a pretty damn good job of it.  I have a couple of things to say about that, but I'll save it for the "Thoughts" portion of this post.  Next up we go to Havok, who has stopped by the Brig, which is currently holding his brother, Lord Summers/Cyclops.  Havok does a magnificent job of dressing down Lord Summers for his recent actions, going so far as to call Utopia "Magneto Island".  Personally I always called it Crazy Mutie Island, but to each their own.  Havok ends the conversation by telling Lord Summers that it was really nice that Lord Summers basically forgot/ignored all of the things Prof. X tried to teach Lord Summers, and then murdered Prof. X to boot.  On the way out, Captain America and Thor invite Havok out for a cup of coffee.  At Avengers Mansion, Cap and Thor try to convince Havok to lead a joint team of Avengers and X-Men, to try to keep Prof. X's dream of mutant and human coexistence alive.  Havok doesn't feel he's the man for the job, but before he can be pressured any further, Avalanche attacks Midtown Manhattan, tearing the streets apart and destroying buildings.  Cap, Thor and Havok rush out to help, with Thor and Havok rescuing civilians and Cap confronting Avalanche.  Avalanche babbles about this being the inciting act before jumping off of a several story high chunk of street.  Next up, we head back to X-Mansion, where the Scarlet Witch is paying her respects to the Prof.  Rogue comes by and bitches Wanda out for the whole, "No More Mutants" thing and claims Wanda had always hid among the humans(as a member of the Avengers).  Wanda's retort is brilliant, and is something else I need to touch on in the "Thoughts" section of this post.  Eventually the argument breaks down into a fight, and the two are hit by an explosion and confronted by a bunch of strange, powered beings.  The beings kidnap the two women(or maybe just one, it was hard to tell) and quickly leave.  This issue ends with the leader of the beings cutting out the brain of Prof. X(!?!?!), stating that with that brain he could eradicate the mutant menace.  And the leader?  The Red Skull!

Thoughts: Wooo, I have a lot to say about this one...  First off, I thought it was a great first issue.  It balanced the Avengers and X-Men sides of things well, gave us a good cliffhanger and was full of really great moments.  Now, those few things I wanted to talk about...  I have to say, this issue really made me realize what a great job Marvel has done turning Wolverine from a crazed, murder machine, with little to no conscience, to a legitimate leader.  I was one of those people who groaned(loudly) about Wolverine being put on the Avengers(and still don't particularly like that fact due to his colorful past...), but I can get it now.  His character has evolved SO MUCH from the one dimensional berserker from back in the 1980's-1990's.  I hated Wolvie heading up a school, but I can see why he did it.  Oddly enough, out of everybody who has been an X-Man, Prof. X is probably the most revered by Wolvie, due to all of the mental help the Prof. gave him those early years, when Wolvie struggled the most with his animal side.  So yeah, go figure, I see Wolverine as a human being now, and not just a crazed animal.  Next up was the conversation between Wanda and Rogue...  I've never been shy about how much I hated the whole, "No More Mutants" decree that screwed up the X-books for so many years.  It led to some repetitious and downright terrible stories.  However, Rick Remender makes a great point through Wanda here...  Why the hell was it so important for there to be more mutants?  So the mutant population was decimated...  So like 90%+ of the mutant population was depowered...  So what?  So former mutants were now normal?  Big deal.  So when the remaining 198 mutants died there's be no more?  And that's a problem because?  Seriously, why was Lord Summers so damn keen on there being more mutants?  I honestly never really looked at it that way, I looked at it the simpler, "I wish there were more mutants because the X-books are really boring now..." way, but why was all of mutantkind so pissed with Wanda?  Hell, if anything, she did them a favor.  If the remaining mutants would have quietly retired/joined the Avengers/a million other things besides become crazed militants on an island, wouldn't they have been able to live out the rest of their lives in peace?  Sure, that's a really simplistic way of looking at it, but why couldn't, say Emma Frost, who could easily pass as a human, dye her hair and just live a nice, quiet, happy life in nowhere-ville USA?  Wanda is totally right here, obviously a large majority of the X-Men flat out love being martyrs.  It was a very powerful argument   So there's that.  Now let's try to get back to the main story here.  I loved Havok's interaction with... Well, everybody, from Lord Summers(who it appears Marvel is going to smartly keep evil), to Cap and Thor.  As a long-time Havok fan, I am really excited to see Alex get a huge role going forward.  The Red Skull reveal was kind of strange...  I'm guessing that's the original Skull, and not Sin, although we only saw the head and not the body, so I guess it COULD be Sin.  Although it's probably not.  I'm cool with the original Skull being the first villain in this series  because he is a big enough threat to actually face the Avengers, plus, as a crazed Nazi, he WOULD hate mutantkind.  I don't get a) how he got Prof. X's brain, or b) how he plans on using it, but it should be fun finding out the answers to those questions.  In closing, this comic was NEARLY perfect.  If not for a few small bumps(mainly the Red Skull and his whole brain-snatching thing), it would have been perfect.  As it is though, I'm going to give it a...

Score: 9 1/2 out of 10.
uncanny avengers #1
Wow, Wanda just verbally kicked Rogue's ass there...

24 comments:

  1. This actually was a good issue. Just about everything about it was good. I even liked Wanda's rebuttal to Rogue which is kinda true. I did think that the end was pretty out there and a little grotesque. I don't think Xavier's coming back from this one.

    By the way, I'm guessing RS's Merry Men stole Xavier's body from his tomb during that small fight between Wanda and Rogue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, it's gonna be tough for the Prof. to come back from this one, but then again, he could always just end up in a cloned body again! As long as his brain is around, why not?

      And I think you're 100% right, ARW. That had to be what the Skull's goons were actually after, Prof. X's body. I automatically figured they were after Wanda and/or Rogue, but it makes way more sense that they were targeting Xavier himself... I mean who else were they expecting to find at his tomb, besides the Prof, himself?

      Delete
  2. Damn that ending came outta nowhere! You guys are right, first I wondered what that random attack was about but clearly they were after Prof. I gotta say, I didn't expect that ending at all though, I'm excited as hell about the next issue.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I find it funny that you bring up Wanda's conversation. I was thinking about that topic all during AvX. So, okay the Phoenix did give mutants their powers back and maybe that was its intention. Of course, before Hope's week-long kung fu training she probably would of lost it and destroyed the planet. Also, lets forget the Phoenix destroyed countless planets full of lifeforms on its way to Earth. It was all good because we have mutants again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well first of all, Wanda straight up kill plenty of mutants by removing their powers. Flying mutants fell to their death, seaworthy mutants drowned, this one guy was doing a rescue mission in the middle of a vulcano when he lost his powers. Chamber doesn't have several vital organs and had to be put on lifesupport after Wanda did her thing, Blob is I believe still doomed to drag 10 times a normal humans skin around in his wake, without the actual muscle/fat mass to go along with it.

    Then off course what happened in the immeadiate aftermath of a her spell, 40 kids died, Skin was crucified. Mutantkind was rounded up by SHIELD and put in a Sentinel guarded concentrationcamp.

    And that's just worst examples. Xavier himself said that Wanda taking away his telepathy and giving back his ability to walk turned him into a true cripple.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You can only really blame Wanda for the mutants who fell to their deaths/drowned/etc. And even that can be blamed on others people(Magneto, Pietro, the government for the Vision disassembled thing, Mephisto/Master Pandemonium, etc). At least she's owned up to her part in that mess.

    I don't see how it's her fault that Stryker/various racists/the Sentinels attacked though. That was happening before Wanda cast her spell. She's right about the way the X-Men liked making themselves targets. And I don't see why most of them couldn't have quietly slipped back into civilian life. The vast majority of mutants were human once. Why not go back to that again?

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comic was pretty great, but for me it's all because of Havok! The rest of great too and the writing was pretty well done. It's just that it all got overshadowed for me by the fact that Havok can Finally be a main character again! I'm psyched!

    Pretty great start to a promising series.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I LOVED the way Havok was written here, Dreager! I really didn't say that enough in that post, so I'll say it here... I loved it!!! He was written so well, his reactions seemed perfect, I had no complaints at all with the way he was presented. And I think he'll make a fantastic Avengers leader. He definitely has the credentials. It's great to see Alex finally step up to the big time.

      Delete
  7. X, you disappoint me! I'll preface this by saying: I never liked Scarlet Witch. Stupid character with stupid powers from the beginning. Worse when Bendis decided to make her omnipotent. And now she says "get over it" after playing Anakin to her own people.

    Durar is spot on with his points. She directly killed those who were using their powers. She indirectly killed all the depowered mutants, who got big fat bullseyes on their foreheads for the mobs when they lost the ability to defend themselves.

    You can't put that on others either. She's the one who made the insane decision to fall in love with a robot in the first place! ;)

    Blending with regular humans is unacceptable as well. Set aside the fact that humans were the ones who cast the first stone with their persecution. Should modern man have just blended with the neanderthals? A big part the mutant idea is that they are a different species, the next stage of evolution. That they could rise above human problems and make a better civilization. "Be the better man" and all that, right?

    From that perspective, Wanda wiped out the future of that species and erased the possibility of a better future. And now she's defending that decision? What a cow.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have to disagree. Wanda kinda has the right to tell the Xmen to get over themselves. She offered to make things right, tried to do so but they were so obessed with being the victims and getting their "justice" that they refused.

      Not to mention that she played a role in getting mutants back when she helped Hope let go of the Pheonix.

      Besides, anyone who's a superhero and falls in love is insane. It always causes problems. XD

      Delete
    2. Yup, my thoughts exactly. Couldn't have said it better myself. But since I'm a huge Wanda fan(hated that she was scapegoated for Disassembled), I didn't want to be the one to say it.

      Delete
    3. I realize I'm being hellova raging comic nerd hear, but hear me out. I'm going Saidi on you guys!

      When did she offer to make things right and try to do so? Did she offer to raise those people in the graveyard she killed from the dead? Did she ever try to revive the mutant species that she extinguished? She even says in the page you scanned that she didn't care if any more mutants were born.

      One good deed doesn't erase your wrongs. Here's what Wanda has done, essentially: killed 10 people, saved one, and told Rogue to "get over" the ten that were lost. How am I wrong?

      Delete
    4. She did try to revive the mutants, but on a case-by-case basis since not all the mutants wanted their powers back. That is how Rictor got his powers back. But then she lost that power so no longer had the ability to do it anymore.

      I think the problem is that we lost sympathy for mutants because they beat that dead horse all the way to this event. Mostly I think that is from bad writing. Everything that has come about that I dislike about the X-comics (most everything from Dark Reigns 'til now) is done with the excuse "there are no more mutants". At this point I am at the point where I think "so what".

      I also don't buy the "rise above human problems" line. If they are the next stage of evolution that just means there is a genetic difference that separates them from homo sapiens. Most of Xavier's philosophy was that they weren't superior or inferior. The thought that they would make a better civilization sounds more like Magneto.

      Delete
    5. Wow, nicely put, Jermox. Especially that last paragraph. I think I've been really down on the X-comics for about the same time period(the founding of Utopia). When they all turned their backs on Xavier's dream and went a more militant route I started to rapidly lose my patience with the X-books. Plus the fact that it was Cyclops, the X-Man most closely associated with Xavier's dream, who became mini-Magneto really bugged me.

      I will say that I blame editorial more than the writers for how much I haven't liked the X-books these past few years. The end of House of M tied the writers hands SO badly. They couldn't add new mutants to the X-Men. They couldn't create the next Magneto/Apocalypse. They couldn't really do anything but throw sentinels and racists at them every issue...

      Delete
    6. See, to me, it's less an issue of what Wanda did or didn't do to help the remaining mutants and more of an issue that the X-Men no longer have the moral high ground. Cyclops -- and a lot of the other X-Men -- were willing to risk the lives of everyone on the planet to bring back mutantkind. I think the real issue is that they can no longer pretend that they're victims. Cyclops was responsible for killing a lot of people when he set the world on fire and Namor destroyed the entire nation of Wakanda. All the X-Men except Logan helped them do that. Even if they eventually changed sides, they were all willing, for longer than advisable, to let the Phoenix Five do what they wanted to do, even when it became clear that it was probably going to end in tears. To me, Wanda was calling bullshit on the idea that mutantkind was innocent and constantly persecuted. Now, the X-Men no longer get to be martyrs because they were responsible for committing incredibly destructive acts against humanity...and could've destroyed the entire world in the process. I think that's the whole interesting part of this series. We're not only trying to show an example of mutantkind to make humans fear them less, we're actually recalling that even the "good" mutants have now given humans reasons to fear them in the first place.

      Delete
    7. It seems to me that there are characters on both sides of the issue with plenty of blood on their hands. And that's the kind of ambiguity that makes scenes like the one X posted such a good pay-off. If Rogue and Scarlet Witch both didn't have somewhat of a point, that would be a pretty boring scene to me.

      Delete
    8. OK, so y'all want to downplay Wanda's failure to pay her debt to mutantkind for her crimes. Let's move on to the second point raised in the panel.

      After the initial exchange, Rogue calls Wanda out for being an Uncle Tom/house slave throughout the mutants' struggle. (This is the best part of the scene, IMO, since to my knowledge, that had never been done before.)

      Naturally, Wanda being a stupid cow, tells Rogue to get over it. What "it" are we referring to? Let's see, since decimation, the mutants have been:

      -herded into a concentration camp by the US government;

      -when they made their exodus from the US, which had become a rogue nation led by Norman "Green psychopath Goblin" Osborn, they faced attempted genocide, what, a half-dozen times?

      That entire chain of events was set into motion by Wanda. To which she replies "stop feeling sorry for yourself, I'm so over your martyrdom." Even better, she tries to claim that she knows "what the X...actually stands for," despite never actually being an x-man herself, instead being more dedicated to being in love with an inanimate object. Again, tell me what I'm not seeing here.

      Delete
    9. I will say this. The messenger is bad but I do agree with the message. Characters like Beast had to face reality and accept that the mutants were going to go extinct. There is that one scene with Beast and Molly from the Runaways in which he explains this to her and it is done quite well.

      Then there is other characters like Cyclops who refused to accept this. Usually that is an honorable trait but he was shown to forsake humans to achieve this goal (not just DP Cykes either, he has done it before). If the X-men would of accepted their fate they probably would not have almost destroyed the world.

      (Of course since they didn't we now have more mutants, which is better comic-wise and I hope the X-books are better for it. But, a lot of death happened just so we can have more mutants and, as far as their world is concerned, that is not necessarily for the better.)

      Delete
    10. "If the X-men would of accepted their fate they probably would not have almost destroyed the world."

      This seems to be the crux of your post jermox. I would ask you this: how would the x-men "accepting their fate" (whatever that means) change a single thing? The Phoenix came independent of anything the x-men did. The Phoenix's possession of the Phoenix five happened because of the Avengers!

      The only hand, at all, that the X-men had in what went down was not letting Bishop shoot baby Hope in the head. Somehow, I don't think that's what you're suggesting they should've done.

      Delete
    11. You act like the X-men were complacent during the entire event. They were actively pursuing the Phoenix to possess Hope since they heard it was coming to Earth. They could of taken Hope off the planet. They could of tried to fend off the Phoenix. They could of tried to build some kind of protection for Hope. If you wanted to see what the X-men could of done you just have to look at all the things the Avengers were trying to do. Cyclops' hands weren't tied; he chose to welcome the Phoenix with open arms.

      By accepting their fate I meant accepting that the mutants were going to go extinct. It is true that the Scarlet Witch started this but Cyclops has been leading to this event since he started Utopia. It was only a matter of time before Cyclops would endanger the world to try to revive the mutant race. This just happen to be the moment.

      Delete
  8. This was a really really good Issue. I am looking forward to marvel now! Now. Pun intended. Can't agree more with you on the wanda rougue talk! The red skull reveal actually made me laugh. Something about the last page with him was so much.... Like the old marvel we knew what with the villains being all over the top crazy-ness

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That last page was AWESOME due to the over-the-top craziness of it all... Having had a day to really think about this issue, that scene with the Skull at the end was pretty great... I mean he's standing there with a brain in his hand! Raised in the air!! Now THAT'S a villain!

      Delete
  9. I loved this issue. I loved that Havok, yet again is the reluctant leader, the only one with a clean enough nose to be a public example of mutantkind. It fits him perfectly. I'm really excited to see him front and center for the first time in a long time. I agree with everything said here about how Remender really seemed to get him. Plus, I loved to see the changed power dynamic with Scott, him finally having the upper hand!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The scene between Scott and Alex was GREAT, JW! I loved it. Remender seems to have a great idea of who Alex is(the reluctant leader, brother of the X-Men's greatest leader), and the reason Cap wanted Alex to lead the team makes perfect sense. Havok wasn't involved with the AvX mess AT ALL. He was in NY the entire time. He's worked for the government before. He's paid his dues(just look at Mutant X!). He IS the perfect mutant to become not just an Avenger, but an Avengers leader. And with me being a HUGE fan(as you know), I couldn't have been happier!

      Delete