Final Assessment of Avengers vs. X-Men

Spoilers ahead.

"I love him. And I love you. I love all of you." : The words that killed Charles Xavier.

Over the past twelve months, we cut our teeth on the critical quagmire with Avengers vs. X-Men, the latest in a tried and true Marvel tradition of hyped mega-crossovers. AvX culminated just a short time ago in a number of transforming departures for the Marvel stable of stories, transitioning now into the much-ballyhooed Marvel NOW launch.  The players, for their parts, all played them with a certain aplomb.  Five Marvel Architects getting together to try to get at something big. The other fifteen to twenty-someodd people working on the project did their best.  

At the end of the day, though, all they've really and surely done is kill the only man in the Marvel Universe that truly believed in peaceful solutions as a means of resolving conflict. A character shunned for years, rendered impotent by unimaginative writing, and never given the proper hero treatment he deserved, under any editorial establishment.

They killed him and a skull-faced Nazi ripped out his brain and now the entire Marvel Bullpen will take turns defecating into the exposed cavity in is skull.  For YEARS.

This is the Final Assessment of Avengers vs. X-Men.

When you need to insert Yin Yang into your exposition, go big or go home, right?...

So maybe you already know, and possibly you didn't, that years and years ago the Scarlet Witch, insane reality warping redheaded mutant daughter of Magneto, whispered three words that wiped out the bulk of the mutant population on the planet.  Far from the measured response one might expect, the resulting mess of years where various teams and heroes vied for relevancy in a universe of unstable molecule costumes of all shades and sizes.  

The saga of Xavier had been expressed and tinkered with for years, but with the events of House of M and well beyond, the Marvel credo has been to remove him from the picture. His influence over Cyclops waning, time showed the establishment of Magneto's Asteroid M in the San Francisco Bay as the creation of mutant sanctuary Utopia.  This and other dramatic actions leaning towards militancy has often led fans of the series in its 90's heyday (Blue and Gold teams! The first ongoing cartoon!) or well before that to cry foul.  It stands to reason that Scott Summers receiving of the Phoenix Force was the culmination of his editorially-driven transformation from Lawful Good Lackey to Lawful Neutral Bastard to Chaotic Evil Douchebag (read: Dark Phoenixclops).   

This transformation has been intended to add weight to a myopic twit that many a fan has resented over the decades, and no doubt many a writer has wrestled with making interesting.  This transformation was gradual, then in sharp turns sudden.  This is the only means by which the militancy bred into a character like Cyclops, having a damaging beam of red blasting unbidden from his eyes did not make him a character of easy benevolence like Charles Xavier.  Scott Summers was tortured, mentally, wound so tight he could snap any minute, even without the tacked-on Mister Sinister plot.    

This may seem a digression, but it is set here to assess what could have possibly driven the character to his actions in the final stages of Avengers vs. X-Men, distorting and ultimately destroying a character decades in the making, even less capable of redemption that Speedball in Civil War. 

Anyone else getting a Cassandra Nova vibe off of Chuck in this scene? Also, note the setting sun. Symbolism, son.

When one of your lead heroes is a soldier with an American Flag incorporated into his costume design, it stands to reason that you'd be a tad militant in your procedures as a comic book company, at least in terms of story if not political allegiance.  Superhero slugfests are standard practice, a tried and true trope that makes itself relevant or irrlevant in terms of plot structure, but in the mainstream gains precedent more often than not.

The ultimate paradox of Charles Xavier has always been his Danger Room scenarios, his training of his pupils in the martial arts, which as it turns out was dastardly in more than one way (the Danger Room achieved sentience at one point, a secret Charles kept from everyone until Joss Whedon coaxed it out of him).  It set his students always at the edge, prepared for violence in a violent world.  

The militancy of the Marvel Universe as a whole is in fact best represented in the "Ultimate Universe", where a caricatured representation of George W. Bush welcomes a recently thawed Steve Rogers to the American Military of 2003. With his help the United States "wins hearts and minds" in Middle Eastern conflicts and occupations, eventually resulting in some blowback: the inevitable superhuman arms race.  

In the standard Marvel Universe of today all conspiracies steer clear of actually implicating any corporate or military structure  of being inherently questionable, merely villain-ridden. Roxxon? Just a bad CEO. The next one will be okay. A.I.M.? Hire them on as consultants but make them take off those helmets, and boom, they're no longer terrorists. S.H.I.E.L.D. as an entity curtailing human rights? Nah, just superhuman. We do have the occasional revelation, such as the one to Wolverine that Nitro was paid off by the CEO of Damage Control to explode next to a school full of children.  War is a constant in the Marvel 616 Universe.  Villain against hero, hero against hero, everyone has had a turn with everyone else.  Grant Morrison once planted an interesting seed of an idea to account for it. The mass sentient bacterial infection of superheroes and supervillains by the ancient archigenator Sublime, which forces the heroes and villains to such extremes of hyperbolic action(slugfests)...  When you see your fifteenth hero vs. hero a la Civil War scenario play out in the 616 Universe, you have to wonder if he wasn't on to something there.

Roughly 85% of the final scenes in Avengers vs. X-Men are people standing around .

So, once the idea of a peaceful mutant-driven Utopia was dashed with the impetuous attack by Namor on the kingdom of Wakanda (Black Panther's fictional and apparently coastal African country), and as the numbers of Phoenix Force recipients are dwindling down to two (since Spider-Man taunted brother Colossus and sister Magik into cancelling each other out), Emma Frost and Scott Summers are basking in fire and doubting one another's intentions.  

There can be only one, and all that mess.  

With these rumblings, all the loyal lackeys to the Phoenix Five (most New Mutants and associated mutant Utopian inhabitants outside of the students attending the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning) turn to Professor X, who has stood by the side of the Avengers since his impartial ending of a battle with a gesture.   

And of course, he guides them to Scott, to confront the Phoenix that has corrupted him utterly.

And Scott, like the petulant child that he is, kills Professor Xavier, the purveyor of peace and benefactor of all mutantdom, stone dead.  The Death of Charles Xavier is told in a whole page, silent as the grave.

Place your bets now. How long before it turns out he isn't actually dead? Generally ranges from 4 months to 10 years.

Then he goes Dark Phoenix, and we have the standard cliffhanger for issue #11.

To this any well-established reader will say "Whatever." 

You can rest assured, when a person in a Marvel Comic says "NOW AND FOREVER, I AM [Insert Cosmic Marvel Universe Force Here]!" that they will be summarily stripped of that power and all actions they take will be retroactively revoked in the following issue (sometimes two, tops).  This was displayed aggressively in Matt Fraction's exercise with generating Thor buzz (Fear Itself) and to some extent with Mark Millar's "Civil War" (which, to be fair, did actually alter the landscape of many titles for some time, towards and unquestioning loyalty to or churlish rebellion against an administration regulating super-heroics  but simultaneously set the tone for these expectations-raised hopes-dashed "hero vs. hero" storylines so frequent with yearly Marvel mega-crossovers).  To that end, the endless parades and fashions of resurrection are so entrenched in the system of Marvel that we can and should suspect that despite everything we have not seen the end of Charles Xavier, let alone the Phoenix.

The battle rages among exploding volcanoes and fiery Phoenixstuff.  Somehow the heroes reach remote corners of the globe for one-panel shots of their attempts to stop the destruction.  And bladda-blidda-boo. Superhero slugfest. You know it's a big deal if Hulk's there.

Yes yes, very good wrath.

You might ask yourself why Charles Xavier had to die.  Outside of the spontaneous appeal of murdering a fairly well recognized character, it gives us something to do with what appears to be a frustratingly noble character who has had all manners of treatment from various writers to make him "interesting"... he was crippled by the Shadow King early on, then a mimic of him died when the mansion exploded the first time (and it was intended to keep him dead, even that early in the game, when the Marvel Universe experienced one of its first ret-cons)...and later, he faked his death, leaving Magneto as headmaster, getting the use of his legs back via his Space Empress girlfriend.  He returned to Earth after years in space, only to be crippled by the Shadow King once again.  He got a fancy bright yellow floating wheelchair for a while, then Stryfe, a clone of Cable, shot him with a techno-organic virus.  After Apocalypse healed him up, he rollerbladed with Jubilee for a night, then fell back into the wheelchair at the edge of battle stance.  Also notable is Professor X's encounter with Magneto on Asteroid M years later, when he mindwiped old Erik after he ripped the adamantium out Wolverine's skeleton, a fraction of Magneto's "evil essence" infected Charles, spawning the psionic identity Onslaught.  Onslaught takes control of Sentinels and attacks New York, and for a while Charles is in jail and his mutant students floundered.  Grant Morrison introduced the novelty of a mummudrai "sister" for Xavier, Cassandra Nova.  Later still, it was revealed he'd ignored the pleas of his sentient Danger Room for decades. He left the X-Men completely to their own devices shortly thereafter, but not before getting shot by time-displaced mutant Bishop, a red herring "death" that nonetheless drove him from main storylines outside of a brief appearance in Wolverine & the X-Men, and brings us to the Avengers vs. X-Men storyline, which outright murdered him. 

What if they said something else besides "No more Phoenix"? Like  "No more humans?" or "No more Fat Chicks?"

Of course once Hope, the long-predestined vessel for the Phoenix, finally receives its power, it's only after she has seen it corrupt five well-loved heroes.  She immediately undoes everything that Cyclophoenix started, what with the planet-wide devastation and all, then joins hands with Scarlet Witch, and in true Post M Day form, says three words that bring out the latent mutant genes of humans across the world, and kills or quells the Phoenix as she does so.

Which leaves us, of course, with the inevitable aftermath.  Cyclops, once he's heard that mutants are reborn as a race, falls right back into his stubborn douchebag shell.  To gain some idea of what will be happening to him in upcoming titles, just review the history of fun-loving Speedball of the New Warriors, who for the deaths of hundreds of suburbanites, mostly children, took to wearing a scourge-suit during his later runs through various penance-quests. 

Of course, instead the Marvel Universe Big Brains like Mister Fantastic might find a way to travel back in time, retrieve Marvel Girl and Cyclops from an earlier point in their timestream, shove their faces into their bleak future like a bad owner shoving his dog's face into a bowl of dog food, and further contort an already twisted and unruly knot of plots, sub-plots, irrelevant occurrences, and even more irrelevant deaths

Worst. Eulogy. Ever.

So now that we have finished with Avengers vs. X-Men the "Marvel Architects" are bringing us into the new era of power and glory, something they call Marvel Now! Truly, this cycle will never end, only sprout new heads like the mythical hydra, and then consume its own tail, or in this case, tale, like a fabled ouroborus. Scott McCloud's market model for the entire industry comes to mind.

Uncanny Avengers, written by Rick Remender and drawn by fan-favorite John Cassady, is provided for us as the most pertinent follow-up to the events of Avengers vs. X-Men.  The first issue features Chuck Xavier's funeral, with Wolverine providing a eulogy, a meeting between semi-estranged brothers Havok (a plaything of Peter David's since a few years back, toothless and subservient) and Cyclops (douchebag), the strident insistence of Captain America that he is not a jackbooted fascist, Iron Man and Ms. Marvel's search for Magneto, and a confrontation of the Scarlet Witch by Rogue at Xavier's crypt.  When shoddy animal-beasts with Remender Disposable Characters written all over them show up and make short order of the two, then dispatch with Xavier's corpse, you may think nothing of it.  

Then we have what may be the single most telling event of recent Marvel history.

What if it was in a big honkin' ice cream scoop?

As previously discussed in this blog, Rick Remender has a special talent in his approach to the Marvel Universe, and it is often a blood-thirsty corpse-strewn event.  When one sees the brain of Charles Xavier in the palm of the Red Skull at the end of Uncanny Avengers #1, the fanfare around the death of Captain America after Civil War and the death of Ultimate Spider-Man are not at all drowned out by the death of Professor X.  There was no proper announcement for this "end of an era", but rather fizzle of fanfare, a thudding drumbeat to apathy, a cricket chirping, fading into silence... that is what surrounds the death of Xavier, peace advocate who could see into all of our minds and understood that we could be better.

If Avengers vs. X-Men has provided any subtext at all with its bold attempt at retrofitting comic book mainstream dynamics (superhero slugfests), it is this: Evil wins. Good men fail.  Good virtuous men will have their brains scooped out by Nazis.

Fighting is the best answer to anything.  War is purifying. Death is an illusion.  Dreams are never realized. Utopia is impossible.

The past is irrelevant. The future is uncertain. The only thing which exists is an eternal now, and continuity be damned, there will be no voices of peace in that eternal now.

Ignorance is strength.  If you attempt to reach new heights, you will be corrupted by your own hubris.

Give up. There's no cosmic force ready to stop what's coming next. What is here Now.

The Marvel Universe Militarization is Now.

WOLVERINE AND THE X MEN:COMPLE (Google Affiliate Ad) 

Penultimate Impressions to Avengers vs. X-Men (with Spoilers)

So, imagine for a moment that you're a nanoscout in an editorial bullpen at Marvel Comics. It's somewhere around the mid to late 1970's and you're dealing with a fellow that used to be a gofer but can call himself a writer now, really and truly.  This sparkly fellow, who lives and breathes these mutants through and through, is Chris Claremont, the originator of The Phoenix Saga, at his absolute prime. It's the prime of Miss Jean Grey as The Phoenix, as well, coming out of the darkness. Immense forty-foot tall avatars of Len Wein and Bob Harras are breathing down everyone's neck over the death of the Broccoli People, whose tiny fictional solar system was snuffed out by that fiery telekinetic redhead in shockingly descriptive detail not too long ago.  Claremont, glowing with all the vim and vinegar allotted to him in his contract (Stan Lee sits in an immense hot tub on the next level up in the building, charging outrageous parties to the petty cash box and using such contracts to light his expensive imported cigars) explains how the rehabilitation of Jean Grey will occur.

The sevenfold veil of Marvel editorial eidolons parts, and a booming voice issues forth, shaking everyone present to the rims of their bellbottoms, as a three-faced robed figure emerges in hard-light hologram.

SHE KILLED BILLIONS, the Living Tribunal states in precise monotone, SHE MUST BE PUT IN JAIL FOREVER OR KILLED. THE COMICS CODE AUTHORITY IS EXPLICIT IN THIS REGARD.

Claremont, crushed, rushes into his tiny office cave and hastily works out the final outfit Jean Grey will wear. It'll be the Shiar that pass judgment on her, yes, those pristine imperial scum.  She deserves a second chance.  He imbued her with powers after a creature that had resurrection built into its function, for crying out loud.  As ever, Claremont knows, the important bit is to approach these characters as if they were well established actors providing an excellent play. He had to have the motivations down, or it would fall flat.

Suicide by laser on the Blue Area of the Moon. Cyclops, crushed, to be consoled soon by a clone who he would have a son with.  That son would be thrust into a dark future where Apocalypse, genetic supremacist mutant, is destined to rule.  That son would return older than his father, much later, after Jean Grey's return ("Hey guys? She was on the bottom of this river! In an energy cocoon! Nyah.") to raise the first mutant born since M Day, when almost all the mutants lost their powers. That mutant's name would be Hope and the Phoenix would come for her.

But not without the process being drawn out among multiple titles for nearly a year.

These guys see Xavier rollin'. They hatin'.

It should be said, the maximized cross-over super-event Avengers vs. X-Men has gone directions that not all that many readers predicted (unless, of course, they proceed in that joyless endeavor of "reading ahead" in the various teasers and previews) but in more recent issues has come to the dilemma of all such major universe-rattling plots, the diffusion of tension.

Captain Britain, eternally upstaged by his betters

After the Phoenix is splintered by Iron Man's Phoenix Buster, five mutants are chosen to live in a Utopia and have their authority questioned by the entrenched power structures.  Find out what happens when heroes stop being polite, and start posturing in angry ideologies that shape the world.  The Real World: Marvel 616.

If you're just joining us, Emma Frost gently pushed Namor into attacking Wakanda to rescue Hope (and, um, drown thousands of innocent civilians in the process), and the Avengers did their best and take the fellow down.  Succeeding, Namor's portion of the Phoenix Force was transferred to the remaining four.  When, during a rescue mission, Spider-Man taunts Magik and Colossus into cancelling each other out ("I'll stop you... with the power of laughter!" or something to that effect), Cyclops and a newly rekindled (no pun intended) homicidal megalomaniac Emma Frost are the last... um, Phoenixes standing.

And that's the real shame of the matter.  The Phoenix has always embodied a fusion of opposites. The message that comes across in this crossover is that the pathway to hell is always paved with good intentions. With good must come bad, and with life, death.  To imagine that the powers would corrupt these noble heroes (who, admittedly, have been shifting more and more into a morally gray area) is to discount the efforts of Charles Xavier, for decades reiterating that peace and reason are the solution to the turmoil and murk that the 616 Universe often finds itself grappling with. And that's just the murk that results from convolutions of plot since Claremont started the Phoenix rollercoaster/death of Jean Grey/clone/future storylines that ground most plots into dust until more recent efforts gave the teams and characters new and more energized focus. Like a laser. Ahem.

The idea of Cyclops being a myopic self-centered god-like being is about as fun as it sounds.

Where does Xavier really stand in all this?  He's been shuffled into the background of each and every X-Men title (notable exception being his visit to Wolverine's new school) for quite some time. Prior to the maddeningly and surprisingly dull Skrull Invasion, he had a place at the seat of the Marvel Illuminati, but perhaps, without crippling him again, or outright killing him (remember Bishop? How he shot Professor X once? How he's nowhere to be seen for any of this?), the creative teams have seen fit to stomp his dream of peaceful coexistence, the Utopia that the Phoenix Five would have had, if they'd been able to maintain control (insert What If? issue HERE), into so much dust.

There's a moment, and maybe you'll catch it. Here...

The only other time I've seen Cap cry is that time Red Skull gouged his eyes out on the steps of Capitol Hill.

Remember, Cyclops was Xavier's star pupil from teen years, and Wolverine the dangerous Giant-Size-come-lately rogue (much older than Captain America, even). For all the posturing done, it's been nearly but not completely subtle, the shift that those two characters have undergone in recent years, Cyclops the militant edge in league with Magneto, thrice-time reformed supervillain (himself plagued with legions of hackneyed clones), and Wolverine, the immortal-by-way-of-popularity, the killer with a soft streak, rebuilding the school and adding a Baby Krakoa.      

So, after so many years of Danger Rooms and such, when imbued with the Phoenix Force, Cyclops is corrupted.  So it goes. Emma Frost is to blame, perhaps.  Or perhaps these years since Jean Grey's final death, at the hands of a faux Magneto that ripped New York apart, had changed Scott Summers too much, and his investment in Hope was too great. Or perhaps the Phoenix Force is too much for oldboy. It works. It works on multiple levels. And for that, we have the current authors involved to thank.

What nobody mentions is, Hope's been listening to Wu Tang Clan during her training sessions.

Each issue of Avengers vs. X-Men is plotted by the same five writers that have taken turns scripting, issue by issue.  Jason Aaron's turn at scripting provided ample comfort with the mutants, and clean dialogue. Brian Michael Bendis took a more action-based "cinematic" set-piece for the scripts he ran on, which is his strength.  Ed Brubaker writes a mixed bag of events, zeroing in on key moments of characterization and domino toppling. Matt Fraction's comfort with the Avenger's end of the spectrum, especially Thor and Tony Stark, gives girth to his portion of the story. Jonathan Hickman, of course gives an intelligent weight to his scripts, packing in information that drives the story with a scale and complexity not unlike a decent Dune novel.

It's a unique opportunity provided by each writer to play to their own strengths, no doubt assessed and analyzed by editors (Jake, Lauren, Nick, Tom and Axel) prior to the plot points being anchored and assigned.  Of course, the rotating artists, the second generation powerhouses such as the Adam Kubert and John Romita Jr, even Oliver Copiel in conjunction with Mark Morales, transition less jarringly than one might expect, as the story unfolds, and it seems that in this project a good time was had by all.  Laura Martin and Larry Molinar do a fine service to color duties.  Overall, everyone did their job well and should expect a dump truck filled with money to be backed up to their brand new empty heart-shaped pools, hollowed out by fanboys that vainly wanted to believe, if only for a moment, that the X-Men, the eternal underdogs and demagogues, stood a chance against the mega-noble hardcases that raked in more billions than some counties (or countries) will ever even see.  If only this sort of care and attention was invested in so many titles as AvX houses (only a few dozen, modest by superhero crossover terms), then surely a new golden age, blessed by the ghost of Jack Kirby himself, would ring out over the dusty bins of bagged and sealed promotional materials and movies waiting to happen, in comic book shops throughout the country.

But.

This is all a build-up to the next big thing.

Dammit, why did Nick Fury's son have to look exactly like Ultimate Nick Fury, again? Really, people. C'mon.

There is always a follow-up to major cross-over events, no matter how the drab tangential storylines play out. Nevermind the plotholes and inconsistencies and linear gaps and Xavier mind-wiping everyone at one point, nevermind the characters in jail or out, or who got beaten up by whom or what dialogue did or did not happen when Gambit fought Captain America, briefly, for the rod of relevance.  There is more time travel yet to come. And more shifts in writing duties. Comfort zones shifting.  Golden ages packing their bags and awaiting the Silver Aeon, overseen by Rocket Raccoon and Groot for some reason, maybe a movie, maybe the recently shark-jumped and all pervasive trend of remaking and remaking and remaking until the whole mess is meta-regurgitation/vomit/feces.

Prepare yourselves for Marvel, now (sorry, I mean Marvel NOW!). It's recommended, if you are a diehard fan, that you insinuate yourself into a comfortable seat, and remember that it's been done before.  If you're invested in the stories, good, that means that the writers are doing their job.  If you're angry about creative team swaps, or ambivalent, don't flinch, not yet.  Be prepared to. This is the answer to New 52. If not, now, never. Avengers vs. X-Men merely paved the way. The appearance of a game-plan being in place is reassuring, even in the unlikely event of a catastrophic cosmic prolapse.

The story has not yet fully resolved itself. The proverbial "suicide shot on the Blue Area of the Moon" has not come. Yet. The Living Tribunal has not yet spoken the last words of the day.  The Watcher's patented "disapproving look" has not reached peak sadness. Yet.

It's coming. The next "Impressions of Avengers vs. X-Men" will be the last.

Sponsored by Rocket Raccoon.

Rocket Raccoon being the cornerstone of the Marvel Multiverse, after all.

All-New Uncanny Impressions of Avengers vs. X-Men.

As discussed in prior installments, the megacrossover world shaker Avengers vs. X-Men is still in full gear, with the arrival of the Phoenix (and its subsequent fracturing) literally remaking the dynamic of the world as a whole.  Cyclops, Emma Frost, Colossus, Magik and Namor each share a fraction of the Phoenix's infinite energy (call them the Phoenix Five), and rather than prove the Avengers right (that is, destroy the world), they issue a declaration of Pax Utopia. The entire world receives free energy, ample food, clean water, and the annihilation of weapons of mass destruction. All military conflicts come to a halt. Deserts are irrigated. Sentinels are annihilated.  Food is plentiful.  The status quo so firmly established as a matter of course in the Marvel Universe 616 is deviated from strongly, and ably, thanks in no small part to the squad of extremely talented writers collaborating on this particular blockbuster.   

The various tie-in titles do a fairly good service to not upsetting the dynamic of reality and accenting the storyline (unlike, say, the truncated battle sequence depicted in "brawl title" AvX between Captain America and Gambit).  We see Emma Frost come into opposition with Avengers Academy, Rachel Summers (formerly Phoenix in her own right) calling her loyalty to the new world order into question, and Rogue scuffling with Ms. Marvel, who sows the seeds of doubt before being tossed into a Limbo prison.  Magneto serves as a John the Baptist.  Hope Summers trains in a mystical cityspace with the masters of Iron Fist and takes lessons from Spider-Man to prepare for confronting the Phoenix once more.

This twist has taken the Marvel Universe in a new and interesting direction and polarized fans in a fashion that simple slugfests never could.  Do you believe that the Phoenix Five's intentions are as pure as they seem, and that true peace can be established in a world where garishly costumed superhumans shatter concrete with wrist flicks?  Do you agree with the Avengers that such drastic changes always come with a cost, a backlash is inevitable, and that the more these mutants embrace their new powers, the more distant they will become from their core codes of morality?

There is also the notable issue of the Scarlet Witch at hand as well.  Her role in House of M (remaking the entire world to be one where everyone gets their heart's desire in a Magneto-run "utopia") has apparently been redeemed since, well, since for some reason every single Avenger has forgotten how badly she upset them and how dangerous her powers are, and oh yeah, she dismissed an entire race of beings with a fragment of a sentence.  Perhaps it's because she slept with Hawkeye that she gets a free pass.  It could also be that she alone seems capable of taking the Phoenix Five to task, and her connection to the Life Force (as established in Young Avengers: the Children's Crusade) is that common bond with the Phoenix that may prove interesting in the upcoming remaking of reality itself, not just the world, in a recently announced universal relaunch called Marvel: Now!

In more recent issues of the main title, we see the stark divide between the forces and note that the grey area (ha! as in, um, Jean) is vast on both sides.  In the most recent issue, Emma Frost nearly kills Hawkeye in a fit of anger (but don't worry, he's getting his own series soon, plus he'll completely forgive her once they have sex).  Internal strife among the Five will no doubt disassemble them (and Colossus is still the Juggernaut, in case you were curious). Charles Xavier's marginalization continues to expand and contract.  Captain America seems to have a born soldier's need for constant battle, his irrelevance in a world of perpetual peace perhaps an unspoken catalyst to his continually antagonizing the Phoenix Five.  Iron Fist's established ret-conned history with the Phoenix Force will grant him a +5 to his relevance.  Then again, maybe everything that's happened for the past ten-plus years in Marvel is about to be erased.  Or perhaps Hickman will simply set the Avengers out to "solve everything".

In terms of scripting duties, it's very interesting to note the emergent variations of style with each issue, and as every section of the story unfolds, the shift in artists seems fitting to the content.  Marvel, all foibles and wisecracks aside, is clearly bringing their A game.  Regardless of the final outcome, readers that have cared for and enjoyed each of the titular teams involved in this conflict are in capable hands.

What comes next, however, remains to be seen.  After years of established wetworks, continuity and character building, a relaunch (restart? reboot? revamp? remake?) of the Marvel Universe titles (Marvel NOW! NOW! NOW!) may cause fans to cry foul, or even worse, call "mimic", since as most comic readers are well aware, about a year ago the DC Universe erased its elaborately decorated chalkboard and started fresh (but in some spots shaky) with The New 52.

Regardless of outcome, the story continues to be intriguing and this reviewer, for one, will continue to buy it, if only to see where the trail leads.  If the end result proves ridiculous, then the purifying flame of my caustic wit will burn it away.