"It's Coming" AvX

On March 28^th, Marvel will release Avengers vs. X-men #0, the prelude to their big crossover Avengers vs. X-men, which has been hyped for quite some time now. The hype began back in October when Marvel released the image on the right, clearly showing the phoenix force and spotting the words “it’s coming” along with the names of Marvel’s top artists. Now, I could go on and on about what/who/where etc. regarding the phoenix force, but as simply as I can put it it’s the universal avatar of death and rebirth and possessed the X-Men member Jean Grey, the first time we saw it. This was during the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix saga in the 70’s, the latter being one of the most influential and famous comic book stories ever.  In the end, Jean Grey died, but was later resurrected by the phoenix. This happened more than once up until 7 years ago when she seemingly, at least so far, passed for good. Now, the phoenix is returning to Earth and it’s looking for a new host. Hope summers, first mutant to be born after the decimation event (when the Scarlet Witch used her reality altering powers to remove all but 198 mutants’ powers), is believed by both the X-Men and the Avengers to be the phoenix’ choice and it’s their disagreeing on how to deal with this that leads to the conflict. 

Now, despite the enormous hype around the event on all comic sites and Marvel even giving retailers the opportunity to choose sides in the conflict by throwing launch parties decorated in either Avengers or X-Men style (though I doubt any of the shops here in DK will do that), I have to say I’m a skeptic on how “big” it’ll actually be. See, Marvel has this tendency to call each and every one of their major story arch’s or events a “the biggest thing EVER/nothing will ever be the same after this” kind of thing. And, well, personally I don’t think they live up to that every time. Let’s take a look at 2011’s Fear Itself: something in particular that bothered me was one of the teasers released sometime before the series started. It depicted Captain America broken, on his knees in tears and his shield lying broken in front of him with the words “do you fear… a loss of faith?” And sure enough, the shield was broken by this asgardian god of fear, some guy that basically showed up out of nowhere and then, what? He’s worthy to be one of the few that can hurt Cap’s shield? Not bloody likely, I say. To me, it simply wasn’t believable that this guy could break the shield, god or no god. In other words, you might say his bad-ass-ness hadn’t been established in the limited series’ previous issues, mainly because of poor writing and art as well. I’m usually happy with both writer Matt Fraction and artist Oliver Coipel, but in the case of Fear Itself, they just didn’t deliver. The event was a companywide crossover and while the aforementioned main limited series wasn’t that good, a lot of the other books were worth a read. 

Thor dies in Odin's arms

That was just a little thing about the event that bothered me personally, probably because I’m a huge Captain America fan, but it’s not the only thing wrong with Fear Itself and lots of other Marvel events. You can pretty much be a 100% one or more of the heroes will die and sometimes it’s a big character and other times you might feel like who died? But in any case, death isn’t that finite in comic books, characters can and will return a lot of the time. And that’s okay, it’s not like you can demand a lot of realism with superhero comics. But personally, I feel that whether they eventually come back or not, death should matter, even in comic books and to fictional characters. I don’t mind them being resurrected somehow, as long as it’s a good story. But when Thor died in the end of Fear Itself (which EVERYone kinda saw coming since issue 1), Marvel had already announced a new series starting less than a year later and featuring Thor. And that’s just “¤#”ing stupid… Seriously, how the ¤%#” am I supposed to care that this or that character gets killed off if you tell me “he’ll be right back” at the same time? Again, it’s fine to kill off and resurrect characters, but at least pretend that it means something.

 Okay, that’s gotta be enough bitchin over superhero deaths, I’m gonna keep reading the books anyways J… Once AvX starts, I’m planning on doing a review of each of the 12 issues of the main series and while we’re at it: AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!!! I’m definitely rooting for the Avengers, just my favorite team of the two. Of course, there’s also the option that the two unite against a common foe, not like we haven’t seen that before (sarcasm may occur), but what do you think? The Avengers? The X-Men? Or the two joining forces against something else? Drop a vote in the poll and comments below.

Mo