Comic Book Queers

Avengers punching X-men – Part 2!

Previously in Avengers punching X-Men…Not a lot of punching. So far The Phoenix Force (tPF) is headed towards earth and ready to possess Hope Summers. The Avengers want to sequester her while the X-Men want to exploit her in hopes that tPF will create new mutants. Read the first recap HERE then let’s move on to…

Issue 2!

The Avengers have brought a S.H.I.E.L.D. mobile super fortress helicarrier to the X-Men base of Utopia. This doesn’t seem particularly fair especially since there are 16 A’s vs. 21 X’s but what do I know? Now that we are 4 issues into this event we can finally get some punching. Right? I was promised punching. So page 1 gets right to it with …talking. The X-Men talking. The Avengers talking. At least Namor has the grace to speak for the audience when he says “The time for talk has passed.” Namor, I wish you would have said that in issue 0. Then “all hell breaks loose” when Colossus flies up and crashes through the helicarrier. LET THE PUNCHING BEGIN!

Red Hulk then donkey punches Colossus while most everyone else falls head first into the ocean. Except Spidey, who is usually upside-down in most panels, falls right-side-up. What is happening in this crazy world?! Namor then punches The Thing onto dry land and Luke Cage punches Namor to the bottom of the sea. Punching! Cyclops tries to eye-blast some Avengers out of the sky but Captain America cracks him in the head with his shield. While all of this is going on, the writer is having fun describing the fighting like this: “Indestructible shield meets mutant skull. The first of the day’s concussions.” The Avengers then face off with the X-Men on a line of scrimmage. Did I mention how awkward the art is in this book? Because it is. Proportions are drawn all wrong and every man jaw under a mask is identical. I think John Romita Jr. needs to practice more. Meanwhile, Hope is feeling guilty so she tries to make a break for it but Emma, still pissed off that her own comic was cancelled, isn’t about to have one of her students die today! So she runs outside to telepathetically mindfuck the Avengers but Iron Man has deployed airborne “microscopic telepathic tasers” which Emma inhales promptly giving her a diamond-plated migraine. “Calgon! Take me away!” she yells. She doesn’t but she wants too, I can tell. She then gut-punches Iron Man with her diamond fist. He’s about to retaliate when Magneto shows up but then Quicksliver shows up to work out some daddy issues. Is this how this is going to be for the next umpteenth issues? Cut to Wanda writing in her dream journal (I kid you not.) She has written “Wanda’s Dream Journal” in fat girl cursive and has drawn an outline of the Phoenix Force on the facing page. Or maybe it’s a hippogriff. Meanwhile back at the boxing match, Wolverine growls when his fellow mutants call him a traitor. He then gives a whole new meaning to head-butting when he replies “Maybe if y’all pulled your head out of cyclops’ ass…”. Now Storm and Black Panther are arguing about the fighting and she says “This is why we have a marriage counselor!” Somewhere on earth a rogue tornado just destroyed a trailer park. Flash to Hope watching from the base. She laments at being the cause of the fight and yet not being involved in the actual fighting. So she elbows some Mystique-looking thing named Laurie/Transonic in the face and the call out box reads “Fourth nose broken in the last eight minutes.” HA! The battle continues on and Cap tries to reason with Cyke but Scott is a dickbus so that doesn’t work. Scott then tells Magik to use the backdoor, which we know Scott likes from the earlier head-butt comment. Seriously, what sloppy bottom is writing this? Magik and Dr. Strange take a mini-vakay in Limbo to duke it out while Spidey and Wolfie sneak up on Hope through an unguarded drain pipe. There is always an unguarded drain pipe. Hope then knocks out her classmates and Wolfie tries to SNIKT her but she gets her Phoenix flame on, nukes Logan to a crisp, and takes off. Meanwhile in deep space the “Outer Space Away Mission” featuring Beast, Thor, Sass-Attack, The Vision (oooh more marital strife!), Valkyrie, War Machine, Protector and Captain Britain prepare to face off against the oncoming Phoenix Force. Thor says “Today is a good day to die.” And….scene.

 

Next: The Limited Punching Series begins!

Taking place during Issue #2 we have two battles waging with some AvX fun facts thrown in by the writer. Up first…

<DING DING!>Round 1! Iron Man vs. Magneto

Magneto assumes this is going to be a short fight considering that he controls metal and Iron Man is made of…non-metallic carbon nanotubes? Oh Tony, you think of everything. Tony tells Magneto that his old drinking buddy/tennis doubles partner Mike Tyson said “always have a plan.” Magneto agrees and promptly drops a building on Iron Man’s head. [AvX fun fact: Each Utopian tower weighs 170 tons.] Ouch. Iron Man crawls from the rubble and fires a swarm of neodymium high-grade super magnets at magnetman. Erik numbers them at 2 million. [AvX fun fact: Magneto has magnetic counting powers.] The two continue to fight with weapons and wit. Over the next four pages the following happens. Erik references Auschwitz – AGAIN. Tony makes a snarky comment in return. He then harnesses the power of Jupiter (yes!) via well-placed Stark Industries satellites and zaps Magneto into the stratosphere. Erik then harnesses the ghost of Obi-Wan and says he “felt an entire planet vanish in an instant.” As if a million voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.  Erik feels something terrible has happened as tPF destroys another world and realizes they are in over their heads. He calls out for help from his daughter, The Scarlet Wanda.

Winner: IRON MAN! (A)

Parting shot: “Well, this has been fun and absurdly expensive but you just float around in space while I go punch some of your friends for a while” – Tony Stark.

<DING DING!>Round 2! The Thing vs. Namor (the Sub-Mariner)

When last we saw these oddly matched heroes Namor had punched The Thing out of the water and apparently right through the helicarrier. [AvX fun fact: The helicarrier repair will cost $3,200,067.] Thing then air-surfs a piece of shrapnel right down into Namor’s face and they both sink to the bottom of the sea. Thing laments that he can’t talk underwater and Namor smirks. Thing, who can either hold his breath for long periods of time or doesn’t actually breathe, then hurls an olde-timey pirates treasure chest at Namor and a thousand dubloons rain down on him. By the way, I need to say how much I love the art in this chapter. Shout out to Stuart Immonen (pencils) and Wade von Grawbadger (inks)! Thing then refers to Namor as “Nimrod” so he grabs a gigantic angler fish by the tail (“MEEP!” says the fish) and bitch-slaps Thing with it. Thing then rips out the fish’s front fangs [AvX fun fact: Braces can cost up to $6,000. Extra for sea monsters.] and pins Namor to the sea floor.

Winner: The THING! (A)

Parting shot: “Next time Namor turns up. I swear it’s gonna be in a tuna casserole.” – Thing

Next all-punching issue: Spider-man vs. Colossusnaut and Captain America vs. Gambit. Go figure.

 

Issue 3!

Wolverine is a midget apparently.

Remember the Issue 2 cliffhanger with a group of space Avengers about to be obliterated by tPF? Yeah, that’s not in this issue. Instead it’s back to Romita’s crappy art and we pick up on Utopia after Hope turned Wolfie into a toaster strudel.  For anyone that has ever wanted to see what a hairless naked Logan looks like, you’re in luck. I, on the other hand am going to agree with Spider-Man when he looks at him and says “Yuck.” Spidey then fills us in on the happenings while Logan puts on a lululemon track suit. Turns out the X-Men surrendered to The Avengers and they are trying to hug it out. Logan doesn’t like the smell of that and in true Logan fashion belittles everyone for not figuring things out faster. It’s a ruse and Illyana pulled the old slight-of-hand and switched places with Dr. Strange then teleports a handful of the X-Men to Long Beach for some fish tacos; leaving the remaining X-pendables in the care of Iron Man. The Uncanny X-scapers decide to storm the Jean Gray school and use Cerebra to locate Hope. I thought it was called Cerebro but maybe this is the lady version. Did I mention how awful the art is in this book? Ugh look at this, is Scott an anorexic pedophile now?

Meanwhile Hope breaks into a RadioShack and creates a device that (to borrow a genius joke from Comics Alliance’s Andrew Wheeler) checks her into five separate places on foursquare. HA! So Rachel Summers (how many fucking Summerses are there?!) reports back to The Avengers that Cerebra can’t pinpoint Hope but gives Captain America first and then Scott the list of places that Hope is the mayor of (again, to give credit where credit is due – Andrew Wheeler joke too good not to share) Cap sends teams to these places, which all sound like rejected EPCOT rides: Wundagore Mountain, Tabula Rasa, Wakanda, Latveria, and Savage Land. Romita then draws the most disproportionate static image I have ever seen. Logan is a midget in the wide shot but on the next page he is as tall as Steve Rogers. Also, there is no movement in that panel – which I placed at the top of this issue review. Please note how awful it is. God, he sucks. Then Cap and Wolverine fight about killing/not killing Hope (you can guess who wants to stab her and who doesn’t).  Giant Man donkey punches Logan and then this happens

after which Giant Man kicks Logan out of the plane at 30,000 feet because this is a non-smoking flight and Logan loves his stogies. This was apparently Cap and Sharon’s plan all along which begs the question why didn’t they just leave him on Utopia and spare the Avenger vs. Avenger mid-flight deplaning?

To be continued...

There you have it. AvsX thus far. As I mentioned in the last review, The Avengers and The X-Men are so distracted by all this posturing and grandstanding that the world’s villains would be stupid not to take this window of opportunity to sneak in and take over. All I’m saying is that if this doesn’t end with Ultron and The Adversary having taken over Earth while the Avengers and the X-Men were out fisting each other then I’m gonna be pissed.

—

By the way, the AvX fight/story continues in the following comics: Avengers #26, New Avengers #26, X-Men Legacy #266, Uncanny #12, Avengers Academy  #29, Secret Avengers #27, and Wolverine & The X-Men #10. Jesus fucking Christ! Are they serious?!