AvX or if you prefer...why it might all Captain America's fault...

So at first I was planning on sitting down and re-reading the entire 13 issue series (Zero issue + 12), none of the tie-ins...not Versus or Uncanny or Wolvie & The X-Men, nada, and see how it read in-completion on its own merit.

...Then I changed my mind...

Well, not exactly...

See I am still going to do that, just not right now.  Rather I am going to sit here at my computer on October 26th, and right down what my more immediate thoughts are on Marvel's big crossover of the year without notes or even a single issue of the comic right in front of me.  These are simply the notions that come to my head when reflecting back on the last six months that was supposed to change the face of the Marvel landscape.  Did it? I guess I will see when I get to that point in my random train of thought of which I guarantee will contain multiple jumping of the tracks. 

After I'm done with this...rambling (?)...then I will sit down, read the crossover in a proper fashion, and add on to this blog with my post-reading reflections, demarcating the date to show when I start the re-read. On to the stream of consciousness:

First off when I think of the idea of Avengers versus X-Men, I think of something more along the lines of what Civil War was with the Pro-Registration vs. Anti-Registration idea. 

It's a story where you can truly get behind one team or the other depending on whose perspective you agree with and essentially that is how I felt this story started out with Captain American deciding he needed to take Hope into custody to protect the world from the Phoenix Force while Cyke, who has been banking his hopes for the mutant race on this girl for the last five years (real time), wants to let the Phoenix Force come and save them all.

Okay now given the whole conceit of this story being their differing opinions on Hope & the Phoenix Force, my immediate question was why the hell does Captain America suddenly give a flying fuck about the Phoenix and on what personal experience is he basing his fears?

The original Phoenix, the one who took on Jean Grey's form, had zero interaction with the larger Marvel U outside of one panel with Spider-Man and Dr. Strange acknowledging something was happening...no Cap to be seen there. He, nor any Avenger save Beast, were a factor when she killed the planet of the broccoli people, came back to Earth, ended up on the moon, and sacrificed herself when Cyclops couldn't bring himself to kill her.

The next time we saw the Phoenix force it was in the form of the time-traveling Rachel Grey and she was nowhere near the power-level of her "mom" nor was she ever the Dark Phoenix threat...nor were there any Avengers...

Let's see then we have the dance of the Phoenix around Inferno time between Madelyne Pryor & the real Jean Grey around who had been hanging out recovering in a chrysalis at the bottom of the ocean since the Phoenix entity assumed her form. Rachel Summers was back in the picture around that time too and was rocking some kind of Phoenix power. No Dark Phoenix threat there...no Avengers either.

Jean reclaimed some aspect of the Phoenix power during a jaunt into space with X-Factor with the Celestial War. Not to get too detailed but Jean was struggling with her own memories, Pryor's memories, and the Phoenix as Jean Grey memories all residing in her brain and was shifting personalities.  It all got resolved, no Dark Phoenix threat here...

Over the years, various writers have teased at a full-on return of Jean Grey as Phoenix, including her redonning the Grey & Gold costume and reclaiming the codename, but it wasn't until Grant Morrison that Jean Grey became the full-on Phoenix...just in time to die at the hands of Xorneto (don't ask). From there the Phoenix force splintered...I guess....because Rachel Summer (now Grey) still had a piece of it, the Stepford Cuckoos had some, Quentin Quire did at one point, some Shi'ar guy had a sword made of a piece of the Phoenix, it came back to Earth in a pair of 'Song mini-series' barely acknowledged anywhere but of which elements have been used (Stepfords & Quire) elsewhere. All that random Phoenix-ness but in none of it did Captain America get involved nor seem to give a damn about what was going on with the mutantverse but more on that in a second. 

My point in all that Phoenix talk, the initial thought that went through my head in this whole Cyke-Cap debate, was that only once in it's comic book history was the Phoenix ever depicted as the universe destroying threat, only once was the Dark Phoenix ever truly in existence.  The odds are that it won't be a bad thing for the Phoenix to come back to Earth & given how many times it emerged between Dark Phoenix and AvX, it was uber-irritating to have that be treated like the ONLY Phoenix incarnation that ever occurred.

That's just a random assortment of Phoenix images for your perusal...only two of them were evil, the rest were benevolent and heroic types.

So back to Captain American real quick, he's a dick...bottom line...from a story standpoint, from a character standpoint, if some guy who had never shown the least bit of interest in your life suddenly swung by your house and told you that everything you're doing is wrong and that he's going to tell you how to run your life and your family and that he knows better than you, how would you feel? 

Because that is essentially how I read this completely out-of-character version of Captain America...he's a bully and a dick and is talking about issues which neither he nor Tony Stark nor the rest of the Avengers really know anything about and Scott reacts accordingly.  That is why in the title up there I say Captain America might be the one to blame here and this entire knee-jerk reaction from he and The Avengers could very well be the cause of all of this crap that goes down over the rest of the story.

For a story that is 13 issues long overall, it certainly felt like the escalation of the conflict is very rushed though when it could have used some time to truly build up to it. I mean it's not like there was any real concern from the Avengers or Cap about what Scott had been doing on Utopia for the last few years. It was just "hey don't do that" then "ZAAAP eat my optic blast"....

Then we get a Wolverine I don't know if I recognize who is flip-flopping from side to side and rather indecisive about where he stands which is not a Logan I really have ever seen.  He is, and has always been, a man of certain honor and conviction, obviously based on the nature of Schism (which, by the way, drives me nuts when the characters actually refer to it as "the schism" when they talk about the Cyke/Wolvie situation). So his whole sleight of hand or indecision or whatever it was supposed to be with Hope just, well it just didn't work for me him saving her then deciding to turn her over to the Avengers. 

And in that same vein, and I did warn my mental train would jump tracks, what the hell was up with this:

Seriously what the hell was up with deciding to, out of nowhere, merge the Iron Fist history with the Phoenix Force history?  Wasn't feeling it, didn't see the point, just felt like a forced way to create a shared back story and a way to kill time with Hope by having her train in Kun'Lun.  It disappointed me the way Hope became an afterthought in a story she should have owned but then again, I suppose if she had been an actual part of her own story the AvX maxi-series would have been a much shorter mini-series.  Instead we get the split of the Phoenix Force between these five:

And, from what I can recall, not a great deal of explanation for the reasons why it bailed on Hope and took those five instead.  My brain tells me that the Phoenix Force was always intended (by the entity not the writers) to be split over some form of multiple people, hence the Five Lights but now one is dead so it looks like Phoenix is finding the next closest thing and ends up in five of the most powerful mutants around.  Still this is all assumption because to the best of what I remember in the mini, the issue wasn't really addressed as to why the Five Lights mattered and their presence was nonexistant after all that build up, but I guess we shall see with the re-read later on if this question was answered.

So the Five go about saving the world but slowly are losing their shit because, as it often does "absolute power corrupts absolutely" and in the meanwhile Captain America is making the situation worse by rallying his troops to....stop them from saving the world and exacerbating the 5's control over their pieces of the Phoenix Force.  So it is a bad thing that Cyke & crew are stopping war and ending famine because of what they MIGHT turn into if they lose control over the Phoenix force.  Regardless of the fact that all of them DID lose control, the battle was being fought by Cap & The Avengers based on the idea of what MIGHT happen...

Cyke is obviously getting more out of hand as the story progresses, Magik is keeping Avengers prisoners in Limbo, we get a neat little callback to House of M with the "No More Avengers", Emma Frost knows she is losing control, Namor goes batshit and decimates Wakanda which then leads up to the whole Highlander twist.  "Kill" one Phoenix entity and its power then disperses between the remaining hosts...cute.  Namor gets beaten first, then Colossus & Magik knock each other out thanks to Spidey (probably the best issue of the whole series because Peter Parker comes off amazing...yes that pun was intended), leaving Emma Frost to get taken out by Cyke to officially make him the complete Phoenix.  Then, just to insure we know he is the big bad of the series and that it is absolutely impossible to take his side, he offs Professor Xavier to which I utter "really?" and then groan because it is possibly the tenth time I have seen him "die" in my comic book reading career. Besides...that body was a clone body anyway, not even the original Charles Xavier body, just his original brain...look up the original Brood story if you are curious...

So now Cyke is the Dark Phoenix and I seriously believe this wasn't JUST a case of Scott Summers losing control here. As with the original Dark Phoenix incarnation, he had a prodding factor.  For Jean Grey it was the machinations of Mastermind and the Hellfire Club that truly allowed the darker side to take charge. In the case of Cyke, Namor, Collosus, Magik, and Emma Frost I do believe it was the constant barrage of Captain American and his army that kept pushing and pushing until that above image became a reality.

So after 12 issues of build-up to this moment, it does make sense that murdering Xavier would be the final push over the edge...it is just so unfortunate that Xavier has become such a non-factor that his death is nowhere near as meaningful as it SHOULD be in my mind.  Charles Xavier had become irrelevant to Cyke after the revelations of Deadly Genesis in which Scott found out Chuck hid the existence of brother Gabriel from him and Alex....

...Speaking of which, how is it we got no interaction between Cyke & Alex after Havok returned to Earth where Scott at least said "hey what happened to our other brother anyway?"...

The state of the relationship between Chuck & Scott not withstanding, I'm not saying a...sober...Cyclops would be just as willing to kill of Xavier, just saying that Cyclops had written Chucky out of his life in anyway that truly mattered.  Hell, mutantkind had basically written him out and his opposite Magneto had become Cyke's right hand man and do you know why?  It's because Cyclops achieved what NEITHER of them could...he unified the majority of remaining 198 (or whatever number it was) post M-Day.  He may have segregated them to an island but they were generally together (like Xavier wanted) and weren't trying to slaughter humans (like Mags wanted once upon a time).  In fact, Cyclops had even put his team out there as a force for good a la The Avengers or FF if they were wanted but the government, under the leadership of Norman Osborn mind you, screwed the pooch on that one.

Yeah so killing Xavier is a whatever gesture after all these years and for me didn't have the weight of say...Nightcrawler's death during Second Coming.  That brought tears to my eyes, that was powerful...

So after all this fighting, after intentionally putting all the power of the Phoenix into the hands of one man, the day gets saved by Hope (finally becoming relevant to a story that should have been her's all along) holding hands with Scarlet Witch (the cause...kind of, apparently Dr. Doom has some blame thereby making Wanda look not quite so evil...of all this to begin with with her "No More Mutants" wish) and wishing for "No More Phoenix".

Cyke goes to jail (which kinda reminded me of Xavier post-Onslaught), a new mutant spontaneously generates powers thus somewhat justifying Cyclops' stand in the first place, and Captain American FINALLY realizes that he might have some responsibility in creating this situation in the first place. Glad it took him 12 issues, forcing an empty war based on MAYBE and WHAT IF, and nearly destroying the globe to realize that one...

Overall I can say this was an empty war and not one in which the reader really had the option of choosing sides after a certain point.  It wasn't something that crossed my mind until a conversation with one @DukeMcNulty but yeah, I would say Marvel took the idea of choosing sides completely out of the equation at a certain point.  When it became obvious that the Phoenix Five were off their collective rocker and tossing dudes in Limbo if they were dissenters, the possibility of even supporting their efforts went out the window...multiply that feeling times a thousand when Cyke killed Xavier.  By then end it wasn't a Civil War type battle where both sides had valid points, it was more like Shadowland where one guy ended up completely batshit and nearly irredeemable.

Which brings me to the biggest, most nagging thing for me about this whole crossover.  The Cyclops we saw at the end of AvX, the "see I was right" Cyke that has been portrayed in Consequences, that Cyclops WOULD have become the reality even without the possession by the Phoenix Force.  Hear (read?) me out...

Ever since the beginning of Morrison's New X-Men run, and stemming from his possession by Apocalypse, we have seen Cyclops grow into a true leader, a force to be reckoned with, all the best elements of both Xavier and Magneto to be frank.  Following M-Day he had to kick it up another notch because he was now fighting for species survival, the birth of Hope took him down an even darker path because he allowed her to be shipped off in time to protect her (as he did with his own son who would become Cable), he formed X-Force to take care of problems in a very direct, murderous fashion, took on a piece of the Void (who knows if anyone remembers that plot point), exiled his people to their own nation, then saw Hope return and his goal start to come to fruition when she began to activate new mutants.  Then the Phoenix force shows up and of course he thinks it's a sign that he's been on the right path all along despite his questionable actions and decisions.  He was the guy ultimately willing to take any bullet, to risk everything, to become the villain if it meant his people were saved. That path would either have led to glory or to gore, and honestly if you extend it down a slightly longer timeline, if you allow for his increasingly militant nature to consume him, Cyke would have lost his shit all by himself without need for the Phoenix Force.

That is where I think I have an issue...I hate the out that possession allows for, that's a big part of the reason I hated Shadowland.  Daredevil didn't need to be possessed to fall down that hole, his entire life had been heading there since the day Kevin Smith killed off Karen Page and then Bendis, Brubaker, and Diggle sent him through 900,000 forms of hell.  That possession gave him an out and made it so Matt Murdock wasn't quite so terrible a person...same goes for having Dr. Doom play a role in Wanda's breakdown...takes away from the reality of what happens when people lose it all.  I know reality is a loose term given we are playing in the world of superheroes, but part of the fun is putting them in a real situation and seeing how it would play out. 

Every day people...good people...they break, they lose their minds to depression and heartbreak and sadness and fall to pieces in often horrible ways.  Multiply that times a million for the world of superheroes and you can see what happens when a person of great power naturally loses their control. Daredevil would have killed Bullseye on his own, Scarlet Witch would want to get rid of the people she blamed for his troubles, and Cyclops would willing go down a dark path to save his people...they didn't need outside influences to push them down that road and having that just gives them an out to make them seem not quite so bad.

As far as the aftermath, well again thanks to @DukeMcNulty, I was given a nugget to think about.  Cyclops did all of this terrible stuff under the influence of another entity...a cosmically powerful, potentially world destroying entity, but an outside force nonetheless.  When did Daredevil, Scarlet Witch, and Winter Soldier all commit their worst crimes? And did that stop any of them from becoming Avengers or put them away in jail?  Hell part of my problem with the new DD series initially was how the Shadowland stuff was just swept under the rug like it never happened and Murdock just started lawyering it up again like no big deal.  It's not exactly unprecedented for some hero to commit terrible acts under the influence of another force and end up protected by their fellow heroes.  To be fair, off the top of my head, only Wanda, Scott, and Xavier as Onslaught nearly decimated the world though...

Not a big fan of some of the ways Cyclops has been portrayed post-AvX....I do think he would proudly walk around wearing a "Cyke was right" T-Shirt but I do not, could not, ever see him calling himself a martyr for the cause.  My perspective on Cyke is that, despite all of this, despite killing his one-time father figure, he would tell you to look at the evidence and then tell him if you still think he was wrong. Scott Summers would not back down from his convictions even under lock and key, but the Cyclops I have seen evolve in the last ten years would not want Wolverine to "martyr" him, much less refer to himself as one, unless he was perhaps doing it to get one last "fuck you" at Logan for picking the side he did.

Do I think Cyclops is irredeemable? No, no I don't but I do think he has a loooooong road to travel before he can show his face in public. I also would like to see more of the general public's reaction to the events of AvX...it was series I actually think could have benefited from a Frontline-type book rather than the overall pointless Versus series. How did the public view these mutants saving the world, feeding them, ending wars? How did they view Cap & the Avengers trying to stop them?  What's the feeling towards mutants now?  These are the questions I have and I guess I will have to see if they are answered in any form, if the wake of AvX is long-lasting or only felt in the MarvelNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! short-term. 

Well this rambling is at a logical close I suppose...I will revisit this subject after I have a chance to sit down, reread the series, and take notes as I go. Until then, I've got half of the Invincible Omnibus Vol. 1 to finish reading, half of "Clash of Kings" to finish reading, and a bunch of other random discount bookstore Marvel Hardcover purchases to knock off too!

X-Men: Schism....really? (SPOILERS AHEAD)

 

Pretty bad ass image right there huh?  Make you think Wolverine & Cyclops are going into a serious throwdown with one another doesn't it?  Makes you wonder just what could drive these two men who have essentially been the two pillars of the X-Community since the move to San Francisco & the founding of Utopia.  Cyclops has been the general, leading his army into war, and Wolverine serving as his first in command, carrying out orders with little question, willing to get down and do the dirty work with his secret X-Force cabal. Yes there have been some rough patches in the road, especially with Cyclops' insistence on X-23 & Wolfsbane being a part of the initial incarnation of his X-Force, but for the most part Wolvie acted like a good soldier, taking care of the wetwork in secret.

Obviously that all got blown to hell when X-Force was outed during "Second Coming" but it didn't stop Wolvie from forming Version 2 underneath Cyclops' radar with a different band of mutants. 

So there's groundwork laid out I suppose for the philosophical tensions between Wolverine & Cyclops that are obviously the basis for Schism, shallow though they may be....it's the depths to which these issues are explored that I find shallow, not the issues themselves.

So there's lots of death in X-Force, there are various attempts to salvage the mutant race as depicted in Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine is running off with pretty much every team that exists in the Marvel U, and there's very little done to push a burgeoning issue between the two X-Leaders, certainly nothing that justifies the image I started this blog with.

"Second Coming" comes and goes, Wolverine has some issues with Hope that are weakly, at best, laid out an issue of Uncanny X-Men, shows a minute interest in the Generation Hope cast as a whole, and then we're dumped into the whole "Prelude to Schism" mini.  I may be skipping some beats here as I am doing this primarily from memory, with a little google referencing for accuracy to issue references (turns out that was actually necessary given that I couldn't remember if the Wolvie/Hope story was a UXM or GenHope story), but that's being done with purpose.  I really wanted to see how much of the build-up to "Schism" actually stuck with me in any sort of relevant manner.  

So the "Prelude" books dance around the impending threat that is heading toward Utopia (I guess this little aside takes place between issues 3 & 4? Sometime during issue 4? During GenHope 11?), but certainly presents that threat as the impending death of everything on Utopia, totally unavoidable annihilation of the mutant species, so much so that is requires four different issues from the perspectives of Cyke, Wolvie, Magneto, and Xavier to decide if it's a fight or flight.  Obviously they decide on fight, now it's just a matter of reading the actual "Schism" story to find out just what they're fighting.  Suffice it to say that when the two stories finally converge, "Prelude" really feels misleading...

Alright now it's time for "Schism"...the big event that we discover (can't quite remember if it's before or after the story starts) will ultimately tear the team asunder, shuffle Wolverine & crew off into his very own team book, and hit reset on Uncanny X-Men with a brand new #1 issue!  Honestly getting all that information prior to the conclusion of the story sucked and certainly sucked the life out of "Schism" for me because it boiled the story down to one question: what cause the schism?

It was a moment I kept waiting for throughout the first 3 issues; with the return of Quentin Quire (which should have felt bigger than it was), the baby Hellfire Club, the mutant museum, the rebirth of the Sentinels, none of it feels particularly important.  The moments of tension with Wolverine & Cyclops feel just like that...moments, moments that could lead to a bigger issue down the line yes (maybe if down the line was a year's worth of stories like this), but nothing to justify the huge rift we all know is coming by issue 5.  Wolverine & Cyke have bonded like never before in the years (Days?Weeks?Months? Who knows in comic book land) since Jean's death and none of this seems like a payoff, just more build-up.  As I read the first 3 issues I found myself constantly wondering "Is that it?", I was constantly waiting for something more to happen to give a logical reason for this rift in the relationship of Scott Summers & Logan.  It never came...

Idie killing the Hellfire Club goons to save lives is a terrible thing for a child to have to endure no doubt, and when that kid already thinks they're the Anti-Christ it only exacerbates the situation.  Idie is most certainly a damaged kid,  but what interest have any of the X-Men shown in these kids since they were introduced?  Cyclops & Hope both want them to be soldiers, Wolverine hasn't given a damn, the end.  Where does Wolverine's sudden interest in her mental state come from?  Yeah it's pretty brutal that she had to kill some people, yes it is awful when she later expresses that she thinks it's just part of being an X-Man, but as the whole foundation upon which a philosophical Grand Canyon is built?  Seriously?  I've been reading X-Books as long as I've been reading comics and Idie killing a few people is far from the worst thing that has gone down between Cyke & Wolvie, to say nothing of incidents that deservedly drove wedges between characters (say perhaps Prof. X hiding the existence of a brother from Cyclops).

And while the visual of a Wolvie & Cyke fighting it out while a giant Sentinel looms over Utopia is quite cool, the two of them scrapping after the robot makes landfall is pointedly ridiculous.  This isn't Wolverine & Angel from the added pages of Classic X-Men #1, these are two men who have gone through hell together for years now who are giving their personal grievances import over the impending doom of Uber-Sentinel.

A quick aside RE: Uber-Sentinel....really? Seriously? Go back to "Prelude" and see that this one Sentinel is putting the fear of annihilation into every living mutant on Utopia, including those on the Alpha power levels of Magneto, Xavier, Storm, & Cyclops?  These are the warriors who faced down Dark Phoenix, the entire Shi'ar galaxy, the Legacy Virus, X-Tinction Agenda, Cassandra Nova & her wild Sentinels, Magneto himself...and they are quaking in their boots over a one freakin' Sentinel!  Now go back to "Schism" proper, issue 5, and now that Sentinel is barely an afterthought, dispensed of by the populace of Utopia without anyone really being in danger of a stubbed toe at the hands of Uber-Sentinel much less death.  Wolverine & Cyclops do more damage to each other (Claws through the hand? Damn!)

The total lack of words, captions, sound effect, etc during the majority of this issue is a neat effect, I assume trying to put the emphasis on the violence being perpetrated by two friends upon one another, and it makes sense given that most people wouldn't speak in soliloquies while spitting teeth in blood.  It's just an odd choice given that X-Books tend to be overly expository, especially in combat situations.

So the Wolvie/Cyke knockdown drag-out ends, Uber-Sentinel gets beat, some caption boxes over the top of moving day lay out the aftereffects, and Wolvie's crew heads back to the mansion that has been left in complete rubble since..."Messiah Complex" I believe.  That was probably the coolest moment of the entire "Schism" series for me right there... but man, you'd think these X-people would care enough to at least rebuild their ancestral home even if they haven't been living there recently.  That's just rude...

So when all is said and done...I think it's pretty obvious I'm let down by this entire experience.  I don't think there was enough meat to justify the Scott/Logan rift, I don't think there is any question that the hype-job the "threat" got in "Prelude" was overkill, and I'm really disappointed that this was how the landscape-changing event went down.  "Messiah Complex" and "Second Coming" were far, far better stories that actually conveyed the possibility of a real threat to the mutant race, that actually paid off LEGITIMATELY built-up issues while simultaneously paving the road for future arcs.  Those stories did not feel forced, did not feel thrown together to accomplish some sales-boosting goal (What else would you call two new #1's?), and I would liken them more to "Messiah War" and "Necrosha" as opposed to the other two recent X-Overs.

All in all, I label "Schism" as a fail, not an absolute fail because I found the art in pretty much every issue to be quite good.  I absolutely hate having a different artist on every ish of a book like they did here (and DC did in "Return of Bruce Wayne") but at least it was good art.  Some small issues here and there, but it would just be nit-picky stuff, mostly with Acuna's art.  It also presented some interesting storyline points going forward as far as the overall fallout from "Schism" & its impact on the rest of the X-Family of books (it can't/won't be as simple as these guys hopped on this bus while the rest hopped on the other bus) as well as providing some intriguing concepts in the L'enfant terrible incarnation of the Hellfire Club, the reborn Quentin Quire, and the reemergence of a Sentinel program amongst governments worldwide.  I guess we shall see what Regenesis brings us in the coming months...I just hope the bricks building this new house turn out stronger than the foundation...

Age of Why...(SPOILERS CONTAINED)

HEY THERE'S SPOILERS IN HERE!!!

Now that that's out way....

I almost wrote this blog immediately after I finished reading the final part of "Age of X" in New Mutants #24 but decided to wait until I had the opportunity to re-read the Alpha issue, the 6 issue story, and the two "Age of X Universe" issues as a whole.  After doing that, my opinion as a whole has not really changed.  It is a terribly flawed, terribly disappointing story, and here is my view on the how's and why's...

The "Age of X" (henceforth referred to as AoX) all started in November 2010 with this little image below:

A handful of blacked out images, a teasing logo that references a historic story from fifteen years ago, and plenty of speculation.  Would it related to "Age of Apocalypse"?  Is that Magneto, Wolverine, or Gambit in that image? Does "X" stand for X-Men?

Over the course of the next couple weeks, the fans were treated to another image with blacked out characters that were revealed a bit at a time...

...as well as QR codes that linked to historical logs fleshing out the AoX world (check them out at the AoX Wiki page).  Comic Book Resources added it's own Age of X Communiques that gave back story to several of the characters, and prior to the actual release of the books, I was quite excited.

The first story of the AoX world, AOX: Alpha, came out in January 2011 and gave me plenty to be intrigued about as it gave origin info on Basilisk (Cyclops), the Guthrie Family, Wolverine, and Magneto, as well as estabilishing the general tone of this brave new world.  I dug it, was very curious to see where it was going, and excited for the X-Men: Legacy & New Mutants issues to come.

My interest continued after reading the first two parts of the story in Legacy #245 & New Mutants #22 as the central conflict was established, the question of just what did Katherine Pryde's camera contain was posed, and the nagging wonder of just what Madison Jeffries was talking about regarding the stars lingered.  The identity of X, Bartender Wolvie, comatose Prof. Xavier, the strange dog tags...it established a mystery to sink my teeth into as I worked to figure out just what the hell had created this world.  And I think that mystery maintains pretty well through Chapter 3...after that, the wheels slowly fell off.

Enter Chapter 4, and the slow downfall of this AoX story for me.  There were definite moments in the first three chapters that brought out my inquisitive side: why was Moira one of the only humans in Fortress?  Why were only telepaths in the brig? Why were mutants who had otherwise lost their powers repowered in this world?  And the cliffhanger of Chapter 3 had me excited for the possibility of Basilisk & Wolverine working to uncover the mystery as well as Legacy (Rogue) and Gambit.

Enter Chapter 4 and the first four pages essentially scream at you identity of the parties responsible for the AoX.  The page featuring Legion & Moira may as well be a picture of the reader being hit in the head with a hammer.  We find out the entire universe is being kept in a box, that Doctor Nemesis is in some wierd stasis in a room that shouldn't exist & someone's brain scans are on his wall.  The entire feel of this chapter just felt different to me, like there should have been more chapters to this story to unfold it in some meaningful way, but Carey was only given 6 in order to accomplish that goal, 7 with the Alpha issue.  Truly not enough to really flesh out the whole AoX world in my opinion, and I guess that was part of the reason for AoX: Universe.

The month that Chapters 3 & 4 came out was also the release of the first issue of AoX: Universe and essentially worthless given the revelation via Katherine Pryde's camera that nothing existed outside of the force walls created by Legion & the Force Warriors every day.  The AoA version of this book fleshed out the world away from the X-Men and this was intended to do the same.  Instead we ended up with a story that really didn't matter because, according to the core text, NOTHING existed outside the walls.  Yes, the reader is brought into this via the memories Legacy has apparently absorbed from the AoX Captain America but does anything that happens here matter?  Hell, how is any of it even remotely possible in a world where nothing exists until it enters the Force Walls and the Fortress?  Are memories spontaneously generated by the constructs as soon as they enter the area?  How are these heroes a part of this world?  These are questions that are never answered, as if these AoX: Universe stories were written with Simon Spurrier having no idea what Mike Carey's larger plan was.

And that brings me back to the last two chapters, 5 & 6, of the AoX world; the chapters where everything becomes revealed to the Brotherhood of X (the name being a further tell that the character of X is the one manipulating everything).  Chapter 5 is a huge dialogue drop in which we learn that all of this is because of Dr. Nemesis' attempts to heal Legion's fractured mind and Xavier looking to fix the damage the Doc caused.  A super personality was created inside Legion's brain that took on the identity of Moira MacTaggert and had the (very vague) power to create worlds.  It decided to create a world where Legion was a coherent personality, a world in which Legion was the hero of the day, a world where it became the voice in charge known as X (hence the Age of X), but it was a world at constant war.  It was even expressly stated that things only existed if X was paying attention to them ("Why do the human battalions disappear when your attention is elsewhere?" said Xavier).  Oh yeah, and it's a shame that the tease of Basilisk & Wolvie joining the search for the truth amounted to nothing...

Okay so now my problems with all of this: why on Earth would X keep Dr. Nemesis around in any form?  Or Xavier? Or any of the telepaths for that matter?  If X could create any world, why would it be a world in which the methods to break that world are still intact? How did any of the events of the Universe books even take place if no world existed outside the Force Walls, if X wasn't paying attention to it, as Xavier stated?  Who the hell are all these random, faceless mutants in The Fortress if those on Utopia were the one's affected?

And I think, with the final chapter, we get the ultimate problem with this entire story arc: none of it matters.  Not one second of anything that has happened, not any of the X-Communiques, not any of the QR historical logs, none of it has mattered. I think that's core reason why such moments like Wolverine leaping into battle with claws extended, despite The Cure probably killing him in the process, has no emotional impact to the reader.  Nothing mattered...

It's a bit odd to write that statement because the same could be said for the AoA in the 90's, but this is different in many ways.  That story, that reality, while only in print for four months managed to draw you in so much more and felt so much more...real.  Perhaps it was the multi-faceted look at the world with something like 10 mini-series' devoted to giving you a full picture of the entire world as well as Alpha & Omega bookends.  The relationships between characters felt fuller and the desperation of their situation more dire, as opposed to the same sort of circumstances in the AoX.  For example, the relationship of Basilisk & Frenzy is surprising in the AoX but it just doesn't ever feel right like the relationship between Jean Grey & Weapon X in the AoA.  And I know I keep comparing the two, but the choice to call it the AoX is just one way in which Mike Carey intended to connect the two stories. 

Another obvious way they are connected is in the use of Legion as the impetus behind the change.  Not wholly original, and entirely unforseen by anyone reading the X-Books really.  There has been nothing in any of the X-Titles that served as precursor to this tale.  No instances of Prof. X expressing concern over Dr. Nemesis' treatments of Legion that have been going on for months now, no signs of Legion having any problems; when the reveal of the "how" is laid out on Chapter 5...it just felt out of left field to me.

I wanted to like this story, I wanted to be impressed and wanted this to be a story I looked forward to re-reading from time-to-time.  Unfortunately that was not the case...hell it took me forever to actually pick up Chapter 5 again after I finished Chapter 4 the second time around.  I just felt...robbed?  No, that's not it, just disappointed in the whole situation.  The answer to the "how" should have been a logical progression of story, the reveal of Moira as X should have had more oomph, and the fallout on Utopia should have felt like something big was on the horizon.  Instead I got none of that...and I don't feel like any of that is coming.

This was something major, or at least should have been.  We should see the repercussions in not just X-Men: Legacy, but also in X-Force, Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, and New Mutants!  This was a story that changed the world, changed relationships, changed status quos, and brought characters into 616 existence that weren't there before.  I know I need to wait and see what's to come, but there was nothing in the close of Chapter 6 that made me feel like there was anything coming.  I could barely tell what Legion was doing on the last page given the quality of the art (that's a whole other story...couldn't even keep wardrobe consistent from chapter to chapter, just like at Moira in 5 & 6).

I guess it's only the future that will show if AoX has any importance whatsoever, but in the 3 months of its existence, it proved to have very little positive impact on little old me.  Shame too, I've generally liked Carey's run on Legacy, not as much since X-Necrosha, but still a solid book.  I hope that the post-AoX stories can redeem the last 3 months and that I'm proved wrong about their impact on the X-Universe proper. 

But for now, let me just say that this is NOT something I recommend for those who have not read it.  If you want to read some alternate reality X-Books, go pick up the AoA trades or Days of Future Past book, don't worry about the AoX.  Leave that up to obsessive fanboys like yours truly...