Marvel Pick Of The Week – October 29, 2014

Pick of the Week:

AXIS: Revolutions 1, by Dennis Hopeless, Ken Lashley, Simon Spurrier, and Tan Eng Huat

This book had a lot stacked against it before I even opened the cover. For starters, it’s the latest tie-in miniseries to yet another Marvel crossover event. If memory serves, this idea started in Civil War with Front Line, a miniseries about what it was like to be a mortal when the gods around you warred. It brought in complicated supporting characters and challenged the ethics of the vigilante system. Since then, most crossovers (like World War Hulk) have had tie-in miniseries, but since Avengers Vs. X-Men, the tie-ins have been anthology titles collecting inconsequential vignettes. Some of these have been fun jaunts with beloved characters or surprising debuts of talent new to the Marvel stable, but generally, these are mildly amusing digressions at best. After reading Revolutions‘s first issue, I can’t say it’s essential to the overall AXIS story, but it’s a ton of fun. In this pair of stories, solo heroes Spider-Man and Dr. Strange try in their own ways to combat the waves of psychic hate energy spewing from Red Onslaught and stirring the world’s population into race riots. I know that doesn’t sound like fun, but trust me.

Another problem this book had was matching Dennis Hopeless to a Spider-Man story. He was amazing on an 18-issue run of Avengers Arena and Avengers Undercover, killing off some teen heroes, introducing many more, and thoughtfully tending to their post-traumatic stress. But his Cable And X-Force took a long time to figure out how to say what it was, and I was not sure he could tackle a new-to-him character in ten pages. Well, this guy could pinch-hit for Dan Slott and Christos Gage anytime. His Spider-Man makes plenty of great jokes amidst the frank heroism, and he uses lessons from Aunt May to teach the rioting New Yorkers about the value of seeing things from each other’s perspective. I know how hokey that sounds, but Hopeless makes things a lot more reasonable. He is fine with people disagreeing and disapproving, but he wants to draw the line that hatred and violence don’t fix the problem. He rescues a catcaller from a beating at the heels of two harassed women and points out, “I’m with you in spirit… but I doubt [you’d] have much luck kicking the sexism out of him, either.” I love seeing mature ethical exploration in comics, and the anthology format makes the message that much more efficient.

The next story scared me more. Spurrier and Huat are a team that told the piece of X-Men Legacy exploring Legion’s reluctance to be a hero. The ideas were usually okay, and I liked the climactic plot reveals, but I had a tough time keeping up, and I didn’t enjoy feeling behind all the time. I actively did not want to see them talk about Dr. Strange’s response to the crisis. I wish I had known how funny it was going to be. In the story, Dr. Strange is adorably grouchy from all the telepathic warfare (accusing his “hoarier-than-thou” benefactors of shooting him the “stink-eye of Agamotto” – comedy gold) but still wants to help, so he drags humorously even-tempered assistant Wong around the city seeking an individual free from hate that he can use to channel the negative thoughts out of New York. Unfortunately, every saint he seeks reveals some secret bigotry with expert comic timing. I hope Cumberbatch can bring some of this attitude to his big-screen portrayal.

AXIS as a crossover is still too young to judge. I think the voices of the characters are wrong, for the most part, but the plot has been engaging and original. Time will tell if this sister title will keep up the quality demonstrated this week, but it’s gone a long way toward redeeming Marvel’s anthology experiments.

Honorable Mentions:

Elektra 7, for the way she uses her keen mind to beat four foes in four pages, kind of like Sudoku with dripping blood. I am going to miss this ninja when her title wraps up this year.

Deathlok 1, for a title that brings the great paranoia of the Cold War stories into modern day action. For a writer like Edmondson, who has built a niche with solo-hero action books like Black Widow and Punisher, he gives this book its own tone, and I think it’s going to be a great addition to the line.

Inhuman 7, for letting the first issue after the movie’s announced introduce readers to the detectives of the Inhuman group. Charles Soule is still pumping out original characters one after another, and I already love the buddy-cop partners navigating this issue in search of Black Bolt and his sexy, sexy brother Maximus the Mad. Ryan Stegman draws a great crazy-hot.

Death Of Wolverine: Deadpool & Captain America 1, for illustrating the way frustrated anger turns into dark humor when we lost someone we love. Marvel has been doing an amazing job talking about the realities of grief in an event that should have been just a sales trick.