AXIS #4 Review: It’s Inversion Baby!
By Nick Tylwalk
(Note: If you’re old enough to know Pearl Jam’s “Do the Evolution,” just substitute Eddie Vedder screaming “It’s Inversion, baby!” in your head for the actual chrous of that song and you’ll understand how I came up with this post title.)
This is a little better, and much more clear than last issue.
More from Comics
- X-Men: 6 reasons why Marvel’s mutants are the best superhero team
- Harley Quinn renewed for a fifth season on Max (and it’s well-deserved)
- Marvel Comics announces seven important X-Men comic books
- The X-Men were betrayed by Captain America in Uncanny Avengers
- Spider-Man: Miles and Peter team-up for their first ongoing series
AXIS #4 shows the effects of the Inversion on Avengers, X-Men and villains alike, and it’s slightly more than just a simple good/evil thing. The Avengers have become totally self-centered, while the X-Men turn totally paranoid and abandon Xavier’s dream, throwing in their lot with Apocalypse and pushing for war with humans. As for the bad guys, they now care about their fellow man, resulting in things like Carnage trying to be a good guy.
Most importantly, this issue shows that only the characters who were actually present when the spell was cast in Genosha are affected. I’m not sure I buy all the particulars (Hulk really has an even worse Hulk names Kluh that comes out when he feels sad?), but at least you can understand what happened at the end of issue #3.
And yet, seeing as this is just the first part of the middle act of AXIS, there are plenty of questions to still be answered. Chief among them is whether this was all part of Red Skull’s overall scheme or if he just got really fortunate by having the showdown from the beginning of the series go down the way it did. And is Charles Xavier still “alive” somewhere inside the Skull’s head? He almost has to be, or it makes big parts of the story pointless.
I’ll even give Rick Remender a slight break from criticism about how jokey he made everyone early on, as it provided a contrast to the way they’re acting now. Not very subtle, but it works.
He also gets props for naming the story “Altered Beast.” I’ll assume he ws a Sega fan in his youth.
Oh, and X-Men fans? You have less to complain about now that both teams of heroes are acting like jerks.
Onward we go …
SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT!
Something’s not right with our heroes. The Avengers have the Red Skull in custody, but when S.H.I.E.L.D. asks to watch over him instead, Captain America makes it clear he’s not taking orders from anyone. Sam actually punctuates that point by punching Nick Fury Jr. before they leave, which is just rude. Cap calls a meeting at Avengers Tower and asks that Scarlet Witch not tell Steve Rogers about it. Yeah, because the old man will just ruin everything.
Other scenes follow up on the effects of the Inversion. Carnage saves a family from the Squid (who?), Tony Stark offers free Extremis to everyone in San Francisco and reacquaints himself with the joys of alcohol, and the X-Men rally their troops for war.
At Avengers Tower, the Inverted members of the team come up with a plan on how to deal with the Red Skull: they’ll simply kill him in order to keep the X-Men from getting what they want, though they’ll double down on the deviousness by telling the mutants it’s being done as payback for them. Got that?
Poor Jarvis makes the mistake of pointing out that the Avengers aren’t killers and gets a hex bolt to the face for his trouble. Hulk (who wasn’t outwardly affected by the Inversion, I guess) gets smacked around for sticking up for him, turning him into Kluh. No longer concerned with little details like a rampaging Kluh hurting innocents — something he already announced he was going to do — the Avengers push on with their plan. Only there’s a big problem, as the Red Skull is gone.
Favorite moment: Not only is Sam Wilson now a self-centered jackass, he speaks in long bursts of exposition like this:
“A fog was lifted — I’ve been liberated of the terrible lifelong affliction of putting others’ needs ahead of my own”
Hulk should have smacked him upside the head just for talking like that.
Final thought: Can you imagine if the Inversion spell would have covered the whole world? That would have been a mess. I like what Remender did here by limiting the scope, even though it smacks a little of event comics convenience. Also, Leinil Yu is an awesome artist, but he sure draws some wrinkly lips.