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AXIS #6 Review: Treading Inverted Water

By Nick Tylwalk

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What is it with Marvel’s 2014 events and their wonky pacing? Original Sin started out with so much promise and crisp, lively character interactions before getting bogged down by a plot that went nowhere for issues at a time. With AXIS #6, my fear is that the same thing is happening with this series.

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Nothing much happens in this issue to actually propel the story forward. I mean, things do take place, particularly in the X-Men camp, but nothing that makes you feel like you couldn’t have skipped this particular installment. The inverted heroes and villains are still very much flipped around, and by the end of the issue, even Steve Rogers is resigned to the fact that he’s going to need to use villains as Avengers. It just shouldn’t have taken us 20 pages to get to that point.

The art by Terry and Rachel Dodson, while nice to look at, is also a weird match for the tone of this act. It’s too light and airy to give, say, the inverted X-Men a real sense of menace. It almost feels like AXIS would have been better served with the Dodsons leading off, when the heroes were still heroic, and had Adam Kubert on the middle portion.

To top it all off, AXIS #6 makes a complete mess of any sense of when these events are supposed to be taking place. Thanks to Superior Iron Man #1 already coming out, we know Tony Stark is going to stay inverted (you can read this week’s New Avengers #26 for another big clue). But he’s already getting confronted by Daredevil here, which hasn’t happened in that series yet, and … (*shrugs*)

That’s no fault of Rick Remender, who can only handle his own story and let the chips fall where they may with everything else Marvel publishes. Ironically, though, I disliked some of his characterizations earlier in AXIS, and now those are fine while the story itself is idling. Hopefully we get a happy medium down the stretch, because this was my least favorite issue of the series so far, hands down.

Let’s get to what plot points there were …

SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT!

Apocalypse and the X-Men still have Manhattan in their grasp. They’re planning on going from conquerors to mass murderers though, working on a gene bomb that will kill all humans. Bender B. Rodriguez would be proud.

Most of the rest of the issue is a series of confrontations. Mystique tries talking sense to Rogue and Nightcrawler but has to be saved by Sabretooth. Daredevil makes an ill-fated attempt to shut down one of Iron Man’s parties. Dr. Doom wants to be a better monarch, but he gets attacked by Scarlet Witch. Quicksilver (who isn’t inverted) and Magneto (who is) have to haul his metal butt out of the mystic fire. Last but not least, Loki tries talking Thor out of acting like a jerk. He fails.

Finally, the inverted villains gather at Avengers Mansion, where Sabretooth tells what he knows about the gene bomb and informs Steve, Spider-Man and Nomad that there’s only an hour to stop it from detonating. That means next issue is going to be villains versus X-Men, and it’s okay to root for the bad guys this time.

Favorite moment: An inverted Loki is more in touch with his feelings. Why else would he admit his love for his brother Thor?

Final thought: On top of everything else I disliked about this issue, it was the first one where big chunks of the overall plot have been shunted to the tie-ins. Want to know what the inverted Avengers are up to, or whatever happened to Nova after he unwisely flew off to take on Kluh by himself? You have to buy other books to find out. Remender had such a strong finale to his sweeping Uncanny Avengers arc that I have faith in him to pull this together, but I’ll be upset if we end up waiting until the very last issue for that to happen.

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