AXIS #9 Review: Stakes Is Low

AXIS really should have been a slam dunk Marvel event. You had the Avengers and X-Men both featured in one story for the first time in a while, a serious menace in the form of the Red Skull boosted by the late Professor X’s vast telepathic powers, plus a hot writer in Rick Remender and an all-star team of artists.

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Somehow it all came off the rails anyway, to the point that AXIS #9 mostly makes you glad the whole things has wrapped up. Despite the talent involved, the only thing the concluding chapter does is highlight the overall story’s weaknesses — particularly the shockingly low stakes involved, the inconsistencies in some of the details, and the fact that even you’ve got four great pencillers, mashing them all into one issue (with eight inkers!) isn’t the best idea.

Marvel certainly put this event behind the eight-ball right away by not having the patience to wait to allow the new Superior Iron Man series to launch until after AXIS was over. That means I can talk about Tony Stark remaining inverted here, before the spoiler section, because you already know how that plays out. If you’ve been really observant, you can even guess that there are a few other characters who avoid being reverted to normal, and only one came as a surprise to me (and it’s a character who’s already been put through enough crap in his life, in my opinion, so I wasn’t happy about it).

The other big problem is that Marvel has already been promoting an even bigger event for next year, virtually guaranteeing that nothing of consequence would really come out of this. You can’t pin that on Remender, and he probably does his best overall job with character bits in this last issue, but it’s all kind of too little, too late.

And the art … Well, if ever there was an argument for a single penciller on an event, even if they need to be pulled from everything else and given a ton of lead time, this is it. Separately, Jim Cheung, Terry Dodson, Leinil Francis Yu and Adam Kubert are all awesome. Thrown together, not so much. i can’t even imagine how this series is going to read once collected.

So long AXIS. You could have been amazing, but instead were just kind of there. And with that, for the last time, let’s dive behind the …

SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT!

It’s old Captain America in his “Fighting Chance” armor versus new Captain America for the fate of the Red … er, White Skull? Yeah, even Skull was inverted, which is why letting him out wasn’t necessarily a bad idea. He’s also got enough of Xavier’s psychic powers to make Sam Wilson unaware he’s not really fighting Steve Rogers. The plan is for the Skull to help revert anyone.

Alas, the inverted folks don’t really want to go back. The evil Havok still wants his daughter back, but the Wasp is too angry to go along with him once she realizes he was lying about stopping the genetic bomb.

Apocalypse isn’t too happy about the fact that the bomb was stopped and that the Avengers took out the X-Men. Deadpool, now surviving as just a head, makes a plea to Evan to shake off the evil influence and do the right thing. Despite no evidence that this would work on any of the other affected characters, somehow it does on Evan. Okay then.

On the moon, Loki flees toward Mjolnir while pursued by Thor, gambling that he’ll be found worthy of the hammer under the circumstances. Fortunately for him, he’s right.

Steve gets the Skull back to Avengers Mansion, but the inverted Avengers are hot on their trail.

Evil Tony reveals that he’s going to have the Stark Sentinels rebuilt, and Captain America and Kluh (I hate even typing that) are about to kill Steve and Nomad. You know someone’s going to save the day, and it’s Apocalypse. Iron Man prevents the evacuation of the Skull, but he’s countered in turn by the arrival of Doctor Doom, Magneto, Brother Voodoo and the Scarlet Witch, the last of whom is under the control of Daniel Drumm. Magneto goes to kill Iron Man but is halted by the Skull, speaking with the voice of Xavier.

Doom and Skull discuss how there’s no choosing who will be spared, and even though they don’t want to go back to their evil ways, they know what they have to do. Doom and Scarlet Witch recreate the order/chaos mix and Skull gets ready to broadcast its effects. That’s the cue for both Havok and Iron Man to start acting up, as neither wishes to be inverted. The spells are cast, but Iron Man throws up a shield so that he, Havok and Sabretooth (who had moved in to stop Havok) are spared from they’re effects.

And that’s that, except for a few loose ends. Namely, Havok threatens Wasp so he can make his escape, forcing Janet to shrink down so they won’t be found. Magneto is upset because Doctor Doom, Red Skull and Iron Man all get away as well.

Wait, shouldn’t the public be furious at the heroes, especially the X-Men, for taking over Manhattan? Well, yeah, but the villains thought of that, recording a video they released to the media while they were still inverted claiming responsibility for the heroes’ actions. I’m actually fine with that explanation, as the Marvel public has extensive experience with mind-controlled heroes doing bad things.

Conveniently, none of the inverted characters remember anything they did while they weren’t in their right minds. That makes it extra dumb that Havok stayed inverted, since his main gripe was being unable to live with the knowledge of what he’d done. Maybe someone should have just told him that? Oh well! Steve says he’ll remember but promised to keep it a secret … except that he’s telling that to Sam.

The final scene shows Sabretooth working on a letter to Logan, as we see inverted Tony setting up shop, Havok reconciling with Cyclops and most disturbingly, Red Skull in the custody of Doctor Doom. A new Avengers Unity Squad is formed, Spider-Man makes good on his promise to remember Carnage’s sacrifice, and it looks like Creed is going to try to be the new Wolverine.

Favorite moment: Spidey and Sabretooth comparing notes on how good it is to make last-second saves, with Peter reamarking that he tries for one per battle but got to do two in this issue. Nice.

Final thought: Not much I haven’t already said, except for this: AXIS was an awful lot to go through just to change the status quo of three characters (four if you count Red Skull). Don’t you think?

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