Uncanny Avengers #3 Review: Sibling Spat

If you’re going to change the back story of two characters who have been around for more than 50 years, you might as well go all the way.

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That seems to be Rick Remender’s philosophy in Uncanny Avengers #3, anyway. It’s already been established that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver aren’t the children of Magneto as we (and they) have been led to believe. Are they even mutants? Probably not. Might they even not be brother and sister? Wanda has that very thought in this issue.

Except they seem to have a much more powerful additional sibling too. She shows up here, raising more questions than she answers. Since this arc revolves around Wanda and Pietro looking for answers, it makes sense that they aren’t going to be so easy to come by. It’s just a very valid question of whether or not that’s an interesting enough premise to keep you interested for several more months to find out.

The pacing here is just excruciating. The Avengers Unity Squad is a seven-person team, but you’d think it was three times as big considering how long it’s been since we’ve seen some of them. Sam Wilson? MIA for two months in a row. Brother Voodoo? Nope, not this month. The only good thing about the Avengers being spread throughout several vastly different areas of Counter-Earth is that it gives Daniel Acuna more interesting backdrops for his pictures. His style borders on the surreal at times anyway, but with the crazy quilt nature of the High Evolutionary’s world, it takes on even more of that quality.

Is that enough to see you through? Your mileage may vary. I like this creative team and these characters, but they haven’t come together for me for two straight months. I hope that changes soon.

SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT!

Vision seems to be settling in on Counter-Earth. He and Eve have been busy making mechanical children of sorts, and High Evolutionary is willing to allow them to populate part of the planet, or so he claims.

Rogue isn’t as lucky, suffering under the control of the chief scientist. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver? They’re in Lowtown, getting acquainted with the Low Evolutionary. He’s the leader of a host of abandoned experiments that have so far been saved from the High Evolutionary’s periodic purges. Some bad news arrives about a new way to track these outcasts, and it turns out the tracker is a mind-controlled Sabretooth.

The twins deal with Creed and his handler, but their sister, Luminous, proves to be a much more difficult challenge, as she is both faster than Quicksilver and more skilled at using chaos magic than Scarlet Witch (on this planet, anyway). She easily defeats our heroes, taking them off to High Evolutionary while she sets Sabretooth and some other troops back to tracking the refugees. Once that task is accomplished, HE tells his New Men to go and exterminate the Low Evolutionary and his “flock of rats.”

Favorite Moment: Though it ends up being an idle boast, Scarlet Witch’s line about the Earth having child Avengers who could kick Luminous’ ass is pretty funny.

Final Thought: This arc could still be heading to an exciting conclusion, but I’m running out of time to be convinced the big finish will be worth it. In the meantime, it’s worth wondering whether Remender had an idea for how to put a new twist on Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver independently of larger Marvel happenings, or whether someone said, “We don’t want them to be mutants any more, who’s got an idea?” You make the call.

Next: Previously: our review of Uncanny Avengers #2

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