As It Stands: Avengers Standoff Recap – Week Six

Welcome to As It Stands, our weekly recap of everything going on in the Avengers Standoff: Assault on Pleasant Hill spring event. 

The crossover enters its second month with two issues this week, and Bam Smack Pow will help you figure out which track to follow!

Previously in Avengers Standoff: After Rick Jones (as The Whisperer) leaked that S.H.I.E.L.D. is using sentient cosmic cube Kobik to turn bad guys into good guys in Pleasant Hill, S.H.I.E.L.D. arrested him but AIM (led by the New Avengers) rescued him. The Avengers Unity Squad and the All-New All-Different Avengers made it to Pleasant Hill at the same time, but Kobik grabbed them and wrote them into Pleasant Hill lives.

SPOILERS AHEAD! PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

New Avengers #9

The U.S. military turns Marine Todd Ziller (say it out loud) into a giant patriotic lizard monster they call American Kaiju and sets him loose against AIM’s island base in response to the attack on S.H.I.E.L.D. Rick Jones and the former New Avengers on the island pilot a giant robot to fight him, but S.H.I.E.L.D. makes use of the fight’s distraction to move in and demand the return of the Whisperer.

Uncanny Avengers #8

The members of the All-New All-Different Avengers and the Unity Squad are stuck in Pleasant Hill, but Rogue’s training with Professor X helps her shake off the mind control and wake up the teammates, most of whom look or act just like their original selves in this new reality. Deadpool, however, was rewritten as a beefcake fireman and sees his return to deformity as one more reason to hate Connecticut. The teams meet up to strategize, but they’re interrupted by Kobik, who threatens to put them back to sleep.

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Though this crossover is still a lot of fun, the mechanics are falling apart. The riot tearing through Assault On Pleasant Hill and Captain America is nowhere to be seen in the Uncanny chapter, and the dramatic disguises of the villains in the main story are reduced to, like, putting a baseball cap on Quicksilver as he runs on a treadmill. If Kobik can turn Orrgo into a Pomeranian and Absorbing Man into the malt shoppe scooper, why do all the Avengers still look like themselves? And in the New Avengers tie-in, the Whisperer storyline doesn’t look like it’s going to loop back around to be relevant to the main event. So budget-conscious readers are advised to prioritize the Alpha and Omega issues of Assault On Pleasant Hill and the Captain America chapters in between. Next, check out the All-New All-Different and Uncanny chapters for a fun but out-of-sync story. The New Avengers/Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. story and the Howling Commandos issue are only for fans of those titles themselves.

Tune in next week as the crossover hits Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., All-New All-Different Avengers, and the Illuminati!

To keep track of our recap coverage, watch this link and see you next week!