Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Avengers & X-Men: Axis #1
Marvel Comics
Remender, Kubert, Martin & Milla
The nine-part Marvel event kicks off this week in a very dense, fast paced comic book. The book has a huge, movie-like opening to it that really grabs the reader and shakes them. Over the bulk of the thirty-page, five-dollar comic book, there are a lot plot thread payoffs from other books, which definitely leaves a newer reader scratching their heads a bit. The book ends with a nice twist that will most likely make you pick up the next issue. This is worth checking out.
Having dropped Uncanny Avengers somewhere around issue ten I am vaguely familiar with the plot threads that get a lot of action in this comic book. There is a rift between Rogue and Scarlet Witch and there is unresolved anger with Havok among others. This comic book deals with those issues and more and it reads a lot like a continuation of Uncanny Avengers rather than the first issue of Axis. Sure you need to have a recap but this goes above and beyond a recap as it feels like twenty pages of epilogue to a story that ran for twenty-five issues. I believe this is going to be problematic for the new reader but joyous for those that followed Uncanny Avengers.
The high point for this comic book is the opening. Remender has fantastic command of the voices and the banter among the characters in the opening to the comic book. It really reads and feels like the opening to an Avengers movie and that is a great thing. Remender doesn't let up from there, as the action is heavy throughout the comic book. There are only a handful of pages that are quieter moments and that, too is a great thing.
As the book moves along the cast keeps growing and the voices become less unique. This is a bit of an issue because of all of the colliding plot threads. It took a couple of reads through to fully understand what characters were saying and why. It also doesn't help that entire teams enter the fray every few pages rather than just one or two characters.
Adam Kubert has done much better work than this comic book. Without ink credits we are left to assume that Kubert inked his own pencils. This apparently was a mistake. The comic book lacks any facial emotion and in many cases facial details. For example, one of the final pages where the Summers brothers shake hands, one of the characters isn't even facing the other and he has a complete blank, almost void, look on his face. It doesn't help that three panels prior to this they are leaving on each other as if in a locker room huddle. Sure, there are some epic images, which there absolutely needed to be, but the book just has no life to it at all. This is a very disappointing artistic effort, even taking away Kuburt's lofty expectations.
The opening issue of Axis gives the reader page after page of story. A lot of it seems to have such deep roots in other books it might lose its punch with the new reader. The comic has an enormous cast that almost seems too big for the comic to handle properly, but it makes a good effort. The book is on the cusp of something great, it just needs to focus on this story and not the last story more and it needs a major re-tooling of the art. The comic might be overpriced but if you are curious enough you probably won't be disappointed.
3 out of 5 Geek Goggles
