This issue picks up right after the events in AvX #6 last week. Marvel timed this VERY well, which doesn't always happen. In AvX #6, The Avengers raided the X-Men island, Utopia, and made off with the "Mutant Messiah", Hope, with the help of the Scarlet Witch. In this issue, the X-Men then set off scouring the globe for her, enlisting many of Wolverine's X-Men team to do it.
Rachel Summers, Cyclop's daughter from the future and one-time Phoenix host, leads the hunt and tracks down Wolverine. Their talk goes poorly and soon it's an all out brawl between a squad of X-Men and a squad of Avengers and man is it a good one! Between Phoenix Namor and the Shi'ar Prince Kid Gladiator, Thor spends most of the time getting beat down. Iceman tries to talk things out with Beast only to get shot in the face with some kind of heat gun! Kid Gladiator tries to push around his school principal only to have Wolverine attack a certain "weak point" that is left to the imagination, and the Kid drops. The X-Men definitely have the edge in the fight and in the end, Rachel finds Hope, knocks out Black Widow, and...let's her go! She didn't say why, but something she saw when she looked in Hope's mind convinced her to let her go. On the last page she's trying to explain to Cyclops how Hope and most of the Avengers were able to escape when the King of the Shi'ar race, Gladiator arrives and announces that "THE PHOENIX DIES TODAY!" For those who don't know this guy...he's like Superman with a mohawk!
For a book that was basically one big fight, it was an awful lot of fun. This series is known for it's humor and they somehow managed to keep that present even in an intense storyline like this. Chris Bachalo's art is heavy and blocky and SO cool! His rotating artist on this title is Nick Bradshaw, who did a great job with the cover (see above). Nick's artwork is VERY similar to one of my all-time favs, Art Adams.
Fun Fact: Of the 7 Avengers featured fighting on the cover, only 3 of them actually appear in this issue!
This wasn't a jaw-droppingly awesome issue, but it was pretty darn entertaining!
If you've been following my blog, you know that I'm not crazy about the current storyline in Thor. The Thunder God accidentally freed a race of ugly alien dog things that were sealed away by Odin eons ago and they are now running amok, putting everyone in Asgard AND nearby Broxton, Ok asleep and trapping them in a big, group, nightmare world. In the nightmare world a goth kid from Broxton used his imagination to turn Thor into the goofball character that his metal band put on their cd cover, The Deconsicrator (the dumbest thing I've seen in comics in a while). The big "D" smashes up the landscape in dream world for a while before calming down and realizing that he not only feels his hammer in his hands in the dream, but he can feel it in his hands in the real world as well. Consentrating, he calls forth a bolt of lightning in the real world and fries the alien dog right off his sleeping chest, waking himself from the dream.
I have forgotten to mention this in the past few issue's reviews, but while the sleepy dog alien story has been happening, Dr. Don Blake, Thor's ex-host from his earth banishment days has realized that he is not real. He was created by Odin specifically to house Thor's spirit while he was on earth learning humility. He's not happy about this and asks Thor's longtime villain, The Enchantress, to make him a god again. She agrees and puts Blake through some weird ritual and at the end she CUTS HIS HEAD OFF! His head doesn't die though! While his decapitated head looks on black goo poors through his neck and takes the form of a big, black muscular creature that Enchantress names "The Keep". Blake has just been used. In this issue, Enchantress, The Keep, and Don's head take a trip to Hell to use it as a shortcut to Asgardia. They find the ruler of the dead, Hela, incapacitated by an alien dog (they're called Mares BTW). The Keep kills the thing and Hela wakes up. She sees what Enchantress has done to Blake and warns her that Thor will either kill her for this or at least want to, but gives her leave to travel through her realm and onto Asgardia. Upon arrival, the 2.5 travelers find all of Asgardia's inhabitants asleep all over the place with a goofball dog thing sitting on top of each of them. They bypass the litter of bodies and head to the throne room. When they open the doors they find Thor waiting for them, fully awake and already pissed (and for some reason, not waking up his friends and family?).
Okay, i think the Mares are stupid. I mean, just look at them! And the Deconsicrator?!? Ugh...that's almost bad enough to take this series off my pull list! But the Enchantress bit? That's got me interested. I'm very curious to see how Thor handles the treatment of his alter ego. And The Keep is actually kinda cool looking!
Not great, but getting better.
Every now and then a comic book comes along that makes me sit back in my chair, smile while I read it, and occasionally laugh out loud to myself. This is one of those books.
In the last issue, Peter Parker into a scuffle with Mysterio and accidentally got caught up in a weird portal that transported him to the Ultimate Marvel Universe. In that universe, the original Spider-Man is dead, and the world now knows that he was Peter Parker from Queens. As the grown-up regular Marvel U Spidey swings around town he is shocked and completely freaked out by how people keep mentioning Peter Parker to him. Then he goes to the rooftops and runs right into the new Ultimate Spidey, Miles Morales, in costume.
This issue: Peter Parker was Miles' hero so when he sees the old suit he immediately asks if he's Peter Parker, hoping that his idol was either not killed or has come back to life. Peter doesn't know what's going on, but he's tired of people knowing his secret identity all of a sudden and after a few funny back and forths, the freaked-out Peter starts getting physical. While Pete has the experience, Miles has a shocking "venom-sting" and following a very cool fight scene, uses it to knock him out. Peter wakes up in SHIELD custody talking to the African American version of Nick Fury, which he thinks is quite funny. Nick quickly realizes that this isn't HIS world's Peter Parker and lets him go, asking Miles to fill him in on the details until Fury can fix the situation. As they are flying away in a SHIELD helicopter it is hit with a rocket blast and goes down. Luckily there are two Spideys on board, so they save the pilot and escape. Then they see their attacker, it's Mysterio.
After Peter goes through the portal, we get a scene of Mysterio waking up and realizing where Spidey has gone. He's not happy. He gets up, puts on a virtual reality-type headpiece and activates a life model decoy-type body that he calls his avatar and sends it through the portal. It turns out that the Ultimate Mysterio that Peter Parker fought before his death, was actually the avatar controlled through the portal by the regular Marvel Universe Mysterio! Very cool twist! He sees the Ultimate U as HIS playground and he's ready to take out the remaining Spider-men in his way!
Oh my dang, this was SO fun! Sarah Pichelli once again rocked out some beautiful artwork, but it's Bendis' writing that make this so special. Character crossovers are usually SO lame, but Peter and Miles are both so likable and funny and Bendis's dialog is so witty that this is just a blast. This will be a really great collected graphic novel when it's all said and done, but I'm not going to miss a single issue of this one.
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