An Asskicking By Any Other Name: Avengers Vs. X-Men #2 Review

Avengers Vs. X-Men #2 is a big old action movie of a comic book, where the first punch gets thrown by the second page and the hits keep on coming until we’re reminded by the last page that all this hot, sweet superhero-on-superhero action (wait, I think that came out wrong) is in service of a plot related to the Phoenix Force coming to destroy the world before the Avengers movie even has a chance to come out.

This book is filled with satisfying, balls-to-the-wall action… but it is also filled with overblown, florid and somewhat pretentious captions that read like a sixteen-year-old either trying to use his comics addiction for an easy C in Intro to Poetry, or to charm the Drama Club skank into turning a backrub into a front rub. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

If you’re looking for any kind of story advancement in this issue, you’re not gonna find much. The issue opens with the X-Men and The Avengers beating the unholy shit out of each other, and pretty much ends the same, with only the minor plot points of, “Yup, Phoenix Force… still coming,” and “Yeah, Hope… still getting jacked up on the Phoenix Force,” being advanced. If this was a modern Grandmasters’ chess game, this issue would be the equivalent of Bobby Fischer darkly muttering about Jews while some scabrous geek flips on the opposing IBM supercomputer.

Which, as an analogy, was fun to write but ultimately flawed. Because greater story almost doesn’t matter in a book like this, because we’re pretty much all here for one reason only: to watch superheroes smack the shit out of each other. The Phoenix Force’s return is nothing but a MacGuffin to make both sides fight, and when it arrives it will magically transform itself into a MacGuffin forcing both sides to bury their respective hatchets and work together to save the world. So this is no chess match, it is a prizefight. We are here to watch two sides whale on each other, reasons be damned. After all, when you dial up a boxing match on Pay Per View, do you really give a fuck about the Roll Royce repair bill that inspired Don King to set it up? Fuck that, now lets see some ears done get bit!

And ears, do, in fact get bit… so to speak. This issue is non-stop action, with the first cross-team matchups beginning to take shape. We’ve got Red Hulk vs. Colossus, Namor vs. The Thing and Luke Cage. Magneto vs. Iron Man (Which is such a gimme I’m saddened that I didn’t see it coming). The battles are violent, exciting, and just the beginning of fights that I am honestly looking forward to; hey, just because I recognize that the whole Hope / Phoenix thing is nothing but a hook to get superheroes to fight each other doesn’t mean that I’m above wanting to see Vision kick the shit out of Danger, or Daredevil stomp on Dazzler, or Cyclops die screaming under a city bus (What can I say? I just hate Cyclops), and on that front, this issue delivers and promises more to come.

However, it delivers these things with narration by some dude who you can just picture wearing a black turtleneck in a coffeehouse, whoring for the type of applause that is delivered by finger-snapping douchebags. The captions here are florid, to say the least, and because of that they are distracting. Here’s a taste:

Irradiated muscles strain. Organic metal groans. Windows shatter miles away. The San Andreas Fault shudders with each blow.

What the fuck is that from, Jason Aaron’s letter to Penthouse? I get that Aaron is trying to caption the conflict in ways that make it seem epic, but I found myself instead wondering which comics slashfic LiveJournal Aaron was remembering while scripting this book. These make Stan Lee’s old captions read like they were written by a monosyllabic eunuch. This is not a good thing.

And we’re only a few issues across a couple of titles into this event, but I can already tell that by June I will be praying for a time machine with which I could go back in time to 2007 to beg Mike Carey to name his new character anything other than “Hope.” The problem with having a messianic character named Hope is that comic writers seem powerless to prevent themselves from using the name in clever ways to meta-reference the stakes of the story. This issue is packed with shit like, “Is Hope safe?” and “I can’t let you go, Hope!” and, “The moment all Hope was officially lost,” all of which, I’m sure, is meant to seem literary and clever, but is already coming across as smarmy and fucking irritating. And it’s all because of the character’s name; not only would writers not be tempted to get cute if they had to instead write, “The moment all Dorcas was officially lost,” at least if they succumbed to the urge it would be fucking hilarious.

I have said before that I am not the world’s biggest John Romita Jr. fan; I find his stuff to be generally blocky and overly busy. However, stylistic issues aside, Romita’s storytelling is clear, and his actual fight panels have an appropriate depiction of violence to give the combat the feeling that there are actual physical consequences to the fighting… although I feel Romita’s stuff pales compared to the similar violence depicted in recent books like The Strange Talent of Luther Strode and Danger Club. In general, the art here serves the story, and I’m sure will thrill Romita fans… I just don’t happen to be one of them.

If you are a fan of superhero action and combat, either on the level of just liking action stories or based on an old schoolyard argument that you’re hoping this book will finally settle so you can take to Facebook and rub it in Billy Hoar’s stupid, stupid face at how stupid his face is, then you are going to really dig this book. It is a lot of fun, and I did enjoy it. However, at its lowest common denominator, this is a thrilling punch-up, while Jason Aaron seems determined to write it as some kind of epic myth. Which, rather than elevating the book, instead provided distractions that keep the book from being truly epic. My recommendation is: come for the violence, and leave before the poetry slam…

…and try not to get too irritated by Hope’s fucking name. After all, this is comics, which means we can always hope that someone will come along and perform the retcon we desperately need to provide us with an event named Generation: Dorcas.