Does Whatever A Spider Can: Avengers Vs. X-Men #9 Review
Editor’s Note: Does he spoil? Listen bub: he’s got Jack Daniels infected blood!
If you are a Spider-Man fan, you will find Avengers Vs. X-Men #9 to be about the most satisfying issue of the crossover event so far. It hammers home his philosophy of “With great power comes great responsibility” without actually saying the words for a change, it plays to his strengths as a character, and it allows this street-level hero to have a distinct and concrete impact on a cosmic-level story in a way that is true to the character, and satisfying for people who love him.
It also has a marital collapse. And it sets up the savage beating of one of the biggest douchecanoes in modern superhero comics. So there’s not a lot of downside here.
This issue shows The Avengers reduced to conducting assymetrical warfare against the Phoenix Five (Well, Phoenix Four now), doing hit-and-run missions against the X-Men via the mystical portal in and out of K’un Lun. Hope is still in training to do… something; no one’s real clear as to what that is yet. Tony Stark has been locked in a room trying to figure out how Scarlet Witch’s and Iron Fist’s powers tie together to take down the Phoenix Force, and so far has only been successful in determining just how much he can fill his armor with pee. And every time The Avengers return to K’un Lun, there are fewer and fewer of them, with the prisoners being taken to some unknown location. In the meantime, some of the X-Men are starting to notice that working for the Phoenix is kind of a shit job, while some of the Phoenix Four are learning that having a Galactus-level power riding shotgun in their brains can totally harsh your mellow.
The defecting X-Men plot point leads into the biggest spoiler of the issue: where Black Panther decrees by royal fiat that his marriage to Storm is over. From an individual story and character standpoint, this makes total sense: Namor has made Wakanda look like Rwanda, Storm has aided and abetted the Phoenix Five, and nothing kills the ol’ marital duties boner quicker than your wife helping to lay waste to your neighborhood (except maybe if she gains 30 pounds, but this is comics; the only way Storm is gaining 30 pounds is if Liefeld jumps back to Marvel from DC and starts drawing her boobs).
Black Panther is angry, and this decision makes total sense to anyone who’s ever felt betrayed by their significant other. However, from a plot standpoint, this feels like a Macguffin; The Avengers need to find out where the X-Men are keeping their prisoners, so the writers need someone to switch sides and feel they need to atone for something. So what we get is I Divorce You / I’m Sorry, I Want To Help / Let’s Have A Rescue, all in the space of three panels. While I can buy the sequence of events, it feels too rushed from something this momentous, and it makes it feel less like an organic story point than a bunch of people trying to write their way out of a corner. It is, frankly, the weakest part of the issue.
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