Avengers #401

Avengers #401
Writing: Mark Waid
Art: Mike Deodato and Tom Palmer

What Went Down: A group of Avengers, plus Gambit, are assigned to search for Magneto since he may be a key to stopping Onslaught (at least right now in the story). The Avengers also debut a new Quinjet that looks a lot like a paper airplane. After Iron Man almost leaves the door to the hanger shut, the team is on its way.

In case you’re wondering how they are going to find Magneto when he’s been missing for months, Cerebro has picked up some electromagnetic energy in South Carolina and Virginia… so there you go. Hank Pym also takes time to show off his team of Avengers and X-Men that are going to be appearing in Fantastic Four this month.

Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver share flashbacks of having to work for Magneto; they resent the fact that Magneto was cruel and often abusive to his henchmen. A particular scene shows Magneto gripping Wanda with his magnetic powers to intimidate her. Quicksilver asserts that he will always protect his sister.

In Virginia, Rogue and Joseph are at a garage getting their car fixed. The mechanic complains that the lift is broken, so he can’t fix the car. Joseph uses his magnetic powers to make it work while Rogue distracts the mechanic. They go off to get lunch when the Quinjet lands right in front of them. Quicksilver hurries ahead of the rest of the Avengers and attacks Joseph, assuming that he is Magneto. Gambit and Quicksilver are both shocked to find Rogue accompanying him.

Quicksilver assumes that Joseph is controlling Rogue somehow, so he presses his attack. Rogue keeps trying to explain, but the Avengers keep interrupting her, so she just attacks the Vision instead. Iron Man tries to defuse the situation, but he shows that he might attack, so Joseph throws him through a cruise ship.

Gambit throws some charged cards to break up Vision, Thor, and Rogue, while Joseph fights the rest of the Avengers. When he grips Wanda with his powers, as he did in the flashback, she freaks out and breaks free with her powers. Joseph tries to apologize and help her up. Behind him, Quicksilver is charging with a giant wooden post to kill Joseph with. The Scarlet Witch contemplates letting her brother do it, but knocks both Quicksilver and Joseph away with her powers instead.

Wanda yells at her brother, telling him that she can take care of herself. Captain America finishes telling Rogue about Onslaught and everyone gets on the Quinjet to leave. Gambit demonstrates jealousy at the relationship Joseph and Rogue appear to share.

How It Was: First up, Mike Deodato’s artwork=sooo gooood. I’m a really big fan of his current work on Secret Avengers, and his stuff on Dark Avengers was great as well. His characters are gorgeous, and his fight scenes are so well posed. A highlight includes the page where Joseph takes on Captain America and the Maximoffs single handedly. My only complaint is the “new” Quinjet design. I can’t see what the point of this is because A: Avengers is being canceled in one more issue, so we’ll never see it again, and B: It is a really dumb looking design. Since Tom Palmer is credited with finishes, I get the feeling that deadlines may’ve become an issue, hence the simple looking Quinjet, but who knows?

As for the story, well the big question is why the heck is this taking place in the Avengers book? Since Joseph is a future X-Man, and Rogue has been missing from the book for months, wouldn’t it make more sense to put this in an X-Men book?

Besides the soliciting of the story, the real problem is that this story is a bunch of super heroes mistakenly attacking one and other, and we just had that in Uncanny #335. Waid does do a good job of setting up the precedent for Wanda and Pietro’s negative feelings toward Magneto, but it’s still absurd that it would take an entire issue to resolve this fight; much of the issue is padded with unnecessary sequences like Gambit arguing about using an elevator, or Iron Man not opening the door at the end of the plane ramp. One ridiculous sequence has Rogue trying to explain the situation, while the Vision keeps interrupting her by asking her to explain the situation. The Avengers just come off as really stupid this entire issue. Plus Gambit should theoretically have a bigger role in this story, since he knows Rogue better than anyone there, but all he gets to do is throw some cards to get some of the heroes’ attention.

The central theme of the story seems to be having the Scarlet Witch show her brother, and herself, that she can take care of herself. There’s nothing wrong with this other than the fact that it has been done to death in Avengers comics since the sixties. I can buy Quicksilver’s reaction to seeing his father, but at this point the Scarlet Witch has already been established as one of the most powerful Avengers. Also, any time you have a story with Wanda, you have writers trying to interpret her vague, plot convenient mutant power. While she’s basically supposed to create unlikely situations, I think it’s stretching the definition to have a pier spontaneously exploding and calling it highly improbable. If there is no chance of something ever happening at all, than she really shouldn’t be able to do it, otherwise there is nothing she can’t do. Of course Avengers’ writers eventually figured this out and Bendis shuffled her off in Avengers Disassembled.

Whoah, that was quite a tangent. Anyways, I think this issue would have worked a lot better without the big three tagging along. Captain America, Iron Man, Vision, and Thor really have nothing to do this issue, and their presence makes it even harder to understand why this fight takes so long. Focusing on the Maximoffs and Gambit definitely would’ve given this story a tighter center and allowed for more development of all the characters involved, as opposed to just hitting a note that’s been hit a dozen times before. Also, if finding Magneto was this easy, why have the X-Men waited this long? This is an unnecessary detour for the story that winds up having little effect on Onslaught. While Joseph does get some good character moments in the coming issues, the fact that he doesn’t actually do a lot raises questions as to why Onslaught’s resemblance to Magneto was even necessary to point out in the first place.

C-

Uncanny X-Men #335

Uncanny X-Men #335
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Joe Madureira

Note: See X-Men Unlimited #12 next
What Went Down: Ozymandias opens the issue walking under a sculpture of the Fantastic Four mourning the loss of Franklin. He is staring at his risen lord Apocalypse. Apocalypse knows that Onslaught is a threat to him, and this fact is reinforced by the appearance of Uatu, the Watcher. Uatu and Apocalypse apparently already know each other, and Apocalypse explains that he is here to observe the end of the Age of Wonders.

In an Avengers Quinjet, the Avengers fly over the ruins of Xavier’s mansion. Nate Grey senses that the X-Men are alive, when suddenly the plane is forced down and ripped open. The X-Men and the Avengers have a minor conflict while Jean Grey ensures that the Avengers are really who they say they are; the X-Men are paranoid after the betrayal of Xavier. Nate mistakes Jean for Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean that Nate resurrected after he came to the main Marvel Universe.

Frustrated, Nate uses his mental powers to take all the X-Men’s memories and show the Avengers what Onslaught really is. Cyclops blasts Nate to free his teammates. Nate claims that he knew Xavier was evil from the moment he came to this world, and Wolverine tries to pounce on him. The X-Men inform the Avengers that Xavier has somehow been influenced by Magneto, creating Onslaught, which causes Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch to feel guilty about the actions of their father.

On Muir Island, Moira MacTaggert is briefing Excalibur about Onslaught. Many of the former X-Men want to go to America to help, but Moira insists that they need to stay and unseal the Xavier Protocols.

Below the mansion, Bishop replays Jean’s urgent message, confirming that Xavier is indeed the X-Men traitor. Gambit walks in and Bishop sort of apologizes for accusing him of being the traitor.

In another room, the Avengers and X-Men explain that Onslaught is pure psionic energy. Jean guesses that the transformation was spurned by the shutting down of Magneto’s mind in X-Men #25. Storm brings up that all information about Onslaught at this point has been supplied by Onslaught, which really means that all the “hints” up until now should be ignored because the writers didn’t organize this story very well. X-Force shows up, and they are assigned to protect Nate Grey, since Onslaught’s research showed he had an interest in the young mutant. Part of the heroes break off to warn the Fantastic Four while Cyclops and Jean go off to Muir Island for the Xavier Protocols. Another group is tasked with searching for Magneto, since he is supposed to have some part in the creation of Onslaught. Storm says she is worried about Cable, so she goes off to meet him in his title.

Wolverine says he has a hunch about Onslaught, so he tells the Vision that he’s going off to follow up on it. Vision comments on the contradictory nature of Wolverine as he drives away. Iceman fills Warren and Betsy in on recent events. Bobby calls Psylocke out on seeming cold and detached, which of course is attributed to the Crimson Dawn. They are sent to meet Scott and Jean on Muir Island. In the sewer, Dark Beast excitedly takes Onslaught to his lab. He starts to explain to Onslaught that he did not actually create the Morlocks, he just experimented on them, but Onslaught attacks him because he already knows all this information. He asks McCoy about soldiers for his army, while inside Onslaught, Charles Xavier is shown to be floating alone in oblivion.

How It Was: Whereas the Onslaught: X-Men one-shot set up the main ideas of the story, Uncanny #355 briefly reiterates those ideas and sets up the various missions that will hopefully further the plot. The major flaw is that none of these missions actually affect the plot other than the oh so brief appearance in Excalibur to get the Xavier Protocols to build the plot device that helps the heroes fight Onslaught. Finding Magneto doesn’t affect the story, finding Cable doesn’t affect it, you can probably already guess what’s going to happen in Fantastic Four without reading it, and Wolverine’s spirit journey to find Onslaught’s origins doesn’t really impact how they fight him at all. This means that the majority of issues in “Phase 1” end up being the equivalent of filler.

Once again, these aren’t really problems with the issue, only the narrative structure of the event. As far as the issue itself… it’s dense—there’s a lot of exposition on top of an unnecessary “heroes’ misunderstanding” to generate some action. Apocalypse shows up, making you believe that he’s going to play an important role, but all he does is appear in an issue of Cable before disappearing. As usual, the Watcher is dragged out to make sure that the average Marvel reader understands how “significant” this story is. Plus, this issue was many readers’ first impression of Nate Grey, which shows him as an over-hyped, whiny teen who just irritates all the heroes.

This issue burns away a lot of the momentum that Onslaught: X-Men gave it. While it’s nice to see that all of the individual heroes have a role to play at this point, the fact that none of these threads really influence the overall plot at all really hurts this book. This issue consists of a bunch of facts we already know and some in-story advertisements for a bunch of other books to come out later. Plus Storm’s dialogue pretty much admits at the start how poorly planned out this thing was to begin with, what with none of the build up to this story really mattering. While the Bishop and Gambit scene is handled well, especially Gambit acknowledging just how shady he really is, the rest of the X-Men are already getting forced to the side in a storyline where they should be central to the events, since this involves their mentor. It’s disappointing to see so much potential that later just gets squandered.

C-

Onslaught: X-Men

Onslaught: X-Men
Writing: Scott Lobdell and Mark Waid
Art: Adam Kubert and Pascual Ferry 

What Went Down: Our prologue begins with a shocking revelation; the video of Jean from Bishop’s timeline, the one that started the whole X-Traitor storyline, is in reference to Professor X turning into Onslaught. Here we get the whole version with the missing sections.

Cutting back to earlier, the story begins with Xavier sitting in his den and throwing a picture of himself and Magneto into a fire. He laments about the failure of his dream before summoning the X-Men to the study. Jean Grey is the only one who knows that Xavier is really Onslaught, but she hasn’t had an opportunity to tell anyone. Dark Beast is still worrying about his infiltration being discovered. Jean recaps all the X-Men’s encounters with Onslaught while Xavier announces that his dream was a mistake.

Jean continues to worry as Charles talks, and she discovers the Cyttorak Gem on his desk; unknown to her, the Juggernaut has been trapped in the gem by Onslaught. Jean continues to probe the Professor’s mind, but Xavier covers her head with a “psychic muzzle.” While the X-Men rush to Jean’s side, Xavier transforms into Onslaught.

Onslaught offers the X-Men an opportunity to join him. When Cyclops brings up the similarities in his tone to Magneto’s, the villain demonstrates his psychic powers on some of the X-Men. Cyclops blasts him, but Onslaught uses his powers to freeze the X-Men in place before disappearing. Gambit frees the X-Men by charging the floor with energy, and Jean fills the team in on what she has learned. Gambit brings up how Bishop has been looking for a traitor in the X-Men, surprising him. The team splits up with one unit going after Cerebro, even though it’s still supposed to be broken, while the other team goes to the ready room.

At the Baxter Building, Franklin—the son of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, is talking to his imaginary friend Charley—who is really Onslaught, while the Fantastic Four eat breakfast. Charley gets mad at Franklin and shatters a glass. The FF think Franklin is responsible, and Mr. Fantastic asks his son to go down to the lab with him.

In the Ready Room, the X-Men discover that Xavier has been researching Franklin Richards as well as Nate Grey. Onslaught mentally controls Cannonball and attacks the rest of the team. At the Avengers Mansion, Nate Grey is trying to convince the Avengers that Xavier has turned evil. They are skeptical, but they agree to check out his claims. Onslaught taunts Bishop for failing to discover that he was the traitor before going off to Cerebro.

In the Cerebro Room, Cyclops is busy disconnecting the computer when Iceman detects Onslaught by measuring the body temperatures in the room. Onslaught turns Cyclops’ powers on Jean, Iceman, and himself. Then he reveals that he has known about the Dark Beast’s presence the entire time and has been helping to hide him from the other telepaths. Dark Beast agrees to join Onslaught; the villain has to siphon some of McCoy’s thoughts to maintain his control of Xavier for some reason.

Later, Onslaught has neutralized Jean’s powers and is attempting to steal the secret to the template of the Phoenix Force from her mind. He takes a break to tell Dark Beast to dispose of the X-Men’s bodies, and Jean takes the opportunity to run away. She escapes to a communications room where she records the message from the prologue.

During the part at the end of the message, the part where it looked like Jean died, it turns out that the flash of light was just the other X-Men coming to the rescue. All the X-Men attack together, seemingly killing Onslaught. Of course, it turns out that the body they killed was really an illusion. Onslaught prepares an energy blast to kill all the X-Men, but Bishop manages to intercept and absorb it. Onslaught and Dark Beast teleport away, leaving the X-Men to ponder what they are going to do. At a secret location, Onslaught manages to activate an army of Sentinels.

How It Was: Another year, another X-crossover. As we all know from the success of Age of Apocalypse, every good crossover needs a double-sized one-shot with no ads to start it off. And not only is this a crossover across the X-books, we’re going full-on Marvel Universe wide inter-company crossover with this one. As the first issue of the story, this is probably the most that’s going to happen plot-wise until the Onslaught: Marvel Universe one-shot that ends it. I’ll get more into why this whole crossover is a bit of a mess, but let’s look at this issue a little closer.

Well Onslaught finally shows off how powerful he is, and it’s a wonder why he didn’t attack sooner to get it over with. Flashbacks to X-Men #50 and Uncanny #322 and #333 try to make this feel like a resolution to a grander, cohesive story, but really this just starts out of nowhere. The “hints” earlier don’t really point to a particular plan, and as you’ll see later, Onslaught’s agenda is never addressed beyond wanting to destroy the world…because he’s evil. The issue does succeed in giving us the broad, general ideas: Onslaught is Xavier, he’s really powerful, he’s interested in Nate Grey and Franklin Richards because…some reason, and he’s somehow connected to Magneto. That’s not bad for a first issue, except that this is pretty much what every other writer goes off of for his next two issues without really adding all that much to the plot until the end.

This is about what you’d expect from a hero like Professor X turned evil story. Waid and Lobdell take their time going through the beats: the X-Men can’t believe it, Onslaught shows signs that he’s not totally in control, the X-Men come to terms with the fact that they might have to kill him. Nothing is exactly subtle—from the villain’s reaction to Magneto’s name to the way Gambit brings up the X-traitor plot thread that has been rehashed over the last couple of months to the X-Men’s discovery that Onslaught could kill them but chooses not to. Of course later in the story, Xavier and Magneto turn out to play absolutely no part in the resolution of the story, so you could call this a misdirect, but it feels more like improper story planning. With so many at Marvel wanting to recapture the Age of Apocalypse, but on a larger scale, this issue tries to create some structure that really hasn’t been built up to as well as it was in the previous event.

Because Onslaught spawns from Xavier’s mind, he has the power to manipulate his students’ minds, and this leads to some interesting results, like having Cannonball freak out or Cyclops turn his powers on his friends. However, Onslaught develops so many other powers including super strength, energy blasts, EMP blasts, etc. that it starts to make him feel less unique. The X-staff is going for a cosmic-level bad guy ala Dark Phoenix or Thanos, but Onslaught never feels thought out enough to resonate as much with the readers.

It’s good to see the Dark Beast finally get something to do other than complain about life with the X-Men in his head. The X-Men’s confusion is well handled, but this thread leads to one of the other problems with this crossover. In order to have just about every Marvel title “tie in” to the story, sometimes events happened in the completely wrong books. So the Dark Beast/Beast storyline that has been running for months in the X-Men titles gets resolved in X-Factor, the origin of Onslaught happens in Wolverine, and Magneto/Joseph—who has been set up as a future X-Man already in the X-Men titles—gets discovered in Avengers. Again, none of these stories ever really contribute to the overall main plot (which should be combating Onslaught) whatsoever.

Still, I can’t help but notice that most of my criticisms, while originating with this issue, have more to do with the overall structure of the story than the issue itself. I actually quite like this one. The video from Bishop’s future is a nice touch, and a lot of the action is really good. All the X-Men’s reactions feel well done, although Xavier/Onslaught tends to talk a little too much and Jean’s inner ranting about Onslaught goes on for far too long. And of course, I can’t really understand the plan in the middle of the issue to split up when they’re facing the supposedly most powerful enemy they’ve ever faced. The ending struggles a little to involve Bishop, since he really had nothing to do with the resolution of the Traitor storyline. It feels tacked on to make Bishop the hero of the issue since he also won’t do a lot in the fight against Onslaught.

While this issue feels significant to a point, it’s a shame that most of the storylines either shift to unrelated books or disappear completely from the story. Out of the dozens of issues that are going to crossover, only two or three are going to deal directly with fighting Onslaught, so he never really gets developed as a character. There’s an interesting idea here about him being a manifestation of Xavier’s repressed feelings and emotions, but it gets bogged down in connections with Magneto and plot devices that serve no purpose. The traitor thread does get resolved, but this also feels shoe horned in. This is an exciting enough issue that is a little too long for its own good; it does a good job of setting up the main ideas, but the story never really develops any themes or developments beyond these general ideas.

B