The brand new Marvel event Avengers & X-Men: Axis continues. I wasn’t too excited for this event, especially coming off of Original Sin, which really petered out at the end; and just look at that review for the first issue that Dave did.
Let’s give the second issue a chance, though. Is it good?
Avengers & X-Men: Axis #2 (Marvel Comics)
So Red Onslaught has called in two Sentinels that apparently Iron Man designed during Civil War to deal with the heroes permanently (and conveniently forgot about). So… yeah, everyone’s in trouble and Tony Stark starts moping during the middle of the fight about the whole thing being partially his fault. Hopefully, they can come up with a plan to save the day before they are all screwed.
Sir, now is not the time to start getting mopey and get caught up in your own inner narration.
Honestly, this comic was just okay. Not bad, but not particularly great either. Avengers & X-Men: Axis #2 consists primarily of one long action scene with tons upon tons of inner narration from Tony Stark as he feels super bad about screwing everything up and how things look rather hopeless. Nothing is particularly thrilling nor stands out all that well despite how dangerous the enemies are (they’re picking off the heroes one by one). The only thing that sort of stands out is that the story feels more artificial than it should for two reasons: 1. The existence of the Sentinels in general (maybe it was hinted at during Remender’s Uncanny Avengers), since if they weren’t around, the heroes would have easily defeated Red Onslaught without trouble despite how “dangerous” he was built up to be. 2. The heroes only lost here because of one hero’s bottomless stupidity and frankly, he served no other purpose to plot other than to screw things up. This whole event so far feels just so artificially dangerous and forced.
There’s honestly not much else to chew on: the characters are just kind of forgettable and don’t have much going for them, outside of typical/generic banter; the only one with personality, Iron Man, is not all that interesting here either and doesn’t make much of impression; the villains aren’t particularly memorable; the dialogue is okay, but like the characters, never really engages; the pacing is alright, the storytelling (minus plot contrivance) is alright, and the flow is alright — however, there’s just not much interesting to say about this comic at this point outside of it being artificial and almost like it’s biding time until something happens (maybe the ending, which shows some promise?).
My plan was more of finding wherever Captain Universe was and having her pull a deus ex machina out of her ass to save us, but your plan might work.
The artwork is by Andy Kubert and honestly, it could be just me, but the artwork seems to degrade over time; it starts off looking fine, smooth, and action packed; but as time goes on, it becomes sketchy, unrefined, and messy looking. This is more obvious when it comes to characters in particular — who really don’t come away looking the best here towards the end. The action is nice when it’s there and it flows well enough from panel to panel, but there’s not much else here to really look at.
Is It Good?
Avengers & X-Men: Axis #2 was a chore to read and a pain to write about. It’s not that it’s a bad or terrible book; it’s just that for an event comic, it feels so lackluster and underwhelming. It feels like it should be kept and focus on solely in the pages of Uncanny Avengers and a maybe a tie-in or two, especially when it feels so tied to that book. I can’t really recommend this considering my experience with it, unless it does a major turnaround in the next issue.
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