Uncanny Avengers vol 5 – “Axis Prelude”
Uncanny Avengers officially ends with issue #25, though what this actually means is that it gets replaced first by Axis, and then by whatever relaunched version comes after Axis.
Since volume 4 of Uncanny Avengers ran through to issue #22, this presents the collections department with something of a problem. Hence the unlikely-looking volume 5, “Axis Prelude”, which collects the final three issues of Uncanny Avengers, the two tie-in issues of Magneto (which will also be included in Magneto vol 2), and the entirely unrelated comedy issue Uncanny Avengers Annual #1.
Did we do the Annual when it came out? I forget. As I recall, it’s not very good. It’s a Mojo story which thinks it’s being very clever and met by having a completely arbitrary non-plot, but continually lamp shading that fact. It’s a joke that quickly wears thin.
That aside, what we have here is a transition between larger stories. Issue #23 is largely aftermath from the previous arc, with the characters adjusting to their new status quo. This basically means Alex being horribly scarred, he and Janet remembering the daughter they had in the deleted future timeline (who is presumably still out there somewhere in Kang’s custody), and Rogue having Wonder Man stuck in her head. All of which is basically fine. I’m not particularly thrilled about going back to a variant of Rogue’s old status quo – once you’ve already done the story about her maturing and gaining control, you can’t really re-tread that ground with this version of the character. If you want to do that story again, what you really need is a reboot. But once the decision has been taken to go this route, the book does it as well as can be expected.
After that, it’s a four-issue crossover with Magneto, billed as a direct lead-in to Axis. And for once that billing is perfectly fair; the end of issue #25 is indeed a major plot point leading into the big crossover.
The Avengers issues have the Red Skull kidnapping Rogue, Wanda and Alex to Genosha, where he’s set up a mutant concentration camp. This doesn’t go as well as he might have expected, because he hasn’t allowed for Rogue having Wonder Man’s powers. Meanwhile, over in his own title, Magneto makes his own attempt to kill the Skull, and gets captured. That leads to the Avengers rescuing him so that he can join the big confrontation with the baddie in issue #25.
If a crossover between Uncanny Avengers and Magneto sounds like a horrendous style clash… well, yup, it pretty much is. Uncanny Avengers is, at heart, a superhero team book of the 1970s and 80s, given a 21st century polish by the contemporary art. Magneto pitches itself as a more brittle character piece, a little bit removed from the superhero house style. Purely in plot terms, a crossover seems like it ought to make sense; Magneto is Wanda’s father, and the Red Skull fits with Magneto’s background, what with him being a Nazi war criminal. But the tone of both books winds up muddled.
Uncanny Avengers is not a book that’s particularly interested in the psychology of its villains. For the most part, it’s perfectly content to go with the idea that the Red Skull does evil things because he’s evil. He’s not evil for any particular reason, or at least, the reasons why he is evil are not of interest to the series. He’s a force and a threat for other characters to respond to, and that’s basically all.
Magneto isn’t that bothered about the inner life of Nazis either, but it certainly is concerned with the inner life of Magneto and the way he’s been damaged by his past. It acknowledges that it’s dealing with a character who has come to take on many of the features of the people he hates (and where that hate drives him as a character). It doesn’t treat his single-minded obsessiveness as necessarily making him a villain, but it does see it as something that makes him unnervingly like a villain, even today. And it sees Magneto’s own lack of interest in the psychology of his opponents as part of the problem with him.
So bringing these two titles together to do a Red Skull story poses a problem, and for the most part it’s Magneto that comes off worst. It’s not a series that really wants to be doing stories with major Marvel Universe figures to start with, and it would rather prefer its Nazis to take the form of realistic figures, not demented cartoons in skull masks.
In fact, Uncanny Avengers is right in its approach to the Red Skull. He’s an outrageously malevolent icon of evil. He doesn’t function well as a rounded character, and his creators never really intended him to. After all, he’s a Nazi villain from the heyday of propaganda. If he had a moustache he’d be twirling it constantly. This doesn’t make him a bad character; but it does make him a character who isn’t at home in Magneto. When you stick him in a setting of huts and tortured prisoners, you’re evoking the grotesquerie of concentration camps. But the Red Skull is a different sort of camp entirely. They don’t go well together.
Still, Uncanny Avengers does find some use for Magneto as a guest star. There are some good ideas in here about his awkward pseudo-relationship with his daughter Wanda – as she points out, Magneto has occasionally tried to be a better person for Xavier, or the X-Men, but never for her. She’s just not that important to him. More broadly, Remender uses Magneto to play into the book’s usual theme of the need for unity. Magneto is locked firmly in the cycle of hate, or at least that’s how the Avengers see it. From his standpoint, killing the baddies is a necessary exercise in clearing away the obstacles to a future peace. But given the amount of hate the character has, there’s obviously a lot of rationalisation in there. Magneto is all too willing to come up with reasons not to rise above things.
This builds to a rather wonky finale, in which Magneto actually does kill the Red Skull, only to find that this releases the Skull as the new Onslaught. It’s a nice enough twist in its way, not least because it actually delivers on the “Axis prelude” billing in a way I never really expected the story to do. Okay, it’s Onslaught, and much like the sixties, if you fondly remember Onslaught, you weren’t there. The original story is a catastrophe from start to finish – an extended tease for a character whose details hadn’t actually been worked out, belatedly swerving into an incoherently plotted story that was simply an excuse to set up the Heroes Reborn line (which had nothing to do with the X-Men). But the flip side is that it’s almost inevitable that the second attempt will do it better. The bar has been set so low that they had to excavate.
Does it work beyond the surprise factor? The way it’s structured, the idea certainly seems to be that Magneto has transgressed by deliberately killing a bad guy, and is getting his comeuppance for that. This is slightly tricky territory, since the “heroes don’t kill” trope has the downside of not actually making any sense. An absolute prohibition on lethal force doesn’t match up with any ethical code people apply in the real world, and it doesn’t even make sense within the logic of the Marvel Universe. (Captain America was desperate to enlist in the US military – how can he possibly be a non-lethal absolutist?) You could make a case that Magneto kills the Skull unnecessarily, but given the scale of the threat he poses and the absence of any clear means of containing him, it wouldn’t be a very good one.
Ultimately, the “heroes don’t kill” thing isn’t an ethical principle so much as a genre convention tied to the idea that superheroes are simply better – just as they can do impossible things, they can (and therefore should) hold themselves to impossible ethical standards. And this is fine, I guess, if you use it as a vehicle to do stories about people crossing ethical lines, rather than seriously trying to push it as a moral in its own right. It works, in other words, if you get everyone to buy it as a sort of metaphor for real-world compromise that allows superheroes to cross a moral line without straying too far beyond PG territory.
But this sort of artificial ethics sits a little uneasily next to the concentration camp stuff, for my money. This may well be the idea – issue #23 goes out of its way to remind us that Wolverine is a killer and that he’d be willing to kill the Skull too, so Remender doesn’t seem to think that Magneto’s behaviour is somehow entirely beyond the pale. At any rate, the message ends up feeling more than a little confused. There’s a symbolic logic to what’s going on here, but it’s not one that feels quite consistent even within the series.
Frankly, there’s another point hanging over these issues as far as I’m concerned, which is that I can’t honestly claim to be remotely excited about Axis. Yes, as I’ve acknowledged, Onslaught II can hardly be worse than Onslaught I. But neither the Skull nor Onslaught are inherently interesting threats – Onslaught is actively the opposite of interesting – and I’m kind of dreading months of stories with variations on the same “here’s a character with a central trait reversed” theme. I’m not convinced that’s anywhere near a strong enough idea to carry the volume of material that’s apparently being asked of it. We’ll see, though.
There are plenty of good moments in these issues – they certainly aren’t bad, and in plot terms they do what they were designed to do. But there’s a mismatch of elements in here that stops things from quite working smoothly.
@Omar – Oh, thank God! A well-reasoned and coherent opposing opinion from someone who’s actually familiar with the period. Where were you, man?
And I agree with pretty much everything you said. My point of contention is that, because there doesn’t seem to be any universally agreed upon science as to what makes a villain an arch-villain (save for the bare bones definition of the term as the primary villain) the term tends to get applied to whomever happens to be the hero’s most popular villain and, rightly or wrongly, the Green Goblin tends to edge out Doc Ock when the question of “Who is Spidey’s greatest villain?” gets thrown out to the masses.
Venom was often referred to as Spidey’s arch-nemesis at the height of his popularity, and fair enough, I suppose. Even though I think the character is dreadful with one of the weakest motivations for hating Spider-Man I’ve ever read.
At any rate, I defer to the most widely held opinion which is that Gobby is numero uno, regardless what I think of him. In spite of the fact that Stan wrote him into a corner and tried to get clear of him in favor of the Kingpin, he was the most oft requested villain of Stan’s tenure (according to both Stan and John). The Kingpin, come to think of it, would have been the perfect villain for Stan’s drug story. But he went with the Goblin because he knew it was going to be a high profile story.
Perception is reality. Even though he presented some creative problems, and even though there are candidates who are arguably better suited to the position of Spidey’s top opponent, the most widely held perception is that it’s Osborne.
Perception is reality. Even though he presented some creative problems, and even though there are candidates who are arguably better suited to the position of Spidey’s top opponent, the most widely held perception is that it’s Osborne.
I don’t think anyone would argue that Osborn didn’t ascend to that position, particularly after his resurrection. I think there’s room to disagree about whether that status was entirely the case prior to ASM #121 or not.
I have my position and my reasoning, though what you Lee and Romita Sr. have to say about contemporary reader requests is significant as well. I think it has to do with where you put the most emphasis: reader perception, or published material and creative focus. I tend to go with creative emphasis, but the case for readerly response is pretty strong too; int he long run, as with Osborn, the reader response shifts creative priorities just as the creative work provokes reader reactions. In the long view, it’s a dialectical process.
I also think a hero can have more than one type of archfoe: most characters, at any given point in their publication history, have a villain who’s a deep, scary personal threat al la Osborn or Venom and another villain who’s a big, scary, how-do-I-stop-their-master-plan-this-time type a la Doc Ock at his height or the Kingpin under Lee’s pen who consistently outguns the hero and gets the multi-part arcs.
Osborn, post-resurrection, got to be both, when during the 1960s he went from a shadowy crimelord under Ditko to a raving maniac whose only plan was “kill the Spider” under Lee and Romita. But it really isn’t until his resurrection that he’s consistently portrayed as someone who’s a good match for Spidey in a straight-ahead fight, and that’s to some extent because post-resurrection Osborn absorbed some of the features of the Roger Stern/Tom DeFalco take on his successor, the Hobgoblin.
Also, now I wonder which character or characters readers and creators would have considered Daredevil’s archfoe prior to Frank Miller drafting the Kingpin and (with Roger McKenzie) building up Bullseye. The Owl, maybe, who was billed as an often requested villain in the 1960s and early 1970s? The Death-Stalker, who was a dominant figure in the book from the mid-70s on?
Superheroes tend to have “archfoes” by era, come to think of it; for one thing, Magneto can hardly have been the X-Men’s archfoe during parts of the late 80s and the post-Morrison era, since both readers and creators gravitated towards treating him more as a deeply morally troubled, flawed ally or even member of the team.
I’m not sure what the point of this debate is, and it’s disappointing to see it get a bit personal. Nevertheless:
Doctor Octopus is important to the mythos because he’s basically an evil version of Spider-Man. Stretchy waldoes instead of webs, but both characters work the same way. Both are also keen-minded scientists etc.
Green Goblin is important to the mythos because he’s the polar opposite of Spider-Man. Rich, powerful, loved, a grown-up, an authority figure. Goblin is a force for chaos. Both have a secret identity, and both know each other’s. There’s a beautiful scene somewhere when Osborn’s first getting his memories back (the first time round), hazy at first. It’s just Spider-Man’s hand holding the Goblin mask, and Goblin’s hand holding Spider-Man’s mask. That says it all. Goblin is also important because he was tied so closely to Parker’s personal life.
Kingpin is not so important to the mythos because he’s just a crimelord. He doesn’t really say anything about Spider-Man except as the enemy of law personified. Note that Kingpin actually worked better as Daredevil’s enemy.
Venom isn’t very important because he’s basically just What If Spider-Man was a badass monster?
I don’t know why just one character has to be the single archfoe.
@Si: I think you nailed the Dr Octopus relationship–after all, if there’s one point the Superior Spider-Man run drove home over and over again, Otto thinks he’s basically Peter but better (or, very occasionally in humble moments, Peter but worse).
The one thing I might add to the Osborne relationship is that Norman also serves as a surrogate father figure–in his eyes, if not in Peter’s. Mostly, this serves to reinforce the personal life ties like you said, because various Spider-Man stories (especially the cartoons and movies) have framed it as Norman preferring Peter to Harry.
I think there’s too much reliance on Stan picking the Green Goblin as the villain for his anti-drug PSA issue. The dude was on drugs. And he had a son who was Peter’s friend that could be on drugs as entree into an anti-drug story. That’s why he was picked.
I don’t recall Norman Osborne being on recreational drugs. I also don’t recall any references to Harry having used recreational drugs until that no-code story.
But I don’t have the issues handy. By all means correct me if wrong, but if the Code wouldn’t approve Stan’s government endorsed storyline, then I don’t see how any previous references to characters taking recreational drugs would have made it through with a stamp of approval.
People seem to forget that Doc Ock is basically portrayed as a fool in a lot of ’60s stories. The Sinister Six, who should’ve overpowered Spidey, get taken down in a single story. Doc Ock tries to marry Aunt May. He’s a dorky mad scientist. The Goblin is just freaking evil.
Which is kind of why I hate the character, but he was easily portrayed as the greater threat, for many reasons.
The Goblin is a fool in a lot of stories too, like the one where he tries to use Spider-Man to defeat a ganglord so he can step in and take over the guy’s gang…but Spider-Man catches the whole gang instead, and the Goblin is left fuming at his radio after hearing the news. Or consider his first appearance, where he’s working with the likes of the Enforcers and running from the Hulk. In the Silver Age, few villains got away without being played as goofballs here and there, not least because they always had to lose in the end.
And the whole “entire rogues gallery beaten in a single Annual” was likewise par for the course; the Avengers did it in their first Annual, and Daredevil did it in his first Annual. (Electro, being in both ASM and DD Annual #1, must be the goofiest of all villains by this standard!) The Fantastic Four’s wedding had almost every baddie in the Marvel Universe turn up, but that was all dealt with in a single issue.
Regarding the Red Skull and the implications of a story which basically equates a Holocaust survivor with a literal Nazi: this is the kind of thing you end up with when you spend decades using Nazis as a cheap way to signal capital-E Evil in funnybooks. The species of Nazis we’re used to seeing in genre comics and fiction is a kind of cheap camp Nazi, obviously, having as much in common with kitsch presentations of zombies and pirates as it does with the actual historical Third Reich. But the fact that a character like the Red Skull is meant to get his instantly-identifiable evil cred from trading on references to fascism (we know he’s bad because he dresses like Hitler!) is hard to separate from the actual historical and political content of those references (it spoils the fun if, in the midst of some loopy Cap adventure, we stop to think what will happen to Earth-616’s Jewish population should the Red Skull get hold of the Cosmic Cube).
The Red Skull and his fellow cartoon Nazis are thus generally presented as generically malevolent, as if fascism were simply a matter of being really bad, rather than a social, political and historical phenomenon tightly intertwined with racism, mass-murder and genocide. The Red Skull has generally been presented not as a representative of a very specific political movement, but as if he were Dr. Doom’s racist, dim-witted uncle. And this both undersells and gives too much credit to actual, historical fascism.
This sort of thing is bad enough in your typical Captain America comic, where the Red Skull is, let’s face it, a generic baddie with a nebulous agenda of Doing Evil Things. But Rick Remender has upped the ante quite a bit here with his own version of the character, who stalks around talking about purity and building concentration camps (for mutants, though! it’s only the pretend genocides we’re evoking today!). In trading on the history of the Holocaust to build up the villain a comic crossover – in a comic whose punchline sees a Holocaust survivor scolded for killing a Nazi – Remender manages to outdo himself in a career with more than a few audacious “look at me, I’m an idiot” moments already.
recreational drugs? really? that literal? come on.
yes, Remender is over and over again showing that these sorts of themes aren’t something he’s interested in dealing with. or if he is, he’s probably the wrong person to be dealing with them from an editorial standpoint. if he’s not interested in them, why on earth does he keep writing them?
errant, HEW requested Stan write a story tackling drug abuse. You make it sound as though Norman was already doing this (“the dude was on drugs”). Are you really saying that a guy medicating on prescribed anti-psychotics is an example of drug abuse? That Norman was doing this to get high?
Again it’s been years since I read the story and I may be misremembering details, but I simply don’t recall ever being depicted as a portrait of a drug abuser prior to, or even during that storyline. Nor do I recall anything in Stan’s writing prior to issue #96 that even alludes to the idea that either Norman or Harry abused drugs.
I’m wrong, kindly point to what issue or scene you’re thinking of.
Whoops. The second paragraph should read “don’t recall Norman…”
Grrr… last line should start “If I’m wrong.. ” Sorry, typing this on my android and I don’t seem to have a knack for it.
Actually, I’m on drugs.
You guys are wrong: http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2013/01/04/comic-book-legends-revealed-400-part-1/
“Of course it matters how you said it.”
Not really, as long as the main point gets across. But I forgot, you seem to be obsessed with Debbie’s Rules of Debates?
“You went from “I don’t think” to “I’m certain” in the span of a paragraph. And now you’re asserting it depends on how an individual sees it.”
Actually, that’s not what I did. I said 1) “I don’t think he was Spider-man’s arch-nemesis until his return” (my personal opinion) + 2) “but he certainly wasn’t before his “death”” (enough evidence to support my theory)…maybe the problem isn’t what I said or how I said it, but a simple lack of reading comprehension on your part?
As for my whole “how you see it”, that was me stating that sometimes, people may have a difference of opinion with regards to certain things, and that we should at least respect those opinions. But respect for others opinions doesn’t seem to be something you share, it’s basically “I am correct, I am always correct, about EVERYTHING, and don’t argue with me!”
Nice link, Wong. Good thing they had the Goblin ditch the broom for the wing glider.
“and was surprised when he “learned” from others”
I wonder who those “others” were…
“But respect for others opinions doesn’t seem to be something you share, it’s basically “I am correct, I am always correct, about EVERYTHING, and don’t argue with me!”
Yes, you’re very astute. I can see how you gleaned this of my personality after I expressed my delight in seeing Omar enter the argument even though he disagreed with me.
Oh, and I don’t need to respect your opinion. I’m only required to respect your RIGHT to hold and to express a different opinion, which I do. I’m not lobbying to censor you.
But your opinion itself is worthless to me. If you weren’t alive in the ’60s and ’70’s, then if you’re going to refer to that era of Spider-Man comics, you should at least be reasonably informed about the period. Omar knows his shit. You do not. I therefore respect his opinion but not yours.
I’ll give you this though, your posts are almost like treasure troves. Just when I think I’ve got them all cleaned out, I realize I missed a gem. Like this one…
“Nice link, Wong. Good thing they had the Goblin ditch the broom for the wing glider.
“and was surprised when he “learned” from others”
I wonder who those “others” were…”
Um, well for starters, how about the guy who wrote the article YOU linked to and quoted on the previous page in an attempt to support YOUR argument?
Wandered over to post a couple of things about UA and….alright this comment thread got went a little askew.
Anyways
A) What happened to the awesome Rick Remender who did that amazing X-Force comic? Has he been brain swapped with the Red Skull (Jeph Loeb)?
B) Saw a good comment on another message board that explained Rogue’s revulsion to Magneto’s actions as being more about his destruction of Xavier’s brain more than anything else. This seems like a good angle if it had been spelled out in the comic.
C) Also kind of wish there were more hints dropped about Red Skull’s post-morgen power up powers; if any of the characters had worked it out then it would have given them a valid reason to try and stop Magneto for killing RS and not just for the bizarre ethic roller coaster rides they were going through.
Finally because I love beating a dead horse, Wanda’s actions lead to the death of a fair few innocent mutants so I don’t know how anyone would accept moral arguments from her :-p
One of the main themes for UA has been that “heroes killing never goes anywhere good”. Wolverine’s X-force squad killing the Apocalypse child. Thor powering up his axe to (unsuccessfully) slay Apocalypse. Rogue killing off Wanda leading to 5 years in an alternate timeline.
I’ve taken it to be that they’re trying to re-cork the bottle when it comes to heroes solving their issues with the taking of lives.
Rogue was either trying to show she learned something from the whole offing Wanda affair, or it was pacifist Simon speaking through Rogue.
(Granted I read the story once during a week of heavy overtime. I’m reserving the right to change my stance on re-reading)
I’d also like to add that the 3 (3 1/2? 4?) UA characters present were all traumatically affected by the previous storyline. Good chance they aren’t quite over it yet and overshooting the moral high ground. Since 3 acts of heroes killing (well, 2 and 1 attempt, in the case of Thor) lead to those scars.
“Um, well for starters, how about the guy who wrote the article YOU linked to and quoted on the previous page in an attempt to support YOUR argument?”
That was from a different article that SOMEONE ELSE linked to, you twit. Seriously, not only are you a dismissive, arrogant, condescending snob, you’re also one with a substandard level of reading comprehension.
“But your opinion itself is worthless to me. If you weren’t alive in the ’60s and ’70′s, then if you’re going to refer to that era of Spider-Man comics, you should at least be reasonably informed about the period. Omar knows his shit. You do not. I therefore respect his opinion but not yours.”
Actually, it seems I know more about that era than you do, which I find hilarious, given how much dismiss others opinions as shit. And given the fact that you can’t even understand what people are saying, nor even figure out what linked articles people are referring to, you really are in no position to judge anybodies statements or opinions, nor be so dismissive of them.
Of course, you don’t have to be a rude hamster prick, but I guess you can’t control that.
@halapeno
“Thrill to the fifty-percent villainy of Two-Face! The Batman’s most fearsome (only?) half-nemesis!”
OMG, the Adam West Batman show never used Two Face, but I can practically hear William Dozier’s voice saying those exact words.
@wwk5d – You saw fit to bring an article to my attention, right? You quoted a big chunk of text from it. That was you, right? It’s your name on the post. So what was with the “I wonder who those others were..” in regards to the urban myth? That was clearly intended for me as I had mentioned it earlier not aware that it was false. But apparently neither did the guy who wrote that article as he mentions it as well.
“Actually, it seems I know more about that era than you do”
And yet where in all the words you’ve contributed to this thread so far have you actually demonstrated this? Is there some hidden text between between the words “hamster” and “prick” that I need special novelty glasses to read?
“given how much you dismiss others opinions as shit”
Ah, okay. You quote me saying that I respect Omar’s opinion but not yours and now I’m a pathological opinion-dismisser?
*thinks it through*
Well, I guess I was dismissive of Neil’s opinion as well. This is partly because I still remember him as that reactionary young fellow he had been on another forum many years ago and I guess I still need to shake that image of him out of my head. However, he’s a very smart guy and he does often make points that have me nodding in agreement. I briefly fell back into circa 2001 there. My bad. So, I now humbly apologize to Neil if I offended him. I will try to be better in the future and to acknowledge he’s become a bright, insightful adult who doesn’t deserve to take any shit from me.
Ahhh… well, that was cathartic.
Where was I? Oh yes, wwk5d, your opinions are still worthless to me.
@halapeno
Again, your lack of basic reading comprehension continues to astound me. Since you can’t seem to grasp basic discussions, I was commenting to an article Wrong had posted, not me. But then again, it must be hard up there on that high horse of yours.
“And yet where in all the words you’ve contributed to this thread so far have you actually demonstrated this?”
Given your lack in basic reading comprehension, I’d say that’s enough evidence, since God only knows what else your asinine opinions could be based on.
“Is there some hidden text between between the words “hamster” and “prick” that I need special novelty glasses to read?”
A middle finger or two, but since you can’t seem to grasp basics, oh well.
“Oh yes, wwk5d, your opinions are still worthless to me.”
And yet, you keep commenting, so therefore, there must be some worth to them.
Sigh. I understood that you were commenting on the page Wrong linked to. But the line “I wonder who those “others” were..” (the others who mistakenly perpetuated the falsehood that Ditko quit over GG’s identity) was written by you.
Meaning what? You’re just genuinely wondering?
Sorry, according to halapeno’s Ridiculous Rules of Internet Debate & Discussion Boards, that’s not allowed in the rules?
” Well, I guess I was dismissive of Neil’s opinion as well. This is partly because I still remember him as that reactionary young fellow he had been on another forum many years ago and I guess I still need to shake that image of him out of my head. However, he’s a very smart guy and he does often make points that have me nodding in agreement. I briefly fell back into circa 2001 there. My bad. So, I now humbly apologize to Neil if I offended him. I will try to be better in the future and to acknowledge he’s become a bright, insightful adult who doesn’t deserve to take any shit from me. ”
….thank you. I’ll admit that I overstated my case regarding the Goblin, and I hope we can get back to actually discussing Uncanny Avengers. (And I’ll be the first to admit that I was a pretty obnoxious 16-year-old, especially online. Then again, who wasn’t?)
I’m only asking you what you meant by it. It’s a straightforward question.
Nothing to do with the fact that I made mention of the myth previously, unaware that it was a myth?
Not an intended jab that you’re now backing away from having realized that the columnist you quoted earlier also brought it up under the assumption it was true?
No? You just felt like typing “I wonder who those “others” were…” for no apparent reason whatsoever?
Oh, hi Neil!
Yes, again I’m sorry and I’ll let you get back to discussing Uncanny Avengers. This ought to give wwk5d some time to come up with more clever insults by combining rodents with genitalia.
PS I do miss those days. It was a fun board.
Hey, glad you find them clever. They are apt is describing you.
And since you are still apparently (like a troll that needs feeding) need an explanation, the “others” that I am referring to are from this passage:
“Also note that when John Romita took over Amazing Spider-Man, he thought that it was obvious that Ditko wanted Osborn to be the Goblin and was surprised when he “learned” from OTHERS that Ditko did NOT want him to be the Goblin. I believe this is because the folks who told Romita otherwise (and it has been Romita’s repeating of what was told him that has formed the main basis of the “Ditko left because he was mad about Green Goblin” legend) were incorrect.”
So no, I wasn’t just throwing it our randomly, I was genuinely curious as to who these people were who gave Romita the wrong information.
Try to keep up. At this point, I’ll have to find someone close by to you come and over and try and explain it all with sock puppets. But that might still be above your basic comprehension.
“It was a fun board.”
It usually is. Until you show up.
“So no, I wasn’t just throwing it our randomly, I was genuinely curious as to who these people were who gave Romita the wrong information.”
Okay, great! Thanks for explaining!
“Try to keep up.”
I will.
“At this point, I’ll have to find someone close by to you come and over and try and explain it all with sock puppets. But that might still be above your basic comprehension.”
I’m not sure I understood that.
“I’m not sure I understood that.”
Ha ha! Except, not really.
Guys, guys, guys …
… can’t we all just get along?
The classic comic book cliche of fighting because *reasons* before teaming up to sock Doctor Doom in the jaw.
So this these guys are going to forming the HtA Defenders in a few issues time? Haha.
This is the last place I expected a crossover with the whole “telepathic hate plague” thing from AXIS, but I suppose this is the right review for it.
Getting back to the comic review, Remender’s work on this title has been a very strange case of seeing a writer suddenly not pulling off one of his old tricks. Say what you will about Uncanny X-Force, but it managed to balance campy absurdity and reflections on the costs of doing violence fo a living in ways that worked.
Part of the problem is that a book jamming together the X-Men and the Avengers and riffing on mashup villains already teeters way closer to the “absurd” side, especially when it’s all played as a strangely reverent take on the 1970s/1980s era of both books. And the annual is a great example of just plain landing on that side.
The book’s attempts to pivot from crazy colorful super-action into some sort of gritty moralism have come across as jarring. Intiially, with Rogue rather suddenly killing the Grim Reaper back in #5, that seemed deliberate; that felt like a left-field development meant to set something up or push Rogue’s suddenly aggressive posturing over into something the other characters would need to respond to.
As the Kang Twins arc dragged on, though, I got the feeling Remender got a bit too eager to mix in some of his own recent highlights — the Dark Angel Saga — with some of Marvel’s — not just the high Bronze Age of the X-Vengers, but also half of Earth X‘s greatest-hits tour of Marvel’s possible futures and What If? concepts. The Rogue storyline pays off there, but there’s so much narrative bloat and so much winking at the audience and so much referential nodding to the continuity-geeks that the character moments stop landing.
And now we’re diving right into a crossover that will pile on even more characters (including some worrying last-minute substitutes, like the Green Goblin being nixed by editorial and quickly replaced with the Hobgoblin *after* the promo art had gone out.)
It’s a book that desperately needs an issue or two between arcs that’s neither a madcap comedy nor a Part Zero disguised as a breather issue. A lot of the tonal and thematic incoherence is coming from Remender deciding he’s got to write this as the permanent crossover it’s been marketed as, so the theme about heroes killing keeps being undermined because big crossover action and camp brutalism both require a merry-go-round of shock deaths and reset buttons. (It really says something that every single death we’ve seen has been effectively undone almost immediately; even the downbeat finale of UXF is undone here.
So the whole “heroes killing doesn’t work out” thing really does stop being about morality and just become a metafictional point about Comic Book Death in general. But then you also notice that the really horrible baddies always get away to commit gruesome murders somewhere else next month, too, and pretty quickly you can’t even justify there being superheroes at all since they can’t kill the baddies off *or* keep them under wraps.
And then there’s Remender’s problems writing the civil rigths allegory. the bit about mutants not having a “real culture” because all they share is a genetic/physical quirk seems great until you think about, say, deaf culture or even (depending on how you look at it) gay/QUILTBAG culture, where people of very different ethnocultural backgrounds still share a particular experience of being “other” in mainstream culture and therefore construct a culture of their own.
The whole thing’s been a bit of a mess, really, a book that can’t quite decide what it’s really for, exactly, but wants you to know it’s definitely against all this killing and hatred in the world. Why can’t people just be nicer?
Grrrrrrrrr! Comic books!
Grrrrrrrrr! Comic books!
This whole “you fucking nerds, arguing about silly comics” bit really doesn’t work very well when you frequently post your own arguments about how everyone but you is wrong about Doc Ock or Jean Grey or whatever in the comments section of a superhero comic book review.
I mean, sure, it’s probably not entirely your fault that you’re a pointless little pusdrop who should fuck off back to whatever syphilitic chancre you dribbled out of, but do try to manage some tiny glimmer of self-awareness.
I just wanna say that I hate all of you comics nerds. You people make me sick. Anyone who reads comics is just awful.
Paul and Al are the exceptions obviously. They’re part of the good ones.
Has Bleeding Cool been closed for the past few days? If not, go back from whence you came foolish fanboys!
I liked the original Matt’s comment after mine, gives me some things to think about when I reread UA. Thanks Matt 🙂
Hey, thanks mate. I will say I got the most mileage out of this story taking it a sequel (both literal and thematic) to Uncanny X-Force.
For best mileage of reading Uncanny X-Force, I’ve found it best to read Jason Aaron’s Wolverine run (and schism, if you want) at the right moments as companion books, since it introduces Deathlok and gives Logan’s main catalyst for his changing his mind after killing the mongrels, only for it to be too late in the day. To me, UA (and axis) feels like a story that’s been building for years in comics I’ve been reading.
(I know Logan won’t feature in Axis, but the heroes killing thing really stems from him, I think.)
I tend to agree with the original Matt about what UA is out to do; I just disagree about how successful the execution has been. And I get the sense that the “Death of Wolverine” event won’t help Remender’s long-term plans.
UA has been working for me, but it’s also been “my” series, in the sense that it’s what I’ve been paying the most attention to and re-read the most.
Even the dubious “M-word speech” worked for me, in terms of it read to me like an interview with Morgan Freeman. I’ll quote it here;
Freeman, known for his roles in The Shawshank Redemption, Unforgiven, and Million Dollar Baby, made his remarks in a December 2005 interview with Mike Wallace of CBS’ 60 Minutes. In the profile of Freeman, Wallace remarked that the actor/director’s “political views are at times surprising,” and then asked Freeman, “Black History Month, you find?”
Freeman said, “Ridiculous.”
When Wallace asked, “Why?” Freeman said, “You’re going to relegate my history to a month?” The exchange continued:
Wallace: “Oh, come on.”
Freeman: What do you do with yours? Which month is white history month? No, Come on, tell me.”
Wallace: “Well, I’m Jewish.”
Freeman: “Okay. Which month is Jewish history month?”
Wallace: “There isn’t one.”
Freeman: “ Oh. Oh, why not? Do you want one?”
Wallace: “No. No.”
Freeman: “I don’t either. I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.”
Wallace: “How are we going to get rid of racism and ….”
Freeman: “Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You want to say, `Well, I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.’ You know what I’m saying?”
/quote
Whether you agree with the sentiment or not, or you don’t think it read that way, in regards to both the politics of that speech, and the heroes killing is bad theme, it’s read correctly and worked for me. And has easily been my favourite series since it began. (Okay, Thor may have taken over a few times, but I’m not sold on the current direction. I’m giving it a go, though. It’s got an arc to convince me to stick around, but I digress…)
Obviously your mileage may vary.
I’m glad to see your comment, Matt. I agree completely. I don’t agree with Havok’s speech, but I don’t in any way think it’s meant to be something you agree with. Havok gives that speech right at the beginning of this project, and most of the X-men-affiliated characters totally disagree with him.
I tend to see a lot of connection between the various disparate ideologies and attitudes in this book as being very close to what I see in queer circles (at least the ones I am a part of). Rogue is obviously in the most radical position, and Wanda’s clearly coming from an assimilationist perspective, and also seems to have issues with internalized prejudice. Havok’s speech sounds a lot like the rhetoric of a lot of so-called “new black” celebrities (Pharrell Williams, Raven Symone, Morgan Freeman).
Even attitudes toward the Avengers (and toward unity)- at various points, the series brings to light that the Avengers have never been majorly concerned with protecting mutants, and that they have never particularly trusted or supported the X-men. By the same token, the point is also made that there’s no point in rejecting their help when it’s potentially valuable (as Rogue points out to Magneto in the most recent issue).
I’m not saying I’m necessarily 100% right, but I read this as being a very nuanced approach to writing mutant/human relations.
And I definitely think it’s important to read this book as a continuation of UXF as well. The discussion of killing and whether or not it’s right or acceptable to do is definitely more than a token ethical dilemma, since it was at the heart of that entire series and it’s important to this one too.
Also, another thing I really appreciate about this book- Remender’s chosen to place Thor as the most radical ally among the Avengers, and that really works in a surprising way. I think Rememder’s Thor works perfectly alongside Aaron’s too.
Anyway. I like this book a lot.
Whoa, what a great comment thread. Lots of interesting viewpoints.
First of all: Shit, I love me some Omar Karindu. Why doesn’t that guy have his own blog? Always a treat to encounter his consistently well-informed and persuasive comments. Also nice to see he can deliver a verbal smackdown if necessary.
Re: the Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus being Spider-Man’s true archenemy, I think there’s a case to be made for both, especially post Superior Spider-Man (boy, do I miss that book btw). Mind, I started reading Spider-Man during the Michelinie/McFarlane/Larsen era, an era when neither villain was very prominent in the various Spider-titles and Venom was always presented as the Big Bad. Even as a kid though, I could see that Venom was just, to paraphrase Si, a ‘badass space monster’, and I never thought their semi-annual grudge matches were all that interesting, because his motivation was paper-thin and because Marvel started pivoting Venom to the (misguided) role of anti-hero fairly quickly. Norman Osborn, despite being dead at the time, felt like a much more formidable, personal threat: after all, he was the villain who, by killing Spider-Man’s lover (as the occasional flashback would remind us new readers), had essentially scored a victory over Spider-Man that could never be undone, and his legacy of malevolent insanity was so strong it corrupted and eventually destroyed Spider-Man’s best friend (Spectacular Spider-Man under DeMatteis was for a long stretch there the better Spider-Man book by far). Doc Ock, meanwhile, was at his nadir: not only was Otto not used very often in the late Eighties/Nineties, he wasn’t very impressive when he was. Personally, I remember fondly Erik Larsen’s attempt to re-establish Doc Ock as a formidable threat in the adjective-less Spider-Man book, with the white crime-lord suit and the Adamantium arms he used to beat up the Hulk (and the subsequent beef Larsen got into with Peter David, who apparently quickly had Hulk return the favor in his own book), but in the end that attempt to revitalize the character got little traction, and ironically the most memorable Doc Ock storyline from that era was in fact meant to be his swansong: his discovery of Spider-Man’s secret identity, his reformation and his subsequent death at the hands of Kaine. It took ten years and a lot of hard work (and a lot of good writing) on the part of Dan Slott to reestablish Doctor Octopus as a viable contender for the status of Spider-Man’s archenemy.
However, a true archenemy is, I think, as a character inherently either a dark reflection of the hero, the hero’s polar opposite or a combination thereof. Furthermore, the true archenemy gets under the hero’s skin, knows the hero in ways other villains don’t, making their confrontations personal and dangerous in a way that other villains, how powerful they might otherwise be, could never match. Several other commenters have asked the perfectly valid question: why must Spider-Man have one archenemy? To that, I can only answer: because! There can only be one! Thor has Loki, Cap has the Red Skull, Reed Richards has Doom, Sherlock has Moriarty, Superman has Luthor and most importantly, because Batman (the only superhero with a rogues gallery as varied, deep and strong as Spider-Man) has the Joker. We’re nerds: it’s fun to discuss this stuff.
Now, the Green Goblin, as Si summarized nicely, is Spider-Man’s polar opposite – successful in his secret identity, irresponsible with his great power, an adult, a father figure even to Peter – there are a lot of parallels, inversions and personal connections that used to make him, to me, the obvious choice. What’s lacking though, I realize while writing this, is strong motivation: as Omar Karindu points out, whenever Norman became sane, he turned out to be a pretty nice guy, and most of his post-resurrection villainy has been of the generic ‘more power!’ variety. Doctor Octopus, on the other hand (again, I credit Slott for strongly emphasizing these parallels), is both Spider-Man’s opposite (an adult, irresponsible, accomplished in his civilian life) and also his dark reflection: a put-upon brilliant outsider who instead of using his powers and his genius responsibly, wants to force the world to finally give him the recognition and acclaim he thinks he’s owed after a lifetime of humiliation and disappointment. In many ways, he’s like the gloryhound Spider-Man before Uncle Ben’s murder – callous, cold and arrogant. Combine that with the ultimate victory of actually having taken over Spider-Man’s life for close to a year (in Marvel Universe time), having literally been under Spider-Man’s skin and having shared his memories, his psyche – that, to me, makes him Spider-Man’s true archenemy from now on.
(Of course, the case could also be made that Spider-Man’s true archenemy is and always will be J. Jonah Jameson, since he’s the surrogate father figure who’s love and approval he’ll never be able to win…)
(RE: Remender’s Uncanny Avengers – I like it! Team books were better in the Eighties, Havok is a cool character finally getting some good storylines again, and all that ‘outrage’ over Jet Black/the M-Word thing is nothing but the needless and loathsome politicization of fiction by people who erroneously conflate the words, actions & opinions of characters with those of their authors, and have poor reading comprehension to boot. ‘Nuff said!)