Avengers vs X-Men: Axis #4 Review

writer: Rick Remender / penciller: Leinil Francis Yu I have no idea how many parts there will be to this crossover event as we will watch the X-Men and the Avengers battle each other…again, but it is definitely going to be the long game judging by the pacing of this issue. In other words, grin and bear it, this might take a while. This issue deals with the aftermath of the team effort it took to overcome Red Onslaught and the Stark Sentinels (I admit, those do have a nice ring to it). While it’s not said explicitly, the personalities of our beloved heroes that were present at the battle were affected by the same inversion spell that made Red Skull / Onslaught submit. Congrats, all your heroes are dicks. Sorta.

I will give some credit here and say that you could extrapolate the temperance and methodology of some villains, where they aren’t evil so much as just sociopathic in how they deal with situations. Both the Avengers and X-Men in separate scenes are preparing for war in the most brutal discourse. Storm leads a rally that sounds like Magneto pre-Scott-Summers-Phoenix-Infused-Murder-Murder-Murder-Kill-Kill-The-Professor event. I smiled for a moment when Sam Wilson punched “Fury” and said “I’m not THAT Captain America” before I realized that all the hype for Sam Wilson as the new Cap has given us an introduction of him as a complete asshole. Like Original Sin seemed really to exist just to create story lines for Bucky and Thor(s), this felt like similar to move us onto Su…