Avengers and X-Men: Axis #9 Review

Well, it’s been an interesting few months with this title. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. It’s been an excruciatingly painful few months reading this book. Marvel has had some questionable success (or lack thereof) with some of their recent crossover events, but there is no question this time around. Axis has been bad. The past couple of issues have been fairly readable which is a huge improvement for this book, but is it too little too late? To answer that rhetorical question, yes. Yes, it is absolutely too late to save this creative landfill of a book. Now, that’s not to say this issue didn’t have a considerable number of high points. For one thing, Rick Remender got to do some of what he’s good at: heartfelt, internal monologues. But the real rub is the character this particular monologue comes from. However, it ends up being sort of a double edged sword because as interesting as it is, you wish Remender would have offered up more character development like this earlier in the event. In fact, a couple of characters had some good moments, but Axis spent so little time developing anyone involved, there’s nobody here to actually care about. I wasn’t invested enough in anyone to care about the upcoming books Marvel tells us to buy via a pretty overt ad right after the last page. And the White Skull actually made you somewhat sympathetic towards someone who, over the years, has been irredeemably evil. I mean, we’re talking about a guy who grafted Charles Xavier’s brain…