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The Question IRL
Jun 8, 2013

Only two contestants left! Here is Doom's chance for revenge...



This is Marvel's new event Axis. What, you think the Logo says Sixis? That's crazy talk, it OBVIOUSLY says Axis. And no that's not the Green Goblin in the background. That's OBVIOUSLY the Hobgoblin, he's in this event too!

So what is this?

So this is the thread to discuss Marvel's upcoming event, Axis. It's a crossover that features the Avengers and X-Men but will run through a number of Marvel books from October to December. Already there have been some books involved in the March to Axis, but we'll discuss them below.
The series itself is running in a single book. called Avengers & X-Men: Axis. It's a 9 issue series running over the three months, written by Rick Remender and drawn by a team of artists including Adam Kurbert, Lenil Francis Yu, Terry Dodson and Jim Cheung. It's going to be three issues a month, provided nothing slips. (Which it could easily.)

There are going to be a number of tie in Axis series which almost certainly won't be important (unless they are.) and a number of titles are going to Crossover into the series.

So what's the rough plot to the series?

Basically the Red Skull has gained near unlimited psionic powers. He is using these powers to broadcast madness and hate all over the world to result in world wide anarchy. It's going to take a whole lot of heroes teaming up to stop him.
But to drag things out and stop the story ending with Hyperion punching him into space make things more difficult, the Red Skull has made a number of heroes and villains Inverted! So old man Steve Rogers has to build a team out of a small number of unaffected heroes like Nova and Spider-Man.

Ah, so the Red Skull has mind controlled everyone into being his slaves?

Not quite. From what little we know, the heroes and villains aren't going to be full on mind slaves. Nor are people being changed into comical, baby eating bad guys who just need to be told to snap out of it by a tearful Jubilee.
No the gist of Inversion is that a characters memories and personality is kept the same, but some core belief is changed to it's polar opposite.

So, for example Luke Cage will go from being a principled man of the people who wants social change, to a guy who wants to be paid and paid well to use his super powers.
Carnage is going to go from being a psychopath with an uncontrollable desire to kill to a psychopath with an uncontrollable desire to do good.

In theory the idea behind Inversion will allow writers to explore characters and tell interesting stories. By making a character into the direct opposite, it will allow the reader to reflect on what REALLY are the core characteristics of our favourite heroes and villains, and how they have changed.

In practice we will probably get some hodgepodge of good and terrible idea, where some writers will tell interesting stories and others will just use it as an excuse to make everyone into Bizarros like Kulh. (Get it, it's Hulk backwards, and he's angry at EVERYTHING!)

The reason the thread title talks about alignment is in D&D terms there is a thing called the Axis of alignment. It is designed to give a snapshot of how a character operate. A character who is Lawful Good will obey laws and help out the weak. If you changed alignment on him, he would likely change to Lawful Evil. He will still (mostly) obey the law, but in a way to benefit and enrich himself and leave people to suffer as that's someone elses job.

Enough of that D&D Nerd poo poo, I want to know about Comic poo poo!

Okay here are the titles involved.

The Main Title.
Avengers & X-Men: Axis 1-9.

The main series and potentially all you need to read. Until you need to read other series.

The Tie In Series.

Axis: Revolutions 1-4.

This is a companion series written by Denis Hopeless. It's supposed to be about all the other characters during Axis, so this series will probably about what happens to Speedball and D-Man when they get Inverted.

Axis: Hobgoblin 1-3.
It's written by Kevin Shinick, who wrote Robot Chicken. It looks like it's going to be a black comedy take at what happens when a cowardly, badguy Roderick Kingsley get's made into a cowardly good guy. From the looks of the unlettered art, this could be okay.

Axis: Carnage 1-3.
It's written by Rick Spears. It looks like it's going to be a black comedy take at what happens when a psychopath (Cletus Cassidy) with no understanding of right and wrong tries to become a good guy. From the looks of the unlettered art, this is going to be an ugly, unpleasant book. And I'm not sure why you want to do two black comedy books about villains.

The Crossover issues.
Ho-boy. A ton.
But for those wondering here are a list of the following crossover issues.

  • All New X-Factor #15-18
  • Avengers World # 15-16
  • Captain America and the Mighty Avengers # 1- 2.
  • Deadpool #36-39
  • Inhumans # 9-10.
  • Loki: Agent of Asguard # 7-9
  • Magneto # 11-12
  • Nova # 23-25.
  • Superior Iron-Man # 1-2.
  • Wolverine and the X-Men # 12.

Hey there is a lot of characters missing from this list.

Yeah when it's actually put out in a full list, this crossover does seem much smaller than things like Civil War, in that a large number of books are avoiding this. In particular many new books (Jason Aaron's Thor, Angella and Winter Soldier) are staying clear of this. The Spider books are off doing the Spider-Verse storyline. Wolverine is doing a Death of Wolverine story. (But for those of you who want a hairy, Canadian in your event book, Sabertooth will be taking up that roll.)
And, kind of crucially, Jonathan Hickman's Avengers are hiding out having time skipped eight months ahead of time. So they are sort of showing what the results of the Axis's timeskip in that book. All the while continuing their Incursion plotlines.


All these changes seem like they are going to be super short term.

Oh almost certainly most of the Inversion stuff isn't going to last long. There's no way we will be talking about Carnage's long stint as an Avenger in 10 years time. But some characters may be effected by this status quo for a while.
Of the new books launching out of this, the Superior Iron-Man is most interesting. It will involve a Tony Stark who has decided to make huge amounts of money by selling his technology and shrugging his shoulders at the consequences. In this case that means releasing Extremis into San Francisco and letting people make themselves into genetically perfect specimens. The series is being written by Tom Taylor (who has form for writing heroes turned jerks in Injustice and Earth 2) so this looks like being Tony's new jerky status quo.

Sam Wilson as the new Captain America is launching in two books (one where he leads the Mighty Avengers, and his own solo book.) Sadly their run may be hamstrung if they are tied into a crosssover which is about heroes being jerks, so if a Sam Wilson book launches with him as a Jingoistic rear end in a top hat, that will impact on his run as a hero.

This sounds interesting. If I want more background to all this, where can I go?

Well if you want more on the background look at Rick Remender's Uncanny Avenger's run. Issue's 1-5 give background as to how the Red Skull got so much super psycic powers. And issues 23 and 24 also further deals with that.
Cullen Bunn's Magneto run (particularly 9-10) are also pretty important about how Magneto became so focused on standing up for Mutants and it looks like he's going to play a really big roll in all this.
Captain America # 24 and 25 setup the current Sam Wilson status quo.
Lastly Loki 6 is a really nice fun Dr. Doom/ Loki story and ties into all this.

I hate crossovers, why shouldn't I ignore this?

Good point. For all the hammering I have given it, Marvel have actually been 2/2 on the last two crossovers. The general conciousness here is that Infinity and Original Sin were both really good, so Marvel are going to try going 3 for 3. And aside from the fact that the main series is 9 issues long, there are not TOO many issues. And the idea of Inversion should lead to fun storylines, if not funny panels for years to come.

Anything else I should know?

Yeah from this point onwards, we are just going to call this crossover Sixis or Sixaxis. You know, after the gimmick that the PS3 controller has. Just roll with it, that is how things are.

Still stay tuned to this thread and we'll let you know how the series develops.

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Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009
The Inversion idea is one of those comic book-y notions that pretty much can't fail to be entertaining on SOME level. It'll either be an interesting twist in a 'there but for the grace of god'/'what might have been' kind of way, or it'll be a hilariously campy trainwreck (now watch one of the tie-in books prove me wrong). And the Loki issues at least sound fun from the solicits.

TwoPair
Mar 28, 2010

Pandamn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta
Grimey Drawer
I actually think this could be interesting. Except for the part that's already been said where Sabretooth's going to turn good. That's the most blatant "poo poo guys, we need a Wolverine but we can't bring him back IMMEDIATELY after killing him poo poo poo poo what do we do" move ever.

algebra testes
Mar 5, 2011


Lipstick Apathy
Is Uncanny Avengers continuing as normal during this?

Codependent Poster
Oct 20, 2003

LordPants posted:

Is Uncanny Avengers continuing as normal during this?

No, it's on hiatus.

Not much faith in this event. For the most part I think Uncanny Avengers has been dreadful with characters acting like big baby idiots.

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009

TwoPair posted:

I actually think this could be interesting. Except for the part that's already been said where Sabretooth's going to turn good. That's the most blatant "poo poo guys, we need a Wolverine but we can't bring him back IMMEDIATELY after killing him poo poo poo poo what do we do" move ever.

Kind of a shame too, that recent Black Widow cover of her and X-23 being all classy and badass at a casino made a good case on it's own for slotting Laura into Logan's place in any story people wanted to tell.

Yvonmukluk
Oct 10, 2012

Everything is Sinister


Gaz-L posted:

Kind of a shame too, that recent Black Widow cover of her and X-23 being all classy and badass at a casino made a good case on it's own for slotting Laura into Logan's place in any story people wanted to tell.

They really should have given her a new codename by now. I mean, that's like Wolverine still calling himself 'Weapon X'.

Dacap
Jul 8, 2008

I've been involved in a number of cults, both as a leader and a follower.

You have more fun as a follower. But you make more money as a leader.



I saw a rumor somewhere that Sabretooth as Wolverine will only be while Axis is running and afterwards Laura will fully step in as Wolverine

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009
Hey, it'd be neat, albeit possibly risky, if they give her the name. Does that mean she'll need to cut her hair short and invest in a lot of product?

Gavok
Oct 10, 2005

Brock! Oh, man, I'm sorry about your...

...tooth?


TwoPair posted:

I actually think this could be interesting. Except for the part that's already been said where Sabretooth's going to turn good. That's the most blatant "poo poo guys, we need a Wolverine but we can't bring him back IMMEDIATELY after killing him poo poo poo poo what do we do" move ever.

Coincidentally, that's the path Claremont went when he did X-Men Forever. He killed off Wolverine immediately, then had Sabretooth join the team, giving him the old Wolverine-in-the-X-Men dynamic, only with higher stakes. He's a disgruntled maverick who doesn't get along with anyone and nobody trusts him, only now it's because he's a raging psychopath who will probably kill you when you're not looking. It was the only interesting thing I can remember about that run.

Dacap
Jul 8, 2008

I've been involved in a number of cults, both as a leader and a follower.

You have more fun as a follower. But you make more money as a leader.



TwoPair posted:

I actually think this could be interesting. Except for the part that's already been said where Sabretooth's going to turn good. That's the most blatant "poo poo guys, we need a Wolverine but we can't bring him back IMMEDIATELY after killing him poo poo poo poo what do we do" move ever.

Is it more blatant than Jimmy Hudson in Ultimate X-Men? Wolverine's new illegitimate son who had never been mentioned before who also has healing and bone claws that magically turned into metal because of reasons.

Diet Poison
Jan 20, 2008

LICK MY ASS

Yvonmukluk posted:

They really should have given her a new codename by now. I mean, that's like Wolverine still calling himself 'Weapon X'.

At some point she was supposed to have changed her name to Talon (someone from the future mentally refers to her as this- I wanna say it's a Dethlok? I got no source but I swear I'm not making it up) but it hasn't happened yet and probably never will because branding.

Aphrodite
Jun 27, 2006

Avengers and X-Men: Axis.

Featuring none of the X-Men.

Diet Poison
Jan 20, 2008

LICK MY ASS
Also totally bullshit that it's making GBS threads up four issues of X-Factor when it's being cancelled at #20.

And it totally features the X-Men, Aphrodite... but it's only Magneto and the half of Remender's lovely team that can call themselves X-Men.

Avengers and X-Men who are also Avengers: Sixis.

Codependent Poster
Oct 20, 2003

Now now, the Jean Grey teachers and students will probably be dragged in since that book really has no direction now.

And Cyclops will show up and either be horribly characterized by Remender, or semi-competent/important, but nothing of consequence will happen to or with him as Bendis has said as much.

Cassa
Jan 29, 2009
Didn't we already have a psychopath trying to be good when Venom did his extreme justice thing?

Web Jew.0
May 13, 2009

Yvonmukluk posted:

They really should have given her a new codename by now. I mean, that's like Wolverine still calling himself 'Weapon X'.

Black Widow, Phoenix, Archangel, AoA Weapon X, White Queen, Danger, Winter Soldier, AoX Basilisk, etc.

I think X-23 is an awesome name. Not a lot names like that.

Web Jew.0 fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Oct 8, 2014

bobkatt013
Oct 8, 2006

You’re telling me Peter Parker is ...... Spider-man!?
I enjoyed this issue, but did they really kill Genesis with a harpoon by Ahab?

PaybackJack
May 21, 2003

You'll hit your head and say: 'Boy, how stupid could I have been. A moron could've figured this out. I must be a real dimwit. A pathetic nimnal. A wretched idiotic excuse for a human being for not having figured these simple puzzles out in the first place...As usual, you've been a real pantload!
The art was kind of a mess, the pacing was rushed as all hell, the plot was all over the place. Summers' brothers fighting each other, this was an ode to late 80s, early 90s events, if I've ever seen one. Stark-tech programmed ADAMANTIUM Sentinels. Over the top action panels, ridiculous bad guy(HE'S PURE HATE!) though some of the large panels were pretty good.

I was not impressed. We'll see where this goes but so far it just feels so ridiculous I can't take anything seriously. Even Evan's death was so pointless and out of place.

Neo_Reloaded
Feb 27, 2004
Something from Nothing
There's no way Evan's death is permanent. Remender is the one who created him and has clearly been building to some nature vs. nurture dramatic conclusion. He's not going to be randomly killed by a henchman in a way that imparts no thematic relevance to his character's whole deal.

Neo_Reloaded fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Oct 8, 2014

Elucidarius
Oct 14, 2006

Neo_Reloaded posted:

There's no way Evan's death is permanent. Remender is the one who created him and has clearly been building to some faith vs. nurture dramatic conclusion. He's not going to be randomly killed by a henchman in a way that imparts no thematic relevance to his character's whole deal.

Besides, they've shown him saying he will get a conclusion during this.

Diet Poison
Jan 20, 2008

LICK MY ASS
Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, the role of Steve Rogers will be played by Clint Eastwood.

DynamicSloth
Jul 30, 2006

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
When you start off your event with Red Skull Onslaught you're not getting any extra dick waving points with a few fancy sentinels Remender.

DynamicSloth fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Oct 8, 2014

muscles like this!
Jan 17, 2005


I thought the first issue was boring, mostly because so much was going on it was impossible to care about any of the half dozen plot points.

Space_Butler
Dec 5, 2003
Fun Shoe
I stopped reading Uncanny Avengers pretty early on, but does Remender usually have every single avenger speak in non-stop quips? That was obnoxious as hell, anytime a character ran onto they page it's like they had a line prepared beforehand and all of them fall flat. That's in addition to pretty much everything being either dull or confusing as a non-UA reader

Art was pretty bland as well, for such a huge and expensive event book. I'm just gonna skip this whole thing and wait for whatever the fallout is.

Lurdiak
Feb 26, 2006

I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.


Space_Butler posted:

I stopped reading Uncanny Avengers pretty early on, but does Remender usually have every single avenger speak in non-stop quips? That was obnoxious as hell, anytime a character ran onto they page it's like they had a line prepared beforehand and all of them fall flat.

He wrote them the exact same way in Captain America's latest issue and it was basically unreadable. It's not like this is the only way he can write, he just seems to have a very fundamental misunderstanding of the Avengers dynamic.

SirDan3k
Jan 6, 2001

Trust me, you are taking this a lot more seriously then I am.

Space_Butler posted:

Art was pretty bland as well, for such a huge and expensive event book. I'm just gonna skip this whole thing and wait for whatever the fallout is.



Well in Ironman its going to be Armor Wars II: the war-more-ing

Gaz-L
Jan 28, 2009

Lurdiak posted:

He wrote them the exact same way in Captain America's latest issue and it was basically unreadable. It's not like this is the only way he can write, he just seems to have a very fundamental misunderstanding of the Avengers dynamic.

To be fair, the main ones there were Spider-Man and Hawkeye, who are pretty quippy. It just got weird when Vision was throwing out one-liners too.

(Besides, Clint's "EVERYONE BE QUIET, AN OLD MAN IS TALKING!" was great in Cap)

Wachter
Mar 23, 2007

You and whose knees?

What the hell has happened to Remender since Uncanny X-Force? Because those were some of the best comics I've ever read, and bits of Uncanny Avengers and Captain America were pretty good, but this is just... :shrug:

Rhymenoserous
May 23, 2008

Space_Butler posted:

I stopped reading Uncanny Avengers pretty early on, but does Remender usually have every single avenger speak in non-stop quips? That was obnoxious as hell, anytime a character ran onto they page it's like they had a line prepared beforehand and all of them fall flat. That's in addition to pretty much everything being either dull or confusing as a non-UA reader

Art was pretty bland as well, for such a huge and expensive event book. I'm just gonna skip this whole thing and wait for whatever the fallout is.

Sounds like he's taking direction from the movies.

Codependent Poster
Oct 20, 2003

If the first page of the next issue isn't Magneto beating the poo poo out of Red Onslaught with the adamantium sentinels... come on. And don't give me the "wonky powers" excuse.

Lurdiak
Feb 26, 2006

I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do.


You're misremembering how horrendously overpowered Onslaught was.

Jiro
Jan 13, 2004

Lurdiak posted:

You're misremembering how horrendously overpowered Onslaught was.

And this is an Onslaught that doesn't have a Franklin slapped to it's back just Wanda which I guess is good enough, for now. :godwin:

Jiro fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Oct 9, 2014

Cartridgeblowers
Jan 3, 2006

Super Mario Bros 3

Did we see Scott/Evan/Quentin get taken to Genosha anywhere? I'm wondering if Magneto's helmet didn't fall of somewhere and all of that's a Red Skull illusion. Quentin also got gutted off-panel which is really weird.

I liked Axis a lot. It's very cinematic and works well if you've been liking Uncanny Avengers.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

Little Mac posted:

Did we see Scott/Evan/Quentin get taken to Genosha anywhere? I'm wondering if Magneto's helmet didn't fall of somewhere and all of that's a Red Skull illusion. Quentin also got gutted off-panel which is really weird.

I liked Axis a lot. It's very cinematic and works well if you've been liking Uncanny Avengers.

It might be a tie in, but I hope not because that idea just gives me flashbacks to FI.

net cafe scandal
Mar 18, 2011

Well that was loving awful.

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to
I enjoyed Axis 1, but i'd not say it was good.

Happy Noodle Boy
Jul 3, 2002


The last page of Axis is straight up concept art for some scrapped Marvel MMO raid fight. Holy poo poo I love it when comic book go all comic book but this just started full comic book and then kept going.

Fred is on
Dec 25, 2007

Riders...
IN SPACE!

Happy Noodle Boy posted:

The last page of Axis is straight up concept art for some scrapped Marvel MMO raid fight. Holy poo poo I love it when comic book go all comic book but this just started full comic book and then kept going.

Red Onslaught is already planned to be a raid encounter in Marvel Heroes, actually. :eng101:

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A Tin Of Beans
Nov 25, 2013

Little Mac posted:

Did we see Scott/Evan/Quentin get taken to Genosha anywhere? I'm wondering if Magneto's helmet didn't fall of somewhere and all of that's a Red Skull illusion. Quentin also got gutted off-panel which is really weird.

I liked Axis a lot. It's very cinematic and works well if you've been liking Uncanny Avengers.

I think Quentin might have just fallen next to a puddle and the colorist thought it was supposed to be blood? I can see him getting knocked out off panel but I don't think they meant to eviscerate the dude.

Did we know about the Genosha re-education camps from Uncanny Avengers? I don't remember that poo poo coming up at all in WATXM, Storm, All-New or Uncanny X-Men prior to this. :catstare: I only list those because those're the X books I'm reading right now, though I'm an issue or two behind in Uncanny and All-New.

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