Marvel Comic Books: Avengers & X-Men AXIS #5

Avengers & X-Men: AXIS #5 On Youtube

New Comics: Avengers & X-Men #5 Recap

Nova and Spider-Man arrive at the Avengers Tower. A priority alert has been called and all Avengers have been asked to report in. At the meeting, many of the Avengers act themselves including Spider-Man and Nova, while those who were at Genosha like the Invisible Woman, Beast, and Vision have clearly been affected by the inversion spell and begin to argue. Sue Storm demands to know where Steve Rogers is, but Sam Wilson arrives, and says that Steve is no longer in charge.

Sam explains that he called a priority alert in because the Red Skull has escaped. Security logs showed that somebody with Avengers level access entered his cell and erased all surveillance footage, meaning that one of the Avengers aided the villain. While the other Avengers listen in disbelief, Sue remarks that they shouldn’t have come here. Sam goes on to say that there are too many Avengers to determine who is responsible, and it will be much safer to lock them all up in Hank Pym’s subatomic ant farm. Sensing the danger, Spider-Man grabs Nova and leaps out the window as the rest of the heroes are shrunk down to a subatomic size.

New Comics: AXIS #5 Cont!

Medusa manages to grab Nova, but Spider-Man is able to rescue the young hero, and gets him to fly them both away from the tower as quickly as possible. However it doesn’t take long for the Avengers to find the heroes and Nova is knocked into a nearby building. Captain America attacks Spider-Man, but using his spider sense, he is able to dodge his shield and it hits Sam instead.

Scarlet Witch arrives, wondering why Sam is taking so long, but Nova and Spider-Man have been saved by Magneto, who says he is here to help. Back at the tower, the Avengers reconvene. They begin to argue but Scarlet Witch says this is only an alliance of convenience, and leaves the team, saying she is now only concerned about revenge.

At the Avengers Mansion, Magneto, Steve Rogers, and Steve’s son Ian explain the situation to Spider-Man and Nova. The inversion spell has indeed turned heroes into villains, and villains like Magneto into heroes. Steve shows the heroes that the Hulk’s evil self has begun to tear the city apart, and is demanding a worthy challenge. While the others watched this, Nova arrives, having immediately flown to the scene, and is happy to answer Kluh’s demands. The others look on, surprised at his actions, and quickly move to give the young hero back-up. But before they can act, an alarm sounds at the mansion. Something is nearby, and Steve tells them to be ready for anything.

Outside, a massive ship has arrived in the skies above New York City. Apocalypse has arrived. With the Avengers splintered, the X-Men have seized this opportunity and begun a strike on the remaining Avengers. Inside the tower, Falcon is draining Wasp of her body’s Pym particles. He is pleased as he views this as a peaceful way to bring order to the world. But the X-Men arrive, and Rogue thanks Sam for his help at clearing out most of the Avengers for them.

Havok sees what Sam has done to his wife and angrily attacks, while Cyclops orders Nightcrawler to find the Red Skull. When Night crawler discovers that the Red Skull is gone, they move on to their next plan: to kill the Avengers. Sam resists Storm and Night crawler’s attacks before he breaks his own hand trying to punch Rogue. The X-Man makes short work of Captain America, easily beating him down. However, Apocalypse stops her from killing him, as the villain needs him alive. He wants Sam to deliver a message to the people of New York. The island of Manhattan is now in the hands of the X-Men. In three hours, any human found in the city will be slaughtered. The Apocalypse of the human race has begun.

New Comics: Avengers & X-Men #5 Review

Hello and welcome to Comic Island! My name is Arden, and this is my recap, and review, of Avengers and X-Men: AXIS, issue five.

So just like last issue, I think this was another solid comic book. AXIS certainly deserves points for consistency. Many crossovers suffer from an inconsistent tone and quality issue to issue, but AXIS has done a good job at maintaining a certain level of quality and story pacing that I really appreciate.

But that does mean that both the good and bad are consistently here in this comic. The good is that we once again get to see characters in new situations with epic action and funny humour sprinkled throughout the story. The bad is mostly in the art, which panel to panel can either be amazing, memorable and really well done, or rather bland and rushed. And this can change even within the same page, which is really weird.

And once again this comic is just jam packed with great little moments. My favourite moments here have to be the X-Men’s dialogue when they come to the Avengers Tower. Rogue is great in this comic and my favourite part of the story. I also like Scarlet Witch’s slightly modified costume, and it looks really cool and slightly menacing. I like that Magneto seems to have shifted to a more positive role as well. I hope that we see more of that in this series as I’m really interested in seeing where that idea goes from here.

Thus far, we haven’t gotten any filler issues or anything that bad out of AXIS, with the possible exception of issue three, though even that wasn’t all that terrible, especially knowing that the story kept the momentum going in issues four and five.

The tie-ins have also worked really well as a nice side part of the story, but remain entirely optional if you just want to stick to the core series, and Nova’s role in this comic is a good example of that. He goes off to fight the Hulk in his own comic while the AXIS comic continues on.

TAGS: new comics, comic event, marvel comic book, axis