Uncanny Avengers 3, A+X 4, Astonishing X-Men 58, Ultimates 20

Uncanny Avengers 3
Remender (w) and Cassaday (a)

Following the death of Charles Xavier, a cloned copy of the Red Skull meant to awaken a set number of years after its creation JUST IN CASE some things went wrong has stolen the telepath's body and grafted Charles' mind to his own, giving one of the most vile villains in the Marvel Universe (or any universe) one of the most powerful telepathic minds the world has seen. Skull has also created "S-Men," mutant-hating supervillains from many different countries and backgrounds to aid him in his quest to destroy the mutants and tear the country apart. He started in issue one with a brainwashed Avalanche attacking New York, he continued in issue two with his S-Man Honest John, the living propaganda, appearing on the news to convince people of the threat of the mutants which, in turn, led to many watching to gruesomely kill any mutants nearby, and now in issue three, Skull has staged a full-on attack in New York City. He allows brainwashed followers to see the x-gene in a person and then they violently descend on that person. Normal humans, not villains or superpowered people, normal humans attack innocent maybe-mutants (only one of them seems to definitely be a mutant, the others don't have physical mutations) and slaughter them. It's...well, it's dark. It's a bit hard to watch at times.

The uncanny Avengers show up, led by Havok, to try to break through the S-Men and Skull and calm things down as much as possible. It's the first time we see the advertised team in one place, with mind-controlled Scarlet Witch and Rogue brought to the fight by Skull after being captured in the first issue. Havok, Cap, and Wolverine get to work trying to stop people and the narration lets us know a bit about what each is going through. Cap, as a human, is having trouble keeping Skull out of his head and infecting it with anti-mutant thoughts. He manages to overcome it, though he recognizably has some troubles, snapping at Havok in the middle of the fight. Wolverine, who hasn't killed since the death of Xavier, does what he can to subdue the people before Scarlet Witch and Rogue, broken out of their control, inform him that Skull has Xavier's brain. Wolverine instantly goes berserker and rushes Skull. BAD NEWS, though, Honest John has convinced Thor that Odin wants the mutants eradicated, that it's in the best interest of both Asgard and Midgard. Thor protects Skull from Wolverine's attack (after Wolverine cleaves a hand off), then attacks him full on as another S-Man deactivates Logan's x-gene. Uh-oh.

So yeah, this issue is just insanely dark. There's no real light to be had and this is probably the darkest corner of the Marvel Universe right now. However, I think it's an important darkness. Cap's hope, AvX over, that everyone can work together to put human/mutant rights on track, but it was always going to be more difficult than that. Red Skull is obviously the perfect villain to escalate things here and, with Skull, you never have to worry about a change of heart or some moral concerns stopping him. The stakes are high and they certainly feel real in this book. It's a little hard to watch but it's incredibly interesting and it feels like it has an actual weight to it, like the impact of this book can be felt throughout the Universe. Also, if you were missing Remender causing extreme pain to Wolverine after X-Force, here's a good time to see it again.

A+X 4
Story one: Andrews (w and a); Story two: Latour (w) and Lopez (a)

Okay, in my head, this post was set up perfectly. I had the melding of X-Men and Avenger in the first entry, then had A+X, then Astonishing X-Men and Ultimates. EVERYONE IS REPRESENTED and BOY do the Avengers and X-Men get along great. Of course, Uncanny Avengers threw that all off by being unbearably depressing and hate-filled. So now we're here, a light-hearted book where an Avenger teams up with an X-Man and everyone has fun. Hoo-bloody-ray.

But really, this book is fine. If you're champing at the bit for continuity and long-storylines and true threats, you're probably not best served by any A+X books. These are really books just for the fun of it. Team up an Avenger and an X-Man, let them do something heroic or fun or whatever, and we'll all feel better after AvX. Some have a little more weight to them than others (Black Panther and Storm clearly had a little more to talk about than, say, Spider-Man and Beast or next issue's Iron Fist and Doop), but these are by and large just fun team-up books. No stakes, no huge threats, no real worries. Reading this AFTER Uncanny Avengers will either make you more relaxed or make you scream "HOW CAN YOU BE THIS CALM? THINGS AREN'T BETTER. THEY'RE FAR, FAR WORSE."

Story one teams Spider-Man (Peter Parker) and Beast (cat-form) in either an alternate reality or a faraway future, HARD TO TELL. In this land, zombies walk the Earth as punishment for humanity's behavior towards Beasts. There is a whole society of Beasts, all started by our original Hank McCoy. Upon their arrival, Hank is taken to make love to the queen and Spidey is taken to fight a huge, feral Beast in a gladiatorial show. Hank and Spidey both take issue with their situation and Hank saves Spidey and they both get banished and sent back home. The story ends with Spidey asking Hank what could send him over the edge so far that he'd turn on humanity right as a child expresses disgust at Hank's form. OMINOUS, but not really because this book is fun. Kaare Andrews' art is great in the story and there's a good bit of back-and-forth between the fun/science-loving characters.

Story two teams up Quentin Quire with Cap and it goes a little predictably. Neither character is written poorly or anything, but like I said at the onset, these books are for fun, not for tons of depth. Cap, on Logan's suggestion, brings Quire to crash an AIM outpost with tons of little mini-MODOKs (MODOGs) and Quire, ever the anarchist rebel, wants no part in the guy dressed in a flag. Cap lets Quire see him as Steve Rogers, the weakling who signed up to protect the innocent, and things go more amicably from there. This is really my first look at Latour's writing pre-Winter Soldier, but there's not really enough here to make any judgments. I think both characters are portrayed fairly accurately and I imagine Quire will be nowhere near Winter Soldier, so no way to call this early. Still, A+X 4 is great if you want some fun, if you want a little jumping-on point for some characters/ideas, or want the whole AvX series completed in your collection. Otherwise, might not be totally worth it.

Astonishing X-Men 58
Liu (w) and Walta (a)

I'll be honest, I think I missed the last issue. I read the recap of the arc at the start of this comic and was thoroughly confused. FORTUNATELY, I read what I think was a point one a while ago showing Warbird's childhood with the Shi'ar where her artistic tendencies were stamped out for warring tendencies. So I'm pretty much caught up. This issue revolves around her and the last member of an alien race the Shi'ar had thought destroyed, an alien race called the Fianden, a race of artists. See where this is going? The Fianden threatened the Shi'ar a while back and now the last member is trying to restore them via a Fianden artifact so Warbird goes after him. They talk, he makes her feel like maybe she's still "defective" from youth, he eventually escapes and releases the artifact, creating a museum of Fianden art. The end of the issue shows Warbird, still grappling with who she is, picking up a pencil again.

I like Astonishing X-Men because there's very little cross-over with other X-books. Sure Gambit has his own book now and occasionally Wolverine will pop in here among everywhere else he has to pop, but the root of this team is largely removed from the rest of the X-Universe. It's part of the reason I like X-Factor, too. When you see Captain America in eight books a week, there's always a nagging thought in the back of your mind saying "right, well, nothing will happen here, he's over there," or asking how he does it all. At some point, "he's superhuman" doesn't make up for an entire lack of sleep. The Astonishing X-Men do this because they're X-Men and they're not busy somewhere else. Works fine. So you might get the less popular characters (Gambit aside), but they're still layered and interesting characters, they just don't necessarily have anything else going on today. For this issue, if you're not at all interested in Warbird, you probably won't be picking it up. If you care about her or about the team or have an undying fascination with the Shi'ar (?), go ahead.

The Ultimates 20
Humphries (w) and Eaton (a)

Nick Fury, appearing as original 616 Nick Fury, is back in Ultimates. After the war and Reunification, Hydra is still kicking around trying to overthrow President Cap. Nick Fury, in disguise, has joined up with Hydra under the alias Scorpio and everyone at SHIELD knows it. Unable to accept that Fury's a traitor, SHIELD sends Hawkeye in to talk to or kidnap Fury. Meanwhile, Fury seems a little less than pro-Hydra, seemingly trying to talk one Hydra agent out of the business and then looking to get his hands on the secret weapon Hydra has procured to take down Cap, labeled "the Torch." Hawkeye and the Hydra agent Nick was talking to, codenamed Nails, find Nick there. Hawkeye tries to get Nick to acknowledge him but to no avail. He's captured by Hydra and their leader, Crimson, orders Nick to execute him. Cliffhanger.

Meanwhile, the California government has found a top-secret SHIELD facility with what seem to be super-powered entities inside, leading the special advisor to the governor to proclaim that they have their own Ultimates for taking down President Cap and Sue Storm and Thor, trying to find a gem of the infinity gauntlet, get teleported into some Hydra base. Good cliffhanger, solid work pushing forward on some other plots that will surely eventually become main plot lines but currently reside somewhere more diminished, good book overall. If you're not in on the Ultimates Universe, it's not a bad time to start. Things are still a little hard to get a grasp of if you're just coming through now, I'm sure, but Reunification and President Cap are probably good times to start coming onboard, if you're so inclined. There are certainly other issues that are more entrenched in the history of the Ultimates that will crop up, but these story-lines are largely new and therefore equally easy to jump on for a new reader as for an established Ultimates reader. The depressing but also fun bit of the Ultimates universe is that people tend to stay dead, more often than not, so stakes can be a little higher. While we all bide our time in the 616 waiting for Peter Parker to return, just as we did with Human Torch and Cap and so many others recently, that same waiting game doesn't typically pan out in Ultimates.