Avengers 14, New Avengers 7, Uncanny Avengers 9

Avengers 14
Hickman and Spencer (w) and Caselli (a) and F. Martin (c)

With the Age of Ultron over, we're quickly moving on to our next major event, Jonathan Hickman's Infinity. Avengers 14 is deemed a prelude to Infinity but it's not treated in the same way so many preludes are, which is to simply dive right into the event after a neatly tied-up arc before it. Instead, this issue is borne from everything that's come before in Avengers, focusing itself on the bomb sites the Builders sent bombs to in order to try to make the Earth itself sentient. The sites seem to, at regular intervals, be playing out some sort of message, starting in the Perth, Australia location (the communication site) and relaying to each other site. This message knocks out all electronics in the world for several seconds, wreaking havoc on the satellites, power plants, and planes particularly. The Avengers are spread out, many of them trying their best to keep planes from crashing or to help people near exploding power plants. Cap is, as is typical, running the show and coordinating the people, though he's still at the SHIELD observational hub with Bruce Banner, who is trying to pinpoint the source of the message. He finally does, tracking it to the Perth site and Cap sends what Avengers are nearby to there. When they arrive, they find that a portal has been opened from the site in India, which was focused on self-repair, and the lifeforms that have been created there are now teaming up with the lifeforms in Australia. Cap sends Manifold to get Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Captain Universe, and Hyperion, who had arrived in South Korea too late to help the citizens of a city with a nuclear power plant. Everyone begins fighting as Banner locates another power spike, this time on AIM Island. AIM scientists have been trying to open the pod they stole some time ago from one of the landing sites and, to the chagrin of Minister Superia, they seem to have done it.

In true Avengers fashion, the issue strings you along for awhile, knowing full well you're not totally sure what's going on but feeling confident that you'll pick it up before the issue is through. I've said before and I will continue to say that I find this book somewhat challenging to think through, as it's not typically entirely linear and there's a whole ton of soft science going into it. However, the longer the series goes on, the easier it becomes to read it correctly. I no longer really find myself turning back and forth and back and forth to try to see if I missed something; instead, I keep going and assume my questions will largely be answered by the end. I'm usually right. As always, the story is engaging and now we're really starting to get into what's really been happening in this series since its onset. It feels like pieces are falling into place left and right which means that we're in for a heck of a wrap up on this storyline. I don't know when that will occur (or even if it will occur) but the pacing has been pretty spectacular. Not easy to go 14 issues into a story before really getting where it's been aiming and still have it feel fresh and mysterious. Of course, several issues in the middle have been dedicated to other stories or to stand-alone aspects of this story, but it's an impressive feat nonetheless.

New Avengers 7
Hickman (w) and Deodato (a) and F. Martin and Beredo (c)

The New Avengers/Illuminati have their first bit of off-time since the start of this series. After four world-ending events in 16 days, they've had about 28 days incursion-less. While it's given the team plenty to fret about, it's also given them a little bit more time to prepare and a bit more time to resume their lives. The team is still monitoring the Swan, allowing her to read books and converse with them but still keeping her locked down. Still, it's given opportunity for them (except Tony, who is in space, and Doctor Strange, who she spat at) to get to know her a bit (allowing T'Challa and Reed to try to parse out fact from superstition in her stories) and for her to teach them as well as them teaching her (including Beast learning languages from her). Terrax has remained silent. Reed and Doc Strange were invited by Doctor Doom into Latveria to eat. A very tense dinner took place wherein Doctor Doom demaned answers about what happened in Latveria (he saw them there) and Doctor Strange and Reed decline any knowledge of the incident. Meanwhile, Black Bolt is readying some sort of weapon with his insane brother Maximus and keeping it all a secret from the rest of the Inhumans. The most compelling story, though, is the rising tension between Wakanda and Atlantis. Since Namor's flooding of Wakanda during AvX, things have only escalated, with several skirmishes between the peoples and Namor approaches Black Panther with an offer of peace. He wishes to end the hostilities between the two nations so they can get back to more important things. T'Challa is incredibly wary about it but allows Namor to bring the offer to his sister, the queen, anyway. She introduces the idea at a council meeting and, after deliberations with Reed on the matter, T'Challa presents a very level response which leans towards the peace. However, a Wakandan general says that Wakanda now, for the first time in history, appears weak and the only way to stave off attacks from other nations is to soundly defeat Atlantis now. T'Challa cedes the decision to his sister, who tells the general to prepare for war.

It's rare that a book can have a sort of break from its most tense story and from its action and still present a nail-biter of an issue. I've loved this book from the get-go and this is kind of the issue I've been waiting for. As much as I've been fascinated by the story of the incursions and the ways that our team has to try to deal with them, this is an explosive team comprised only of geniuses and leaders. It's been hard, with all of the driving story that's been happening, to actually get a look at this team for what it is but now we're getting that chance and it's working. Now, too, seems as good a time as any to say that I absolutely love the way Hickman writes all of these characters. His Black Panther is the best Black Panther I've seen in a while and everyone else is pretty pitch-perfect too. I was very sad to see that Epting and D'Armata weren't on this issue, but I do kind of get it. While it's certainly still a spectacular issue, it doesn't require the same grand sense of scale those two have brought to the book so far. Instead, it requires a different look entirely and it gets it with Deodato and Martin. Another amazing issue.

Uncanny Avengers 9
Remender (w) and Acuña (a and c)


Boy oh boy, what a load of information. Everything is falling apart (more than usual) on this Unity Avengers team as Rogue and Scarlet Witch debate what Alex meant in his speech about viewing everyone as people first (Scarlet Witch thinks it means not to generalize and Rogue thinks it means to ignore what it means to be mutant). Cap and the rest of the team now know about Wolverine's time with X-Force that led to the killing of the child Apocalypse which may or may not have spawned this situation today. The whole team knows that Jarnbjorn is Thor's old weapon and it's a bit his fault that they have it now (since he went against the All-Father's wishes to enchant it and then lost it somewhere). Add to that the frustration that they can't find the Apocalypse twins and that Captain America's secret message from Kang (after he had been launched from a SWORD escape pod to a random landing site to find that specific message) explains that the Apocalypse twins are trying to destroy the seven possible timelines into the future that start to appear very soon. This is, of course, the Apocalypse twins' intent and, to try to ensure it comes to fruition, they've found several life seeds (to herald in new worlds) and several death seeds (to make new horsemen). Now they've managed to split up the Uncanny Avengers by revealing to Thor the news of Wolverine's assassination of a child. Thor, for his part, stands up for Wolverine amidst outrage from Cap and Janet. Still, Wolverine, Rogue, Sunfire, and Thor have set out on their own to try to hunt the Apocalypse twins. To make matters worse, the Apocalypse twins have settled on their new horsemen, raising from the dead Grim Reaper, Banshee, Daken, and the Sentry.

This issue gets a little bit bogged down with dialogue but it kind of makes sense in this case. There's a lot of fighting between the various factions within this team and that fighting is based in real prejudices and problems in the Marvel Universe so it's hard to boil those down to a couple of snappy one liners. For my part, I'm really happy it didn't just come down to some sort of back-and-forth that throws snappy insults in or anything else along those lines. Instead, there are intense debates about what it is to be a mutant and what Alex's speech means as far as the culture goes. Rogue very much believes in a mutant culture, like any other culture. Wanda, however, thinks that cultures like that are steeped in tradition and age and that you're born into them and linked by many deep connections borne from those traditions whereas mutants are only linked by a gene that transferred powers onto them. There are several good points about what mutants are and how they should be viewed in the world buried in what is already a solid story that seems like things can only ever go well for the bad guys in it. If you're not the type of person who's willing to read through a lot of philosophical debate about a fictional race of people, you'll probably want to skip the middle area some, but I found it pretty compelling, which may be the single nerdiest thing I've ever written. There's also a dream from Wolverine of a dead Warren and kid Apocalypse, so there's that too.