Comic Review - Avengers vs X-Men

To shake up the status quo of the Marvel Universe ahead of the Marvel NOW! relaunch strategy the company naturally went for a big mad event and decided to pit its' two premiere teams against each other. Both have evolved considerably since I last properly read the titles. The Avengers have gone from being just another superteam that spent long periods struggling to live up to the Earth's Mightiest title to an all-star Justice League type roster of the company's premiere heroes while the X-Men have become more of a political collective, given their own island Utopia. Off-panel as well there have been some changes to the stats quo as well - to whit that the box office success of the heavily Avengers-centric Marvel Universe has turned what was a single book that for vast chunks of the preceding decades was kept ticking over out of seeming obligation has become the hub around which Marvel's comics arm rotates. Conversely, the X-Men film franchise was (until a recent takeover) owned by dastardly evil empire Fox, who refused to hand over the rights they'd paid for. While mutant sales are strong Marvel have subtly done what they can to try and position their books as of secondary concern and by the time AvX was published the pressure was becoming more overt.

[CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ANYONE ELSE FIVE YEARS BEHIND]

Minifixation Update

More fresh piping hot reviews! From the Marvel universe there's the sensational She-Hulk, the improbable Nick Fury Jr, Sunspot, a stealth-suited Iron Man, the Red Widow, a bigger cuter Kingpin, Black Tom Cassidy and the Executioner Skurge.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe gets updated versions of Drax and Yondu, the Janet van Dyne version of the Wasp, Spider-Man's flashy new Infinity War suit, the Brickfig Hulkbuster, Justin Hammer, Odin and the Patriot.

From DC comics there's Jim Gordon as Batman, Bruce Wayne, Star Sapphire, Jessica Cruz and Lois Lane, while their animated spin-offs turn up Robin and Red X.

Plus of course a surprise appearance from Captain Canuck.

Comic Review: Captain Marvel - In Pursuit of Flight

Preamble - I used to be a major Marvel obsessive. From the nineties through to just after the millenium I bought anything and everything - Wonder Man, Ghost Rider 2099, even Infinity Crusade, voraciously hunting down back issues and trades, loving the universe. Then in around 2002 a mixture of being poor and Grant Morrison & Kurt Busiek being replaced on my favourite books by Chuck Austen & Geoff Johns put me off. Once I was out I dabbled occasionally - Civil War, nextwave - but never really followed much. Modern ongoing comics had no appeal to me and I was pretty sure it was all rubbish. An attempt to at least follow IDW's disastrous Transformers for some sort of connection to an art form I theoretically love twice ended badly, the most recent resulting in me not actually reading any even vaguely new comics for something like six months, leaving me assuming everything was that smug, that intolerably insular, that derivative and that obsessed with meta. However, a friend recommended I give Marvel's NOW! relaunch a go for something different but not contrarian, sending me a reading order. The same person recommended I watch Drive and that's a track record you can hang a few comics recommendations on. The starting point given was just before NOW!, with the seventh series of Captain Marvel. As said, apart from a few storylines I've read nothing since about 2002, so these are the musings of a lapsed fan trying to get back into the universe. Preamble ends...