Last week was a huge week for releases and on top of the ones that have already been reviewed here at ComicBook.com, it seemed like it would be as good a time as any to launch a weekly review round-up. With a busy, crazy week of news behind us, though, it didn’t happen right away–so instead we’re going to take a quick look at a handful of last week’s books, as well as one or two of the titles released this week.For ease of browsing, we’ll rate each book out of five stars.
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Last week’s titles:
Avengers vs. X-Men #5 (Marvel) – **
This title continues to be just an absolute dog.
Until Avengers vs. X-Men, I’d always been a fan of John Romita Jr.’s artwork (although, frankly, it’s stylized and not right for every situation), but it’s been downright dreadful in this series and piling that on top of a disjointed script where people act out of character, fight for no real reason and seem to do things for no motivation greater than “it’s what the plot demands they do”? A recipe for disaster.The much-hyped end of the “first chapter” of Avengers vs. X-Men concluded with a number of Marvel mutants being tapped as hosts for the Phoenix Force, after Hope Summers–who had been the presumptive host–begged Wolverine to kill her, as she was unable to control the power of the Phoenix. She’s clearly still playing a major role, as by the end of the issue she’s been taken away by the five new Phoenixes, who speak in a stilted voice to communicate to the reader that they’ve been taken over by The Phoenix.Of course, Cyclops has been talking like that all along and up until now everyone has just assumed it was merely bad dialogue. In the end, will we find out this whole crossover was manipulated into happening at all?The out-of-the-blue ending may be excited to the merry Marvel faithful, but reading the story with a critical eye it just seems like yet another variation on the theme of Blackest Night and Fear Itself–take a powerful item that can change a character’s appearance, give them new powers and put a whole different spin on their personality(albeit briefly), and give it to whatever random characters the writer thinks might look cool in new clothes.The first time around, that kind of gimmick is kinda neat–seeing what The Atom and Batman would look like if they had power rings or whatever. The second time, it starts to wear thin as all the costume changes seem unecessary when you know for a fact Colossus won’t keep his Asgardian toy at the end of the thing; by the third time, it’s just another tired trope that needs a break before it can be impressive again.
