The first month of Marvel NOW! has finally kicked off in earnest and, as we did with DC Comics’s The New 52, we’ll be taking a look at each new #1 and evaluating how the relaunch fares both overall and on a title-by-title basis.We start this week not only with two new #1 issues but with a #1 that we never really looked at back in October for practical reasons.Uncanny Avengers #1: B-Since this comic hit the week of New York Comic Con, we never got a chance to write it up in-depth (although we did talk a little bit about its shock ending)–and have since discussed some of the practical concerns facing the title, which appears to be shipping every six weeks (as opposed to Marvel’s current business plan of every two weeks for most of its major titles).Logan’s eulogy was beautiful, and some of the character work in the issue really works well. It’s a great introductory issue because almost everything you need to know is there on the page. But that last page splash burned off so much of the goodwill the rest of the issue had built up for me not only because it was needlessly grotesque, but because the last five or so pages of the issue were almost a completely different book than what had been established up to that point.After Xavier’s funeral and a surprisingly well-written argument between Havok and Cyclops, it becomes obvious that the whole book is really about Xavier’s dream, whether it’s achievable and what that means for the mutants. That’s something that will apparently spill over into Uncanny X-Men, where Cyclops will team up with Magneto and Emma Frost, among others, and that’s set up a bit here, when Magneto seems very affected by watching Wolverine’s eulogy for Xavier on a monitor.Avalanche, whose influence by the Phoenix is replaced by influence from an “unseen hand,” goes ballistic in the center of New York and starts killing people in what’s the turning point moment of the issue. Having just rejected Captain America and Thor’s offer to lead a team of Avengers, Havok joins them in battle against Avalanche, too late to stop him but in time to save most of the lives he put in danger. On another battlefront, the X-Mansion is attacked by a group of villains who meet up with, and quickly dispatch,a powerful-but-squabbling pair of mutants. Those developments will likely come back into play as that pair of mutants are both team members, per the cover and solicitation information, even though the team does nothing like getting together in this issue and, given the delays on #2 and #3, it might be a long time before we get that far into the story.
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