Marvel has had a pretty great time of things in the 21st century, and I’m not just talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The ’90s weren’t a great time for Marvel as a business, but the ’00s rebuilt the company’s esteem with its fans and gave readers some great runs and stories. One of the most controversial aspects of Marvel in the ’00s was the event cycle. While Marvel event books sold well, a lot of fans didn’t enjoy the way that books they read got hijacked for events. The event cycle, in the long run, hurt Marvel, chasing away everyone but the diehards who read everything. Event books can have a checkered reputation; people love some of them and others of them are hated. However, there’s one thing about them that is pretty universal about events — they don’t always age well. They’re usually of their time, with months of build-up needed to understand them, so reading them on their own years later isn’t the best way to experience them. However, there’s one rather maligned Marvel event that I think has aged very well — Avengers Vs. X-Men.
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Avengers Vs. X-Men was stacked with some of the best Marvel creators of the 2010s — Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction Jason Aaron, John Romita Jr., Olivier Coipel, and Adam Kubert — and pit the Avengers against the X-Men in a battle over the Phoenix Force. It was released in 2012, to take advantage of release of The Avengers to theaters, and it doesn’t really have the best reputation with fans of either team. However, I’ve always liked Avengers Vs. X-Men and I think it’s aged better than most other Marvel comics.
Avengers Vs. X-Men Is a Rollicking Good Time
A lot of fans don’t really count Avengers Vs. X-Men among Marvel’s best event comics. Like many Marvel events, it depends on mischaracterization, and it was blatantly pro-Avengers, portraying the Avengers as the heroes and the X-Men as the villains from the beginning. It’s definitely not going to be counted among the best X-Men stories of all time by X-Men fans, and most Avengers fans aren’t exactly fans either. A brief synopsis of the story is that the X-Men have learned that the Phoenix Force is coming back to Earth, and Cyclops amkes a plan to use it to bring the mutant race back to prominence. The Avengers learn of the return as well, and Wolverine, in a feud with Cyclops at the time, went to the team and warned them that Cyclops was playing with fire. The Avengers attack the X-Men’s homebase of Utopia, and the two teams skirmish around the world before a battle between the X-Men and Avengers on the moon ends with Cyclops, Emma Frost, Colossus, Magik, and Namor splitting the Phoenix Force between them. They use the power to help the world for a time before the Avengers’ attacks on them drive them to madness. Things get bad, the Phoenix Five turns on each other and eventually the X-Men and Avengers team up against Dark Phoenix Cyclops, who killed Professor X, and defeat him.
Avengers Vs. X-Men isn’t at all a deep story, and I think that’s why it still works over a decade later. It’s twelve issues of turn your brain off action, and that’s the fun of it. Have you ever wondered what would happen if Iron Man and Magneto fought? You’ll see it. Do you want to see who’s a better tactician between Captain America and Cyclops? You’ll see it. That’s the fun of Avengers Vs. X-Men. On top of that, unlike other event stories, it wasn’t built up by months of other books. It does a great job of laying out its own status quo, and then gets right to everyone fighting each other. As a story, it’s an excuse to smash heroes against each other like a kid playing with action figures and that’s fun to read sometimes. Avengers Vs. X-Men #9 has one of the coolest Spider-Man moments ever. The tie-in issues expand on the battles, and they’re also a lot of fun, as Marvel got even more great creators to make these stories. Avengers Vs. X-Men is spectacle, and that’s why it aged so well. You can sit down, read it, and get exactly what you expect from it. Something like Secret Invasion isn’t nearly as good unless you read the build-up (and even then, it’s still a boring read). The same can be said with Siege and Fear Itself never should have been published in the first place. However, Avengers Vs. X-Men is just mindless fun, and that’s what has allowed it to stay cool.
Avengers Vs. X-Men Is Marvel at Its Simplest and That’s a Good Thing
Avengers Vs. X-Men didn’t win any awards. It didn’t change the landscape of the comic industry — although it led into the Marvel NOW publishing initiative, which has a lot of great books as long as you aren’t a fan of the X-Men, which were put under the control of Bendis. It was just two of comics’ greatest teams smacking each other around for twelve issues. It’s mindless fun, and that’s why it aged so well.
Look, Marvel has beaten the Avengers fighting the X-Men into the ground, as well as just the concept of superheroes fighting superheroes in general. Avengers Vs. X-Men isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, it’s just trying to give readers a fun, action-packed story. It’s the one Marvel event that I can re-read constantly without having to read any other books, and that has made it a go-to. I get the hate against it — I could go into all of the problems with the book — but I think that it holds up way better than a lot of Marvel stories that fans love more.
What do you think about Avengers Vs. X-Men? Sound off in the comments below.
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