A.X.E.: Judgment Day #6 Review: An Event Worthy of a Thumbs Up

I was initially skeptical of what A.X.E.: Judgment Day had to offer; here, at the end, I'm glad to admit my error in judgment as the final issue places Judgment Day into consideration as one of Marvel Comics' very best events. While the final issue shows the familiar strains that come with these sorts of miniseries—an impressive array of publications across slightly more than 3 months, including 6 titanic issues from a mostly-consistent creative team—it provides an appropriately thrilling climax and poignant denouement that draw the entire affair to a fitting close. It's an impressively ambitious affair, especially when one considers that it's using superheroes to contemplate the problem of evil and man's value in an era of decline.

The weighty thematic notes of the story are infused into the action as the issue intertwines exposition and dialogue into the momentum shifts of combat. Much of the issue unfolds as a countdown to the moment when the Progenitor succeeds in annihilating Earth, and nearly every panel manages to pull triple duty in addressing suspense, character, and theme. This is hardly the first time writer Kieron Gillen has pulled off such deft balancing acts, but it is one of the most impressive efforts as dialogue is sometimes made every bit as astonishing as Mjolnir's mightiest blows.

All of this is made effective by careful character selection split between two teams to provide plenty of perspectives and regular narrative shifts throughout the issue. In the threeway alliance made between humanity, mutants, and Eternals, Judgment Day #6 provides a spotlight to individual heroes from each species, although it's the Eternals who are most noticeably changed in the finale (mutants simply retaining their radical revisions from issue #1).

The final deployment of a hexagon of humans—presenting their final statuses in contrast to where they began—is a sentimental affair, but one that possesses enough nuance to provide an honest assessment of the human condition. There's abundant space for readers to find themselves in the final issue, but it ultimately does not allow for humans to be deemed a net good. It reads something closer to "Needs Immediate Improvement."

While that couldn't be said for any aspect of this issue, there are the apparent flaws that come with the crunch of an event series. Shifts in artistic style make it clear that emphasis was placed on specific pages to meet the very high standards set by Valerio Schiti and Marte Gracia at the very start. The Progenitor's first appearance is simply stunning, which makes some of the pages that follow jarring, although they remain pleasant to the eye – loss of depth and detail plague some pages.

Considered in its totality, A.X.E.: Judgment Day is one of the most striking event series in Marvel history. Schiti and Gracia's work display a tremendous breadth of vision filled with characters and stunning splashes that serve just as well to capture the tense character dynamics and stirring appeals to the human spirit running throughout it all. There's ambition and complexity throughout a story that reinvents itself on multiple occasions, but only to better serve the core concept of questioning how we judge the world. There may be no perfect answers, but A.X.E. posed the question to readers brilliantly.

Published by Marvel Comics

On October 26, 2022

Written by Kieron Gillen

Art by Valerio Schiti with Ivan Fiorelli

Colors by Marte Gracia

Letters by Clayton Cowles

Cover by

Mark Brooks