A.X.E.: Avengers #1 Review: A Tired Iron Man Tale Disguised As an Event Tie-in

Marvel’s event of the year has been churning forth ever so slowly with the main title and a legion of single one-shots that each supposedly further the story. When it comes to A.X.E.: Avengers #1, that seems to be the case—even though it takes readers on a slight detour into a tired Iron Man story we’ve seen play out countless times.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the overarching story, a war broke out between the Avengers, X-Men, and Eternals after Druid attacked Krakoa. To settle things and return the world to peacetime, a faction of each group decided to put their heads together and revive the dead Celestial actively being used as the Avengers headquarters. As fate would have it, this was a bad move as the Celestial didn’t turn out to be the good guy this crack team had hoped.

That directly brings us to the events of A.X.E.: Avengers #1, which starts with this team inside the Celestial trying to reverse course. We only get a few pages of the team as a whole before things launch into an Iron Man-centric tale where Tony Stark is forced to relive his past and every time he has previously failed. As with an egomaniac like Iron Man, the whole “woe is me” approach is something we’ve seen countless times before in the character’s source material. There are even a few panels ripped straight from the character’s upbringing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While the event itself has been intriguing with its warring dynamics amongst the various groups, this issue pumps the break so that Tony Stark can lead his own psyche through a round of therapy about the very same topics we’ve seen him battle before. It’s tiring to the point of exhaustiveness, and it adds little—if anything—to the overarching narrative of the event. Federicio Vicentini’s line-art helps lift the issue somewhat, with sharply-angled faces and lively action. Still, the dragging plot weighs heavily enough the whole project suffers as a result.

Published by Marvel Comics

On September 28, 2022

Written by Kieron Gillen

Art by Federico Vicentini

Colors by Dean White

Letters by Cory Petit

Cover by Nic Klein