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Avengers and X-Men: Axis #4: Review

Nov 2014
Rick Remender, Leinil Francis Yu

Story Name:

Altered Beast: Inversion, Chapter 1

Review & Comments

Rating:
4 stars

Avengers and X-Men: Axis #4 Review by (November 8, 2014)
Review: Ah… after three issues of just watching heroes fight a powerful (semi-)new villain we finally get to something interesting. The good guys are turning bad, the bad guys are turning good (and I guess the neutral ones are breaking even). This is where the series should have started and maybe flashed back to the Red Onslaught battle. It starts off intriguingly with Captain America (the Falcon one) and Nick Fury (the other new one) conversing and sounding a bit out of character—until Cap slugs Fury and storms out. The changes come in rapid succession: Carnage catches criminals with a minimum of violence, Tony Stark unleashes Extremis (though since Civil War Bad Tony and Normal Tony look too much alike), the X-Men prepare for war against the human race, the Avengers plot to execute the Red Skull—and, as a nice touch, Hulk is the voice of reason. It’s all handled nicely and I can’t wait to see what happens next—I hope don’t muck it up.

Comments: Kluh is a genetically altered version of Hulk, created by Xemnu to fight the real Hulk in HULK (2008 series) #30. This doesn’t seem to be him as Kluh was sent back to where he came from; here Kluh is a new form of the familiar Hulk.


Avengers and X-Men: Axis #4 Review by (November 8, 2014)
The tie-ins continue to be split between World War Hate and its aftermath:- ALL-NEW X-FACTOR #16 is still back in the World War Hate of Axis #1-3. Continuing the story from last issue, the team hide in a forcefield to keep human-controlled Sentinels from getting the nuclear football. And continue their own subplots. AXIS: REVOLUTIONS #1 has 2 stories set in World War Hate, as 2 heroes deal with the chaos in New York. Spider-Man seems fairly immune to Red Onslaught's hate thoughts, but Dr Strange finds them hard to resist. Later in AXIS: CARNAGE #1, another villain is turned good(ish) by the ending of Axis #3. But Carnage discovers it's not easy being a hero when your experience and skills are the opposite. AXIS: HOBGOBLIN #2 and CAPTAIN AMERICA & MIGHTY AVENGERS #1 are delayed until next week.

Spider-Man wasn't on Genosha in #1-3 which his why he hasn't been inverted from good to bad. (And why he could be in New York during World War Hate in Revolutions #1 below. The Dr Strange part of that issue must be before he joins the fight at the end of Axis #1.) Nova *was* there but he got batted a long way away by a giant Sentinel on #2, so he wasn't there for the inversion. Hulk *was* there at the end, and the inversion seems to have initially made him stupid - he speaks like Bizarro, eg "Jarvis good friend. Him right." The change to Kluh is a late-manifesting effect.




 

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Avengers and X-Men: Axis #4 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

Two weeks after the defeat of Red Onslaught, Captain America (Sam Wilson) and Hulk meet with Nick Fury (Jr.) and Maria Hill aboard the Helicarrier to talk over the next steps in recovery. Hill demands that the Avengers turn over the powerless Red Skull to them; Cap refuses. Tempers flare, Cap slugs Fury and stomps out with the Hulk in tow….

In Brooklyn, the Squid and his gang are holed up in a house surrounded by police after a botched robbery. They plan to kill the hostages but suddenly Carnage crashes in…. When Spider-Man arrives and learns who is in the house, he rushes in and is surprised to find the mad symbiote gone, the baddies bound, the hostages unharmed, and a note from "your friendly neighborhood Carnage"….

Iron Man jets down just before a game at Giants Stadium in San Francisco. Tony announces that he has downloaded the Extremis virus on everyone’s smart phones for free and they can now achieve their perfects lives. He then celebrates with a glass of champagne….

At the Jean Grey School, Storm and Havok address the entire student body, calling for mutants to stop fighting among themselves and join forces to go to war against the real enemy—the human race—with Apocalypse as the new leader….

At Avengers Tower, the heroes, knowing that the X-Men will be coming for the Skull, plot to kill him to keep him out of their hands. When they arrive at the cell, their faithful butler Jarvis tries to talk sense into them but the Scarlet Witch casts him aside with a spell. Hulk stands up to his comrades but Luke Cage punches him out. The saddened Hulk transforms into a bigger, meaner, blacker Hulk called Kluh, slaps them around for not being rotten enough, and crashes out, ready to go on an orgy of destruction. And then they discover that the Red Skull has escaped….


Preview Pages
Click sample interior pages to enlarge them:




Leinil Francis Yu
Gerry Alanguilan
Edgar Delgado
Jim Cheung (Cover Penciler)
Jim Cheung (Cover Inker)
Justin Ponsor (Cover Colorist)
Letterer: Chris Eliopoulos.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Captain America
Captain America

(Sam Wilson)
Captain America
Captain America

(Steve Rogers)
Colossus
Colossus

(Piotr Rasputin)
Cyclops
Cyclops

(Scott Summers)
Hulk
Hulk

(Bruce Banner)
Iron Man
Iron Man

(Tony Stark)
Jarvis
Jarvis

(Edwin Jarvis)
Kitty Pryde
Kitty Pryde

(Kate Pryde)
Luke Cage
Luke Cage

(Power Man)
Nick Fury Jr.
Nick Fury Jr.

(Marcus Johnson)
Nightcrawler
Nightcrawler

(Kurt Wagner)
Red Skull
Red Skull

(Johann Shmidt)
Rogue
Rogue

(Anna Marie LeBeau)
Scarlet Witch
Scarlet Witch

(Wanda Maximoff)
Spider-Man
Spider-Man

(Peter Parker)
Storm
Storm

(Ororo Munroe)
Thor
Thor

(Odinson)
Wasp
Wasp

(Janet Van Dyne)

Plus: Genesis, Havok (Alex Summers), Idie Okonkwo, Kid Omega (Quentin Quire).

> Avengers and X-Men: Axis: Book info and issue index

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