Avengers vs. X-Men #1: Infinite
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Stuart Immonen and Marte Gracia
The short of it:
Nova, who is never identified by a real name, but is 90% not Rich, is flying towards Earth to warn everyone that the Phoenix is coming. Like a space Paul Revere. Really, that’s all that happens here. Nova puts over how time goes away when you go as fast as he does, and then when he gets to Earth we see him trying to not destroy things with no degrees of success. At the end we’re left where we were after Avengers vs. X-Men #1…not knowing who he is, but knowing he brought Phoenix warnings.
What I liked:
- Infinite Comics is an interesting gimmick, and to be fair, I do like it when a digital comic actually takes advantage of the medium. Sure, panel to panel isn’t exactly new, but the transitions in this were smooth as silk.
- Stuart Immonen on art was a great visual way to debut the concept. You can’t go wrong with one of Marvel’s top artists.
- Waid did what he does best and kept the story tight and personal. I might not know Nova’s name, and I may have known he was going to make it, but he made me care that he made it.
- Nova is a Cardinals fan, and I’m going assume he didn’t mean Arizona or Stanford so……GO RED BIRDS!
What I didn’t like:
- Yes, this was free to me since I bought AvX and went online and typed in my code. But really, Marvel should have just made this free in general to gives readers a chance to see just what Marvel is going for.
- I didn’t like that the issue didn’t really seem to go anywhere. I mean, really, if you read Point One and Avengers vs X-Men #1 then you pretty much know what happens here save for the narration.
Final Thoughts:
Anybody else remember when Marvel did Dot Comics? That helped bridge me back into comics back near the end of high school by introducing me to the Ultimate line…which I then proceeded to not care about when I started reading comics again. Come to think of it, I evaded all of those Dot Comics books for a while before finally caving with Ultimates and Ultimate X-Men. To this day I still couldn’t tell you how Bruce Jones’s Hulk ends.
So last I checked Rich Ryder took the entire Nova Force into himself as a way to combat Thanos in the Cancerverse, depowering every single Nova in our galaxy and dumping the power off seemingly for good. Now, we have a new Nova, from Earth, that doesn’t appear to be Rich at all…or selling that he shouldn’t exist. Alternate reality? Writers who didn’t read Abnett and Lanning? Who knows?
I want a browser viewer for these kinds of books, as while I like my iPhone…I would much rather read these things with my MacBook. Maybe I should just buckle down and get a damn tablet already.
So the Phoenix has pretty much just morphed into universal evil and damnation, right? It’s killing every planet it flies past, despite that…that was never the Phoenix’s M.O. Sure, it ate a sun and wiped out a solar system, but I always assumed that to be a one time deal since…there was never any evidence that genocide was Phoenix’s main move. Did it just get generic ultimate villain’d?
Overall: 7/10
