This summer’s sole big comic crossover begins tomorrow night at midnight as many comic shops will be staying open late to sell the first issue, but is it worth lining up for? DC won’t be doing a major crossover this summer, so it’s up to Bendis and Marvel to deliver epic super hero action.
After last summer’s Fear Itself, I really wasn’t looking forward to any Marvel book anymore. That event was a very poor attempt to shoe-horn both Thor and Captain America into one story to cash-in on both movies being released that summer. It was cheap, felt cheap, and came off as a commercial for the movies that you paid $4 an issue for. As The Avengers is the sole Marvel movie this summer, it’s understandable that they would focus on them for the big crossover, however this time they have a story that fits in with the overall Marvel mythos over the last decade.
If you’ve read X-Men in the last few years, Hope Summer’s story has become a pretty major part of the franchise. The Mutant Messiah has been building up to something pretty big, and this big event will see that come to the Marvel Universe in an epic way and it’ll pit the Avengers and X-Men in a fight to defend both of their ways of life.
The Phoenix Force is headed to Earth, and it’s coming for Hope.
On one side you have Cyclops who sees Hope as the future of the Mutant race and must be protected at all costs. On the other is Captain America and The Avengers who are tasked with protecting the planet from any threat, and the Phoenix Force and its planet devouring flames is a pretty major one. So when Nova returns and warns them that “it” is coming, Iron Man and Captain America go to Wolverine to figure out where it’s headed. Logan tells them there’s only one place it could be going…and we’re off.
The first issue is basically just putting the pieces into place. The Avengers come to Utopia for Hope and Cyclops will protect her no matter what. It ends in a cliffhanger with the Helicarrier floating over Utopia with the full Avengers roster ready to take Hope in a fight, and while it’s a two-week wait for the next issue and you’re left with that cliffhanger, the issue lays out the premise for this epic crossover well enough that you feel like you got your money’s worth.
I have a good feeling about this one. Instead of inventing something to tie into the movie in theaters this summer, Marvel has created an event that feels more like a natural evolution of the overall story that’s been going on in the Mutant books over the last several years. Lets hope it’s more Civil War than Fear Itself.
