This one… this one is a beast. Just months before New Avengers started, Joss Whedon succeeded Grant Morrison as the preeminent X-Men writer. Another “big” Hollywood get for Marvel. At the time, Whedon’s big claim to fame was two modestly successful TV shows. But he was a comics guy, and so was one of the few Hollywood types lured to Marvel in this period who actually cared. His arrival in the X-Office was such a big deal they created a new title for him, Astonishing X-Men, drawn by John Cassaday. 6-ish months later, the New Avengers hit the stands. And now, 8 months laterer, their worlds collide (This issue is published alongside NA 8 despite clearly taking place after #10). Olivier Coipel is back to draw this landmark, largely self-contained event. While it has several tie-ins, most of them are standalone miniseries themselves, and curiously, neither New Avengers or Astonishing X-Men tied into this series despite its dramatic impact on both. This is not the approach they would take to the following year’s crossover, by a longshot. But that’s for later. For now, rising star Coipel is drawing an Avengers/X-Men team-up/showdown for superstar Brian Michael Bendis, and that was pretty exciting news. Comics being comics, everybody knew what this was before it came out, but still, exciting. It’s also noteworthy that not only does inker Tim Townsend get his name on the cover, so does Frank D’Armata. Is this the first Marvel comic to credit the colorist in this fashion? It may be. The practice will become more common eventually. Long overdue. My copy of this book features several pages that were cut wrong at the printer, the top right corner folded over and actually taller and wider than the book when unfolded. I have a couple like this from over the decades, it’s weird. We open in the 1980s, continuity-wise, with the Scarlet Witch giving birth to her beloved children. Except…
Xavier and Magneto are currently in Genosha, I think, a late 80s island stand in for Apartheid South Africa with mutants as the oppressed people and humans as the oppressors. Genosha was eventually freed, once ruled by Magneto, and then I think turned into a wasteland. Xavier and Magneto were kinda hiding out there after Magneto was killed at the end of Grant Morrison’s X-Men and then immediately got better. I don’t know, I didn’t read the stuff after Morrison. So they’ve brought Wanda here to try to help her.
Before Wolverine was revealed to be named James Howlett and not actually Logan in the terrible Origin miniseries, Magneto, who’d always gone by Magnus, was revealed to actually be named Erik Lensherr in the mid-90s, for some reason. And then in 2008, they randomly revealed his REAL name was Max Eisenhardt. I mean what is going on? You know what were cool names? Magnus and Logan. Anyway.
This all seems so silly since they’ve revealed Wanda and Pietro aren’t his kids, aren’t even mutants. It’s certainly not the fault of the decades of material that played off those facts that they were randomly undone to spite 20th Century Fox, but it can’t help but feel silly in retrospect.
Grim times in a grim place. Meanwhile, in New York (I mean, I guess it seems to be daytime in both places even though they’re a world apart), Carol Danvers, Wonder Man and Falcon are all approaching Avengers tower in regular clothes. They let us know the Avengers have summoned old members to their new digs, and that they’re trying to keep their new base a secret as long as possible, so they couldn’t just fly in. And then… the X-Men just fly in in their scifi plane and land on the roof. Whoops. As in the Sentry story, the X-Men for the purposes of this one are the Astonishing team of Cyclops, Emma Frost, Beast, Kitty Pryde, Wolverine and Colossus, recently revealed to be less dead than advertised after succumbing to the so-called Legacy Virus in the 90s (It was mutant AIDS. Sometimes the metaphors are not subtle!). Hank is very impressed by the new Quinjet model as they land. Inside, they find the Avengers, the previously seen former Avengers, Yellowjacket, Wasp, Dr. Strange, She-Hulk and Professor X, who the X-Men have recently had a serious falling out with, which is why he’s holed up in Genosha with Magnus/Erik/Max. But this is bigger than that, as Xavier says they’re all here to decide the fate of Wanda Maximoff. Back in Genosha…
The fact that she can completely remake reality and is losin’ it is pretty bad. Back in New York, Emma says they should put Wanda down. Spider-Man objects to talking about her like a dog as Cap says there’s always another way. Logan disagrees, Wonder Man agrees. Emma asks Chuck if he could help her.
Now, not wanting to kill someone is pretty normal for most superheroes, but Bendis has a weird plan for Wonder Man, and this reads a certain way in retrospect. So, the whole gang flies to the burnt out husk of Genosha, and when they arrive, Wanda, Pietro and Magneto are all gone. And as everyone reacts, Professor X disappears, too. Emma gets a fix on Wanda.
And thus, it’s game on. Spider-Man being involved in this sort of thing is pretty unusual, and to use him as the POV as we enter a remade reality really makes that more obvious. What’s going on? We’ll learn more next issue.