Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Valerio Schiti
Color Artist: Federico Blee
Cover Artists: Valerio Schiti & Federico Blee
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Reviewer: StoryBabbler
The Avengers have been through a lot this year, with the Ashen Combine invading Earth, Kang showing up to warn them of “Tribulation Events”, Nightmare and the enigmatic Myrrdin attacking them, and recently the Blood Hunt global vampire attack which ended with Dr. Doom as Sorcerer Supreme. And now they have to deal with the X-Men. Read Avengers #21 to see whether or not the Avengers can catch a break this year.
Review:
Alright, let’s get the obvious out of the way: The cover is a lie! This is not an Avengers versus X-Men book. Not at all. It’s really more of a fun cool-down chapter where it’s the main Avengers and X-Men team hanging out and having dinner together. And for some people, that’s a good thing. For me, I’m not sure. Fair warning, there will be some SPOILERS throughout this review.
As I said earlier, this comic is just the Avengers and X-Men having a fun little get-together. They play a short game of baseball that’s get a little competitive and can go either way until Juggernaut steps up as the pitcher and they lose their last ball. Ending the game in a tie with the only real winner being Juggernaut. After that the teams have dinner, catch up, talk, share life experiences, and by the end they strengthen the bonds between their two teams.
It’s clear what the objective of this comic is: let the Avengers not only have fun but spend time with other superheroes. In this case, the current main X-Men team. To that, I applaud Jed MacKay for that. Admittedly, I have no clue where this will all go if anywhere at all since the main two X-teams are engaged against each other in the whole “Raid on Graymalkin Prison” crossover event. So this can either be setup for the fallout of that event or something later down the line. Or it’s just a bit of fun that won’t go anywhere specifically any time soon.
Now, while some people will love this comic for that alone, I’m not too impressed but I respect the effort. It’s standard fare stuff in cool down comics like this to the point where it’s almost formulaic. There’s not much action (key word is action not fighting), the characters either dance around talking about the big stuff readers want them to discuss or they go all in, there’s a bit of drama that’s immediately squashed in short order. Then by the end, the comic reasserts their shared spirit of camaraderie before shit hits the fan and they inevitably turn on each other in a later story or crossover. All I would like to see come out from this is more consistency in the Avengers and X-Men actually teaming up and fighting bad guys together in later issues or crossovers. That way, I’ll know this issue is more than just a fun disposable one-off comic.
Obviously, there’s plenty of character interactions and some stood out more than others. The first is Magneto and Vision’s brief discussion on his change of heart, Tony and Hank about why the Avengers didn’t stop his dark self, followed up by Storm getting questioned on if she still believes in Xavier’s Dream. And last but not least is the last interaction between the team leaders Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel, and Scott Summers, aka Cyclops saying they’ll be there for each other when things get real. Again, I don’t know if this is just MacKay affirming where these characters stand since he’s writing both the main Avengers and X-Men books, or if he’s directly setting things up for a future crossover event with them. But hopefully something good actually comes of this.
Final Thoughts:
Avengers #21 has the Avengers and X-Men face off…in baseball. Don’t let the cool cover fool you, it’s just a fun little get-together between the Avengers and the X-Men. On the one hand, it’s nice to see the superheroes hanging out and being chummy together a little bit. On the other hand, it could be setup for darker things to come in a future story where they turn on each other, as usual. Hopefully, something more fun and positive comes from this issue and the heroes actually stick together in future stories.