Comic Conversations: Atomic Robo, Avengers vs. X-Men and Spider-Man!

This summer, Marvel's big thing (besides The Avengers movie) is "Avengers vs. X-Men" which, as titles go, is up there with "Snakes on a Plane" for being an exact description for what the story's about.

To be a little more specific, AvsX is about what happens when the Avengers discover that the Phoenix force is coming to Earth and decide it needs to be stopped while the X-Men are ready to welcome it with open arms.

The Phoenix force originally manifested in Jean Grey and it ended up driving her crazy and killing her. The Phoenix itself ate stars on a fairly regular basis so there's a good reason that the Avengers don't want it coming to Earth. On Wednesday the first part of this big story came out...

"Avengers vs X-Men #0"

Scarlet Witch, Avenger. Daughter of Magneto. Story by Brian Michael Bendis

Hope Summers, X-Man. Called the Mutant Messiah. Story by Jason Aaron

Art and cover by Frank Cho

The first story, with Scarlet Witch, starts off magnificently with a fight scene between her, Miss Marvel, and Spider-Woman against MODOK (mental organism designed only for killing) who has the best sidekicks ever including a T. Rex head attached to a missile.

Then things get a little depressing when Scarlet Witch goes back to the Avengers Mansion for the first time since she went crazy a few years ago and sees her husband, the android known as Vision, who tells her she isn't welcome there.

I'm not really up on what's been happening with the Avengers. I've read a few issues here and there but not the ones where Scarlet Witch went crazy and got rid of most of the mutants.

Also, at no point did any of the many Avengers in this story fight any X-Men.

The second story has Hope Summers sneaking out in the middle of the night with Cyclops' jetpack so she can go fight crime. So things seem off to a good start until Cyclops arrives to lecture her. Then she takes off anyway and fights some mutants with snake powers.

So I just took a break from writing this to look up Hope Summers and the Phoenix Force on both Wikipedia and a Marvel Comics Wiki and I don't really know why Hope is called The Mutant Messiah. She was the first mutant born after the mutant population was reduced to a few hundred by Scarlet Witch but from what I gather her back story is a confusion of time travel and alternate futures where maybe she dooms all the mutants.

Also, neither she nor any of the X-Men fight any of the Avengers in that story.

What the heck, I think I'll still pick up issue one when it comes out on Wednesday. The whole series has Marvel's best writers and artists working on it so it's at least worth a look.

More than that, is having an Avengers vs. X-Men launch party from 8 p.m. to midnight Tuesday April 3, to celebrate the release of the first issue so maybe that will give you an indication of how big this is supposed to be. To my recollection, they've only ever done that one other time and that was for the brand new "Justice League" that premiered last August.

"Avenging Spider-Man #5" by Zeb Wells and Leinil Francis Yu

This was a fun issue about what happens when Spider-Man learns that Steve Rogers was a big comic book nerd before he became Captain America. It was sweet seeing Spidey trying to relate to the great Captain America while Cap doesn't really want to remember his nerdy past. This is just what I like to see in comics from time to time, the superheroes team-up to fight crime and then they hang out like friends.

BOOK OF THE WEEK

"Atomic Robo Presents: Real Science Adventures #1"

Six short comics written by Brian Clevinger featuring Allied spies in World War II! A crazy dinosaur! A radioactive robot! Bruce Lee! A crazy wizard! And, best of all, Atomic Robo!

Really, I've talked about Atomic Robo here before and how great it is. Seriously, go to http://www.atomic-robo.com and there you can actually read some Atomic Robo for free and see for yourself.

Plus, they'll have another Free Comic Book Day offering in May and another new series starting in June, "The Flying She-Devils of the Pacific."

All that plus there's a cartoon in the works by The Fictory which looks pretty incredible and I've kicked in some money myself in order to get more Robo.

I think you get the idea.

Next week I'll be headed to Legends of Superheros in Middlebury for the conclusion of Grant Morrison's first story arc in Action Comics, the last issue of "OMAC," "Fatale #4," "Amazing Spider-Man #683" and the real first issue of "Avengers vs. X-Men," which I hope will have some Avengers and X-Men fighting and maybe some explanation about this whole Mutant Messiah thing.