To set up this comic you have to know what has happened in the Marvel world previously. Under the Phoenix influence, Cyclops killed Charles Xavier making him hated by everyone. The Avengers Unity Squad (A mix of Avengers and X-Men) went to war with Red Skull who had Charles's brain and was using it to create a war between mutants and humans. He escaped capture and began to collect mutants and imprisoned them in a camp. Magneto was there and when freed he went against the wishes of the Avengers and killed Red Skull. This backfired and created Red Onslaught.

The Avengers are fighting Plant Man (yeah, he's as pathetic as his name) when they suddenly start fighting each other. Except for Iron Man, because Iron Man has a built-in psychic wave protector in his suit. He cannot be manipulated mentally. So he adjusts the frequency of it and projects it to affect the other Avengers in order to get them to stop fighting themselves. He also fixes it so it covers the city of Los Angles, but when he finds out that it's a global phenomenon he realizes it would take him days or a week to come up with a fix for the entire planet and meanwhile the entire planet is fighting each other and it's only a matter of time before someone kills someone else. Steve Rogers figures out that it's Red Onslaught and they hunt him down. Some superheroes go to fight him while others stay behind to put out fires around the world.

Red Onslaught has a surprise for them. While Tony was asleep he had him make two Sentinels made of adamantium that are uploaded with the weaknesses of every superhero he has ever come into contact with and how to beat them. A file Tony has secretly kept for years on his computer. The Sentinels start knocking out heroes, but Rogue, while attached to Scarlet Witch who Red Onslaught is trying to absorb, sees that a part of Charles is still inside there. The plan becomes to have Scarlett Witch and Dr. Strange work two types of magic in order to switch the consciousnesses of Red Onslaught with Charles so he can be shut down from causing worldwide destruction.

This is easier said than done as one by one of the good guys go down. But Magneto who slipped away comes back with reinforcements that Stark didn't count on. If they can survive this day nothing will be the same for the Avengers or the X-Men or others who were on Genosha that day. It will be up to Spiderman and Steve Rogers with some unlikely help to right the world again. This comic is as amazing as Spiderman. And the dialogue is true to the characters and when you have characters such as Spiderman, Ironman, and Deadpool for starters the language gets pretty snappy and funny. A great deal of this comic is fighting and the artists really go to town showing it in glorious grim detail. I really loved this comic. It had a fabulous storyline and a million characters that you know and love. I cannot recommend it enough. ( )

I was eager to read Axis because the idea behind it, heroes and villains having their base alignment reversed, sounded intriguing. However, in execution, it wasn’t as exciting as I hoped.

The Red Skull/Onslaught is so dangerous that even a cadre of villains shows up to help the heroes defeat him (because they’re not going to let him rule if they can’t!). A spell cast during that battle goes wrong, leaving everyone…confused. The change of alignment (heroes turning bad, and villains turning good) isn’t instantaneous and the initial build-up is very good. I loved how Tony Stark was handled, in particular. His actions are insidious, and somehow right in line with his character. But everyone else just suddenly became selfish to a murderous degree. There is little to differentiate each villainous hero from another - the way that the supervillains stand apart from one another in the normal continuity. Further, Axis only affects the heroes and villains involved in the battle. This was a bit of a letdown for me because it meant there were still “real heroes” left to fix the problem.

The best part of the story are the villains who are suddenly good. They were far more interesting than the heroes, but had very little screen time. The realization that they perhaps didn’t want to go back to being villains, but had to for the greater good, was a concept that deserved so much more!

Overall, this was a fun read but not sufficiently fleshed out. And this hardcover release is way overpriced for the amount of material collected within. Cautiously recommended. ( )

In an attempt to defeat the Red Skull who now has Charles Xavier's skills those who are there are flipped psychically and the good become bad and the bad become good. Entertaining to see people whose moral compass has flipped. ( )

Unlike othersI enjoyed this book. It was at times confusing. In this universe Wolverine is dead and Professor X's consciousness has been taken over by the Red Skull.The X-men and the Avengers are fighting over who will control the defeated Red Skull. Captured but not defeated the Red Skull continues to make plans toto take over the world by use of telepathy and bending the heroes mind into doing evil. How this all plays out is the stuff of the book. ( )

It would seem there is a lot of dislike for this series out there, and I even thought it seemed a little blasé at first, but as the series progressed I found I was enjoying it more and more (which to me seems fitting, as most liked the opening acts and then found the closing act to be tedious, while I'm on the other end of the spectrum, much like the theme of the storyline itself). There was quite a bit that I found off and very forced with how the story starts (you can read my thoughts on the prelude here), so I was happy to see how much all of that actually came together to create a story that I liked.



Basically, the Red Skull has fused part the brain of the deceased Charles Xavier to his own brain, because he really dislikes mutants, so he's going to use a mutant's power to make everybody else hate mutants too. Magneto has had enough of his shenanigans and drops a brick on Red Skull's head, killing him. Except this doesn't kill him, it causes the birth of the Red Onslaught, a mash-up of Red Skull and Onslaught. It turns out, tho, that Xavier is still in there fighting to keep Red Onslaught in check, so the Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange think if they can reverse the good/evil polarity of Red Onslaught they can suppress the Red Skull and let Xavier take over, thus ending the fight. This would make for a very short story if that actually happened, and of course things go wrong, so instead of just switching the axis of the good/bad for Red Onslaught, it also happens to several of the heroes and villains present, so that basically all the good guys are now bad, and the bad guys good. I think this is where a lot of people didn't like where things went, but this is actually what saved the series for me; I found it wildly interesting to see how Remender played on how each of the characters would behave if their roles in the Marvel Universe were suddenly reversed, and how those that weren't affected by the axis shift would deal with the situation. Of course, everything works its way back to normal for our cast of characters (or does it?!) and everybody continues then to move forward to the Time Runs Out storyline and the impending Secret Wars.

Fairly solid story from Remender, and the art is good, if seeming a little rushed. This has been something that I've noticed lately: when there was only one big event per year, the art was fantastic. You can tell that there was some time taken on all aspects of the art to really make it stand out (House of M is usually my go-to source for this example - I really think the art is gorgeous in that story and an example of using extraordinarily art to really amplify a great story.). Yet, largely when we've seen more and more Event type stories piled on one another, I think the art is being rushed and it's beginning to show. For example, here we have four artists working on this one series (Adam Kubert, Leinil Francis Yu, Terry Dodson, & Jim Cheung), and while their work is good and fairly consistent with their normal style, to me, it doesn't seem nearly as clean or refined as I know these artists can be. (Dodson being the exception here, as I didn't feel his style lent anything to this story at all - it's a little too cartoonish for my liking, especially when it does feel like he was rushed a little.) Personally, I'd like to see the big Events being handled by one artist, who is given enough time to truly let their talent shine through. I'm curious to see how the main Secret Wars series will look when all is said and done.

Overall, not necessarily a story that has to be read for the bigger picture of the Marvel Universe, but one that I still enjoyed all the same. ( )