Secret Avengers #29: OK, let's start with the obvious. It's a little hard, in the beginning, to follow the story, because you spend so much time thinking, "Isn't Hawkeye a prisoner in Utopia or Limbo (depending on who you ask)?" or "Isn't Black Widow lying in a gutter in Indonesia?" In other words, it's hard to know how to place this issue given that it does its best to avoid mentioning "Avengers vs. X-Men." Did it happen before the event? After it? It's unclear. But, Remender does a pretty good job of making that irrelevant fairly quickly in the issue by throwing us immediately into the matter at hand.
After the occasionally-brilliant-but-mostly-ridiculous Descendants arc, Remender returns to this title's original bad guys, the Shadow Council, and its as-yet-unrevealed (if I'm not mistaken) plans for the Crown of Serpents. Remender uses a number of clever devices here, from using John Steele as our insight into the operations of the Council to creating a sovereign nation that essentially serves as a "Bar with No Name" on a massive scale. Steele has been a compelling character since his debut, so it's sad to see him die here. But, Remender handles it well, and, when Hawkeye eventually realizes that he has also lost Eric O'Grady, it leads you to wonder how the deaths of two members of his team are going to weigh on him. (Speaking of O'Grady, Remender seems to open the door to the possibility that he isn't dead, exactly, though reborn somehow.) But, it's the re-imagined Masters of Evil as a nation that really takes the cake here and makes you quickly forget about that other event. By putting the Council at the head of the Masters of Evil, Remender creates an evil empire that could seriously challenge the Secret Avengers (heck, all the Avengers combined) as they try to determine what exactly the Council plans on doing with not one, not two, but three crowns. But, before we get there, we're apparently going to be treated to a fight between Taskmaster and Venom. I'll admit that I was planning on canceling this arc after "Avengers vs. X-Men" ended and, when I got this issue home and realized that it wasn't a tie-in issue, felt like I had been swindled. But, I loved this issue and can't wait to see where Remender goes from here. How's that for a happy surprise?
X-Men Legacy #271: OK, to be brutally honest, my first thought when reading the first few pages of this issue was, "Really? Lost in space? Again?"
First, before we get started with the issue, I think it's weird that this issue also doesn't focus on "Avengers vs. X-Men." However, I think the decision is all the odder given that we really haven't seen much in the way of the rank-and-file X-Men's response to the advent of the Phoenix Five (then Four, now Two). Act Two of the event has focused almost exclusively on the Five. The main mini-series has dedicated only sporadic moments t0 Magneto, Psylocke, and Storm, generally as a group, and "Uncanny X-Men" has focused on Sinister, almost exclusively. "Wolverine and the X-Men" and "X-Men Legacy" have been the exceptions, but the former has focused on almost too many characters and the latter has focused only on Frenzy and Rogue. How about everyone else? In particular, I feel like Iceman and Rachel have been given short-shrift in this Act. Their defection from the School was a major plot in the tie-in issues associated with Act One. But, in Act Two, they've been essentially been reduced to occasional moments, such as Bobby's three- or four-panel appearance in "Avengers vs. X-Men" #9. Rachel did manage to get an entire issue focused on her, in "Wolverine and the X-Men" #12, but it doesn't explain why she suddenly quit the cause with Bobby, as we saw in "Avengers vs. X-Men" #9. I really think that someone could've showed us that story, to give us a better sense of how the rank-and-file members feel. (I mean, Bobby and Rachel actually aren't really even rank-and file members. How do the New Mutants feel? They were in the first few battles in Act One, but they've disappeared in Act Two. Gambit? He was part of a group conversation with Storm and some other mutants in "Avengers vs. X-Men" #9, but you couldn't even tell which comments were his.) All in all, I can't help but feel like the authors putting together this event missed a serious chance to give us some color commentary about the Phoenix Five from the perspective of their closest allies.
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