Axis #6 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

When will this long national nightmare end?  [Sigh.]  We have a number of problems here, but I'll group them together to try to make it seem like I'm not just randomly listing complaints.

First, it's still unclear why we care about where Remender is taking us.  I'll admit that my "enjoyment" of this series isn't helped by the fact that I'm currently reading Boom! Studios' "Irredeemable" for the first time.  Waid did such an amazing job of creating a world in that series, one where a superhero becomes a super-villain, that it's hard not to see this event as anything other than a pale shadow of it.  In Waid's story, the drama comes from the fact that the Plutonian is, as the title implies, "irredeemable."  Although I'm not entirely sure how the series is going to end, it's pretty clear that it's not going to involve everyone just shrugging and saying that it was understandable that he killed a few million people.  However, this series has the air of forgettability to it.  It'll either be ret-conned by the end like "Age of Ultron" or it'll be forgotten like "Secret Invasion."  Thor is unlikely to go to jail for robbing a casino, Tony Stark is unlikely to have Stark Industries permanently taken from him as a result of releasing the dangerous Extremis app onto the market, and the X-Men are unlikely to face charges for invading Manhattan.  In other words, the changes to the Marvel Universe would be so legion if the heroes faced consequences for their actions here that it's clear that they're not going to face them.  Again, it raises the question of why we care about anything happening here.

Moreover, we've been down the road of "inversions" (if not mystical ones) so many times already, including with some of the characters here, that it's lost its meaning.  Rogue and Wanda as villains, Magneto and Sabretooth as heroes:  we're not talking about anything new.

Another problem with this series is that it's starting to feel like "Age of Ultron" in the sense that we've drifted far from the premise of the event.  It's not like this series was called "Age of Red Onslaught" or anything, but it's odd that we no longer even seem to care about the Red Skull.  All of a sudden, we've got Apocalypse establishing the "Age of Apocalypse" and the Avengers becoming fascist overlords.  Who knows what we're going to see happen in the next chapter?  The "Age of Wanda?"  That prospect should be exciting, but it's just not.  It feel like we're just cycling through plots and villains like we're playing "Street Fighter."

With only six issues left, I'm just not really sure if it's possible for Remender to give us an ending to redeem this one.

* (one of five stars)