This is the exact opposite of AVX vs. While that was a mini-series where each issue had two fights between an Avenger and an X-Men character, this has two team-ups between an Avenger and an X-Man. Both team ups can go pretty much anywhere in continuity, so you don’t have to read anything else to know what’s going on. The two team ups here are Cable and Captain America, and Hulk and Wolverine. I’ll talk about each fight separately.
The first team up takes place in World War 2, where Captain America and Bucky are trying to stop a mysterious ally of Hitler’s from planting a Sentinel into the ground. Cable time travels to the location and opens fire immediately. What follows is a rather entertaining fight scene with the three of them vs. a sentinel and a small group of heavy Nazi soldiers. Dan Slott writes both characters well, both during and after the fight. This team up is very appropriate considering both characters are soldiers above all else, and in his future Cable actually used Captain America’s shield at times. Of the two fight scenes in issue 1, this is the better one.
The second fight takes place sometime after AVX. The Incredible Hulk is staying at the Avengers mansion – maybe that will be explained in the near future. Either way, this issue starts with a bizarre scene where Wolverine and the Hulk are arguing over the last piece of cake in the fridge. Before long, an older version of both characters time-travel into the kitchen, and there’s a fight between the present and future versions of the two. Apparently Wolverine and Hulk were sent back to kill the Red Hulk – this is the second time in my memory where Jeph Loeb has hinted at the Red Hulk dying in the near future (the other was in Avengers X-Sanction). Take from that what you will, personally I don’t care about Red Hulk. This fight can be read in less than two minutes – there’s very little substance here, but that’s not to say that it isn’t at least entertaining.
The art is fairly good in both stories, no further comments on that front.
This is an entertaining issue, but it’s not really worth the $4 price tag. It’s fun and it doesn’t rely too much on continuity, but it feels kind of pointless in the grand scheme of things. If you want a comic with two different A+X team ups, this might be worth checking out, but I won’t quite recommend it. I probably won’t get anything from this series after issue 2, unless it has a team up I’m very interested in.
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Jeff Parker has completely rehabilitated Red Hulk as a character, so I actually do like him now. Rulk sucked back when Loeb wrote him, but Parker made Red Hulk great. The Hulk/Wolverine story was a case of Loeb being too ambitious. He had a really good story, but not enough space to tell it, so it all feels really random. He needed a full issue to tell this story.
The Cable/Cap story was OK. It was fun.
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Not too sure about Jeph Loeb needing a full issue for his story. Lately, he seems to not use his space wisely.Too many short dialogue bubbles that do little to advance the story. I’ve recently read some of his earlier Cable work in the mid 90’s, he used to be better with using the space that he had to tell a complete story. Now, even when he’s entertaining his work just feels lazy.
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Well, yeah, he’s sucked for a long time. But his Nova short in the Point One was solid. And I feel like there was a great story here that just couldn’t be told in such limited space, even by a great writer. I don’t know where he’ll be getting back to the story set up in this, but I’m actually kinda intrigued. As long as he doesn’t have Red Hulk go back to his Rulk days of easily beating anyone, and punching the frigging Watcher. (Parker’s retcon that the Watcher allowed himself to be punched as part of a plan to save the Earth was masterful.)
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