Scanned Thoughts: Uncanny Avengers #3

Every now and then, I go to a movie that I don’t understand or Google just to see if I can keep up. I guess I like to keep my fucked up tastes refined to some extent. Sometimes I find something really awesome. That’s how I saw the Matrix for the first time. That and a buddy of mine watched it stoned and swore it was the best thing ever, but that’s another story. But more often than not, I get halfway through the movie and wondering out loud, “Where the fuck is this going and why the fuck didn’t I sneak more beer in here?” Sometimes that gets me thrown out, but other times that makes a few new friends. That’s sort of how I feel about Uncanny Avengers right now.

This new series that spun out of the events of AXIS has been more chaotic than a field trip of pre-schoolers to a candy factory. It had a simple premise. The Maximoff twins wanted to hunt down the High Evolutionary to learn about who their real father was. It didn’t take too long for someone get drunk and drive completely off-road because it’s been tumbling and stumbling like a drunk who just stole a motorcycle. It’s still somewhat coherent, but it’s not very concise. I want to give it a chance to do something meaningful, but it’s getting to the point where even a lazy traffic cop would pull it over. I’m still going to give Uncanny Avengers #3 a fair shot, but I’m keeping my fucking seat belt on.

I probably should’ve worn looser pants as well because this issue involves what I can only describe as robot sex. And no, I’m not talking about the kind that involves the Terminator porn parody. Like everyone else in the Uncanny Avengers, Vision got separated from the team. But luckily for him, he ended up with a hot sexy robot version of himself. I guess it was love at first interface because they start hooking up in ways that I’m sure other robots would jerk off to if they had the right equipment. Vision describes it using romantic language that would give lonely housewives a pussy boner. I’m not sure if Marvel is trying to cash in on the 50 Shades of Grey crowd, but it’s a bit late to the party.

That’s not to say there’s more to this than inducing pussy boners. Vision has apparently completely forgotten about the team’s mission and the former lover he came to Counter-Earth to save. Now he’s busy making cute robot babies for the High Evolutionary. Never one to pass up a new potential life form, the High Evolutionary shrugs off the fact that Vision kept this from him and is probably in the process of screwing him over. But he got some robot poon out of it so he wins either way. It’s really not clear what this scene is intended to do other than appeal to those with a robot fetish. I won’t say it succeeds, but I can’t say it fails either.

The unanswered questions with Vision continue with more unanswered questions regarding Rogue. She’s still being kept prisoner by some creep old guy obsessed with her powers. He apparently thinks that her powers and sexy southern accent will help create the ultimate soldier. I’m not sure I get that logic unless all life has an inherent weakness for sexy southern accents and last I checked, the South lost the Civil War so I’m not buying it. All this creepy old guy does is keep Rogue from doing anything meaningful.

Between Vision shrugging off his old team in favor of a hot robot woman and Rogue being rendered useless by some creepy guy who looks like a vulture fucked a priest, there really isn’t much to go on here. The unanswered questions only help continue the overly choppy narrative that has plagued this series from the beginning. I get that the team got split up, but how the fuck is this supposed to move the story forward? If someone with ADHD read this, they would probably worry about upping their meds.

That’s not to say there isn’t a meaningful story to tell here. It’s just that pretty much every character in the Uncanny Avengers doesn’t do jack shit to advance it. The only ones who do help move it forward are Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Since they’re the ones that triggered this shit storm by going to Counter-Earth in the first place, that’s both understandable and appropriate. And they do actually uncover something meaningful.

After the High Evolutionary flexed his genocidal rage-boner, the Maximoff twins track down some of the creations that managed to escape his wrath. With help from a new ally who goes by the Low Evolutionary, he leads them to a refugee area where the High Evolutionary’s failures live like homeless crack addicts in downtown Detroit. It’s a sad sight, but one the Maximoff twins are familiar with so it strikes the right emotional chord. It gives them even more incentive to beat the answers about their parents out of the High Evolutionary, amongst other things.

As for the Low Evolutionary himself, he’s somewhat intriguing. However, he’s still poorly developed. He’s basically the High Evolutionary’s son who decided not to be the same dick-cheese as his father. He’s basically Eminem, minus the music. He doesn’t have his father’s charisma, brilliance, or respect. But he does have an incentive to help Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch so that makes him relevant. It just doesn’t make him much more than that. He wants to attack his father and channel his inner Luke Skywalker. Bug given what the High Evolutionary has shown thus far, he’ll probably lose more than a hand.

The Low Evolutionary still ends up contributing way more than the Uncanny Avengers, which is pretty fucking pathetic. Even so, it puts Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch on the right track. They just have to help the Low Evolutionary piss off his father, which isn’t as hard as it sounds. They’re tasked with taking out the High Evolutionary’s new tracking mechanism that’s being used to hunt them down. They’ve been pissing off authority figures for most of their existence. This should come naturally do them.

As they go about this mission, there is some discussion about Magneto and their family history. It’s still very light and very under-developed. The emotions surrounding this huge revelation about who they are and where they came from are basically shrugged off. They shrug it off the same way Snooki shrugs off an anal wart. I get that there’s an ongoing conflict involving the High Evolutionary and a bunch of innocent beings he’s trying to slaughter, but glossing over this part of the story is like glossing over Pamela Anderson’s tits in a photo shoot.

Callousness aside, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch do eventually find what they’re looking for. That tracking mechanism the Low Evolutionary mentioned is actually pretty familiar. It’s Sabretooth, who the High Evolutionary decided to mind-fuck into working for him. The saddest part is this is probably the most anyone in the Uncanny Avengers actually contributes to the story. That’s not saying much because Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch make quick work of him. He’s Sabretooth. He’s been getting his ass kicked by X-men and others like the X-men since the Reagan Administration. It still hasn’t gotten old though so I won’t deny I enjoyed it.

However, the next challenge they face is a lot trickier than pwning Wolverine’s old scratching post. Her name is Luminous and she was revealed in the last issue to be Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch’s long lost sibling. She’s got Quicksilver’s hair, the Scarlet Witch’s rack, and the High Evolutionary’s douche-bag attitude. Overall, that’s makes her a pretty daunting threat and she proves it.

She ends up being the most entertaining part of this issue with how she takes down Quicksilver and looks downright bored while doing it. He’s fast, but she’s able to counter him with some speed of her own. She barely even moves from where she’s standing. She just lets Quicksilver make an ass of himself and lets her fist do the rest. As much as I enjoy watching Sabretooth get his ass kicked, I admit I enjoy seeing Quicksilver get his ass kicked almost as much.

The battle against the Scarlet Witch is much more volatile. There’s a lot of firepower involved, but it’s the kind that stoners everywhere will appreciate. Luminous demonstrates that like the Scarlet Witch, she can wield chaos magic as well. But unlike the Scarlet Witch, she can actually control it in a way that won’t lead to mass genocide or inversions. I’m almost conflicted on who to root for because the Scarlet Witch has done a lot of bad shit over the past decade and somehow nobody really blames her for it. She’s not Quicksilver or Sabretooth, but I admit she’s due an ass-kicking and that’s what Luminous gives her.

The action here is fairly solid and I haven’t been able to say that very much about this series since it began. It’s been so choppy and disorganized that there hasn’t been many enjoyable battles that aren’t horribly one-sided and/or involve the High Evolutionary committing mass genocide. It still feels disorganized in that only the Maximoff twins get to do anything relevant. That doesn’t make the battle against Luminous any less solid. It’s probably the most enjoyable battle this series has offered to date, which isn’t saying much.

After the Maximoff twins are defeated, Luminous casually traps Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch so she can take them to the High Evolutionary. She even hints that he’s their real father. She also hints that the truth will destroy them. But then again, that could be subject to retcons as well. The only thing to take away from this moment is that Luminous is really badass and she’s got an awesome rack. She would’ve made an excellent bond girl in Goldfinger. Given how little effort she needed to take down the Maximoff twins, I don’t think James Bond’s dick would stand a chance.

And while Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are enjoying this family reunion with their sister, they fail to notice that Sabretooth recovered enough to do his job. He was then able to track down the Low Evolutionary’s headquarters like a good, obedient pet that only occasionally makes a mess on the carpet. So now the High Evolutionary has neutralized the Maximoff twins and he knows where to find what’s left of his failed experiments. By all accounts, he’s doing pretty damn good. He sends out his hit team to finish the job so he can prepare to make the Maximoff twins more miserable than they already are. Even if every other character has it rough in this series, it’s safe to say the High Evolutionary is really enjoying himself.

This series was already playing with a bad hand before it even began. The whole concept of retconning Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch’s lineage already kicked a shit storm whose stench this series could not escape. That alone made it hard to enjoy. But it sure as shit doesn’t help when the narrative remains disorganized and choppy. There are more than one sub-plots unfolding and only one of them gets any meaningful development. Granted, that development leads to a pretty meaningful battle that offers some tantalizing hints at what the Maximoff Twins are up against. But that’s really all it offers.

I guess the best thing this issue can offer is it didn’t make any of its lingering flaws any worse. Sure, that’s like saying someone didn’t shoot themselves more times than they already had, but it’s still a flawed and uneven narrative. It just isn’t any worse than it was before. There’s still a story worth telling here, but that story is slow as fuck and most of the characters in the Uncanny Avengers aren’t contributing jack shit to it. I won’t say this series did anything overly egregious. I won’t deny the battle between the Maximoff twins and their long lost sister wasn’t good. It just wasn’t much better than that. I give Uncanny Avengers #3 a 6 out of 10. It’s good, but it’s starting to drag. If someone doesn’t do something meaningful, they should just sit on the bench or run for Congress. That way everybody will be more comfortable. Nuff said!

Uncanny Avengers #3 - Mind Fucking Awesome

I often roll my eyes at the conspiracy theorists that smoke way too much weed and think that the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and the Lizard people secretly run the world. There are just some people that refuse to accept the fact that the world is so boring and inept that the very notion of ruling it is both absurd and an obscene waste of energy. But make no mistake. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would love to rule the world. I'm positive that men like Rupert Murdoch, Glenn Beck, and Pat Roberston masturbate to thoughts of being worshiped like gods while they laugh gleefully as everybody they don't like is horribly tortured in front of them. But they know they'll never have that kind of power in an age where every possible leak that can be condensed into 140 characters will be blared all over the world within seconds.

In the world of Marvel comics, however, ruling the world isn't just possible. It's actually pretty easy if you've got a strong stomach, a massive ego, and way too much free time. This is a world where minds can be controlled, governments can somehow pay for floating helicarriers and killer robots, and the public doesn't go nuts when major cities are attacked and destroyed at least once a month. It's a world where a guy as ruthless as the Red Skull are among the most dangerous villains in the Marvel universe and in the post Avengers vs. X-men world, he's essentially a pit-bull roaming a country of sick kittens.

In the pages of Uncanny Avengers, the Red Skull has already proven how sadistic he's willing to be. He didn't just exhume Charles Xavier's dead body, cut out his brain, and probably jerk off into his rotting flesh for good measure. He actually merged his brain with Xavier's so that he has the powers of the world's most advanced telepath. With that power, he could mind-fuck the likes of Rogue and the Scarlet Witch. With that kind of power he could both make the universe's most awesome lesbian porn and create another M-Day. This way he can conquer the world in a nice, clean, efficient manner. It's basically the kind of plan that Hitler only fantasized about when he wasn't fantasizing about Benito Mussolini going down on him.

It's a twisted, yet dire conflict for this new brand of Avengers that Rick Remender has set up as a bold new partnership for the X-men and Avengers. It has also been billed as one of Marvel's most hyped books. Yet after two issues and some fucking annoying delays, it's been a difficult book to get excited about. The events in this book have barely been mentioned in the other Marvel NOW! books. It started off as a story that takes place directly after the events of Avengers vs. X-men. Now given the microscopic scale of the modern attention spans for most readers, it's starting to come off as one of those books that doesn't fit into anything. Like a pervert at a panty factory, it's just there without contributing much.

But now that Uncanny Avengers #3 is out, the story can finally move forward and maybe...just maybe we can see it tie into the greater Marvel NOW! universe. It would be hard not to acknowledge an event that involves the Red freakin’ Skull coming back from the dead armed with Charles Xavier’s telepathy. At the end of the previous issue, he mind fucked Rogue and the Scarlet Witch just before they were about to puke and/or shit themselves after seeing Charles Xavier’s dead, brainless body. Now he’s got them under his control and he’s using that same power to mind-fuck all of New York City. There’s actually some nice narration from Rick Remender, which is something we didn’t really see in the previous two issues. It seems bland, but it adds more detail into what the Red Skull is doing. It’s basic, essentially using his telepathy to turn average people into minority-hating, blood-thirsty, sociopaths. It’s basically doing what the Vatican, Fox News, and every governor of Texas that ever lived wished they could do.

Seeing weak-minded civilians get caught up in a blood-soaked hate-fest is nothing new. Hell, we see it every time the Lakers win the championship. But Rick Remender actually does something unique here in that he uses that narration I mentioned to describe some of the attackers and the victims. It’s not much. He basically just gives a short blurb about characters like a woman who just recently woke up a mutant and had powers that made her eyes look like she just saw her parents in a bukake video. Yet it’s still enough to make you actually give a damn about them and what’s happening to them. If you don’t, then you’re probably a sociopath and should go back to dissecting small animals in your basement.

Having already had to clean up a mess in New York City with Avalanche’s lobotomy-driven rampage, the Uncanny Avengers are quick to the scene. It also marks the first time Alex Summers is taking charge of the team. While I completely disagree with Captain America’s decision on the basis of him being a raging douche-bag who was demonstrably full of shit in the first issue, he does indicate that he inherited some of his brother’s competence despite not inheriting his ability to soak the panties of female telepaths. He orders the team to protect the civilians, which at this point are just beating the shit out of innocent people with the same candor that they would probably use to tell someone to fuck off on a message board. Yeah, it’s that bad.

But it isn’t just deranged civilians that the Uncanny Avengers have to face. The Red Skull is neither stupid nor lazy enough to think that he can win a battle without at least some team of genetically impure beings that Hitler would probably not approve of. We saw them in the previous issues and they’re basically the kind of shit guys like Zola and Sinister do on a weekend. One of them is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle rip-off named Crooked Emerald. He’s supposed to be the embodiment of human will without incurring a lawsuit from DC’s Green Lantern. He’s tasked with taking on Thor, who would have way too easy a time brushing off pissed off civilians. He also has a pretty easy time with this asshole, making me think that turtles that aren’t ninjas have little to offer.

Even with the Red Skull’s posse of freaks being easy fodder, this doesn’t change that other unpleasant detail about the Red Skull possessing Xavier-level telepathy. And last I checked, Captain America and Havok weren’t smart enough to recruit a psychic. Again, I bet Havok really wishes he inherited his brother’s knack for seducing telepaths. It starts to effect Captain America, who already has a reason to hate mutants after Avengers vs. X-men where he damn well knows that he fucked up more than Cyclops and got away with it. The Red Skull taps into that burning inclination to take his frustrations out on the closest mutant, but being Captain America he manages to resist because it just wouldn’t be good PR if a symbol of America was seen killing an innocent civilian without the aid of drone strikes.

Yet even though he doesn’t join in the riot, he clearly is affected by the Red Skull’s influence because he yells at Havok for being a shitty leader. He’s not entirely wrong. Just trying to contain the civilians rather than fighting the source that’s fucking with them is like suing the restaurant that made the scalding hot coffee and not the asshole that dropped it on you. It’s actually a really good scene because it shows that Captain America, for all his freedom-loving bravado, is still an over-privileged white guy who is inclined to blame minorities for shit that goes wrong. I guess that would make him a more honest Captain America, simply because it makes him more of a douche. I don’t mean to sound anti-American, but a country can be guilty of one too many dick moves.

Eventually, the team does shift their focus to the source of the shit storm. After Wolverine roughs up one of the Red Skull’s freakshows, he meets up with Rogue and the Scarlet Witch, who also managed to free themselves from his control. They inform him that the Red Skull is doing this with the brain of Charles Xavier, which he ripped out by digging his body up shortly after Wolverine gave a heart-felt eulogy. Wolverine is usually a pretty easy guy to piss off. But short of stealing his beer and cutting up Jean Grey with a meat cleaver, I can’t think of too many ways to piss him off more.

But the Red Skull is ready for Wolverine’s hissy fit in a way Nazi’s probably wish they were before they invaded the Soviet Union. It started when one of the Red Skull’s Nazi-approved freaks mind-fucked Thor into thinking his father, Odin, was standing in front of him. Then the Red Skull did the rest, using Xavier’s telepathy to appeal to the blond haired, blue-eyed Aryan side of Thor. That’s another detail that is often overlooked. Thor, for all his godly bravado, is still the kind of guy that Nazis would love to have on their side. And thanks to the Red Skull’s influence, he does join them.

And he does so just in time to confront a freshly pissed off Wolverine. First, the Red Skull has another one of his Nazi-approved freaks negate his powers. Then Thor does the rest with his hammer, giving Wolverine the kind of headache you could only get from going 12 rounds with a crystal meth addicted Mike Tysons. It marks an ominous end for the issue and one which Remender goes out of his way to state the Red Skull has a hell of a boner. It’s another one of those benefits to the narration that adds depth to the issue. The Red Skull may be a pissed off sociopath, but when he’s gleefully mind-fucking his enemies into brutalizing one another he’s one happy motherfucker.

I often look at heavily hyped comic books in the same way I look at the New York Yankees. They’re easy to hate because they get all the attention, sales, and glory. If they were actual people, they would be those rich douche-bag trust fund kids who never had to work to earn the caviar enema they get every morning. But there are times when, like the New York Yankees, those books earn the respect and praise they get. Sometimes it starts off rocky, but when it comes together it can either win you a World Series or make a damn good comic.

Uncanny Avengers #3 follows a style and theme that wasn’t that prominent in the first two issues. Maybe it was just a result of the bullshit delays, but it was a pretty striking shift. It went from merely following a random assortment of high-profile characters as they pieced together a new team with scotch tape and spit to putting that team in a position to really kick ass against a high-profile threat with a high-profile arsenal. While the high-profile aspect of this book has sometimes worked against it, this issue made it work in all the right ways by following each character and adding depth to their own personal conflicts.

But beyond the characters, Rick Remender showed that attention to detail that made his Uncanny X-Force run so epic. He actually highlighted some of the lesser characters, who in most comics would be akin to the poor saps in Star Trek that wore red uniforms and either ended up dead or overlooked. By giving a personal touch to each character on both sides, it heightens the emotion of the book. It isn’t just another battle between the Red Skull and the Avengers. It’s a personal struggle both for them and the people they’re trying to save. It’s basically the shit you never see in a Michael Bay movie, the humanity behind the explosions if you will.

The only real issues I could possibly have with this comic are the delays that always make me want to inject ammonia in my rectum and the sudden shift in style. I really do like the narrations that Remender used. It’s the kind of shit that really isn’t utilized by a lot of writers, who just like to have the characters speak, swear, and screw either vocally or with thought bubbles. Aside from Chris Claremont, few writers actually make an effort to make this shit work. So why the fuck wasn’t it greater part of the previous issues? It makes this issue seem inconsistent in the greater context of the story and even if the delays lasted longer than your attention span, it was still a major “Where the fuck was this?” moment.

Uncanny Avengers is a series that I had high hopes for and for the first two issues, it hasn’t really lived up to those hopes. I get that it’s hard for even the best steroid-addled baseball player to hit home runs every time, but it’s his own damn fault if he boasts that he can. Marvel boasted that Uncanny Avengers would be a big fucking deal in the post-Avengers vs. X-men world. This issue finally makes me feel as though they weren’t full of shit or shooting too many steroids when they said that. I give Uncanny Avengers #3 a 4.5 out of 5. Now if only Rick Remender and John Cassaday could keep this up by releasing this book on time more often, it would be supremely awesome. I don’t mean to sound needy, but when your patience is only as great as your supply of weed you can’t help it. And take it from a guy who once bought crushed maggots and thought it was pot. Good shit is worth waiting for. Nuff said!