Now that was a pretty damn awesome issue. I’m happy to say that the big finale to Avengers vs. X-Men looks like it’s going to be both epic and cool, with this penultimate issue really setting up what should be a bombastic showdown. This issue has got great action, some wonderful character moments, awe-inspiring art and a brilliant cliffhanger that I’m kind of ashamed I did not see coming. But that just means it took me by one hell of a surprise! However, despite all this well-deserved praise, anyone who has been reading my reviews knows that I have one really big BUT when it comes to Avengers vs. X-Men…and this issue continues to emphasis that same glaring flaw.

Avengers vs. X-Men #11

The story is incredibly wishy-washy on just how much of a villain it wants Cyclops to be. At a time when it needs him to be a mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash, this comic still goes to great lengths to make Cyclops sympathetic.

Comic rating: 5/5: Great.

My major gripe with Avengers vs. X-Men is that it does not have a solid answer to two important questions: What has Cyclops done wrong? And was it Cyclops who did it, or was it the Phoenix acting through Cyclops? Unfortunately, this issue continues to flip back and forth on the issue. And from someone who sympathizes with Cyclops, it just makes all the so-called heroes out to be huge assholes. One moment they are talking about having to stop Cyclops because he cannot control this evil power, and the next they are blaming Cyclops for everything. The comic has made it very clear that the Phoenix is the reason the PhoeniX-Men started turning evil, that these people were possessed by an evil force and it eventually took over. Yet never do any of the Avengers or X-Men say that they need to save Cyclops from the Phoenix. They all act like it’s Cyclops himself who is behind all of this, and not that their friend has been possessed by this evil force.

To me, that kind of makes them jerks. They don’t want to help Cyclops and stop the Phoenix. They just want to kill Cyclops and be done with it.

Despite that glaring issue, this is still a great comic. The action is fantastic, with a lot of high-stakes superheroics. But rather than just boring action, all of it is spliced with some really meaty character moments as everyone tries to reason with Cyclops while simultaneously trying to kill him. The art by Olivier Coipel is also phenomenal, giving these moments the epic feel that really makes them stand out.

Also, a very important character dies this issue, but it does not have the impact that Marvel probably hoped it would. I’ll spoil the death when we get to it in my synopsis, so if you want to know right now, just click the jump and scroll down. Otherwise, how about we get on with the fully synopsis and more review!

Before I get into the synopsis, I wanted to explain my position a little bit. I may be one of the only Cyclops supporters left in comicdom, and considering how much I’m going to rant, I thought I’d at least state what I believe up front. It might get pretty long though. If you want to skip right to the synopsis, just scroll down to where the pictures start. Otherwise let’s look at Avengers vs. X-Men from Cyclops’ point of view…

The destructive Phoenix Force is coming to Earth, and it’s going to possess Hope Summers, one of the X-Men. The Avengers show up unannounced and demand that Cyclops and the X-Men step aside while they take Hope. They’re either going to lock her up or kill her, which was Wolverine’s plan, all in an effort to stop the Phoenix. And if Cyclops doesn’t do as he’s told, they’re prepared to take Hope by force. Cyclops, meanwhile, has been training Hope, his adopted granddaughter, so that she can control the Phoenix and use its power to save the mutant race. But now the Avengers are telling him to go sit in the corner, they’ll handle this, because they’re the Avengers.

What choice did Cyclops have but to tell them to get off his property? Remember, Captain America didn’t come to Cyclops to talk, he came to Utopia to take Hope.

The two teams fight and finally end up on the moon. Then a mistake by the Avengers causes the Phoenix to split and create the PhoeniX-Men, giving Cyclops and his friends this ultimate power. Cyclops immediately uses this power to make the world a better place. He brings food and water to the starving corners of the Third World, he turns wastelands into farmlands, he stops natural disasters, he goes to the UN and declares an end to war. We are told and shown the PhoeniX-Men doing good deeds with the power. We’re also told that the people of the world love them for this.

My point is this: we have never seen Cyclops do anything wrong or evil. He fought and imprisoned the Avengers who attacked him first, that’s it. Namor destroyed Wakanda. Emma started killing people. Colossus and Magik were responsible for their Hellish prison. We saw all of them go bad. But we’ve yet to see Cyclops go bad. He hasn’t conquered the world, he hasn’t enslaved humanity, he hasn’t hurt anyone other than the Avengers who kept coming after him. No only that, but any time Namor or Emma tried to convince him to do something evil, Cyclops rejected it over and over again.

Why did Marvel not just show Cyclops being evil? They’ve had several issues during which he could have done anything to get us readers fully on the side of the Avengers. Instead, they just have everyone keep saying that Cyclops has turned evil. I guess the idea is that he went and changed the world for the better whether the world liked it or not, even though the only people we saw complaining were the Avengers (and Barack Obama that one time).

But isn’t using your super power to do good deeds in the world the exact definition of a superhero? Is it simply because Cyclops started doing it on a global scale that he was evil? If he had used the Phoenix power to continue to just fight crime on the streets of New York City, would that have been OK?

For Avengers vs. X-Men to truly work, they should have made it more obvious that Cyclops was turned evil by the Phoenix Force. He should have enslaved humanity or conquered the world with the Phoenix power. He had noble intentions to begin with, and maybe he could have started out doing good, but we’ve all seen how the Phoenix Force corrupts, and it should have more obviously corrupted Cyclops. Instead, he’s been a pretty good guy so far. Everyone is just repeatedly telling us he’s evil without actually showing him being evil.

And that’s what I consider to be the huge flaw in Avengers vs. X-Men. If they had done things just a little differently, handled Cyclops’ characterizations a little better, I wouldn’t be ranting with every review.

Anyway, let’s get to the synopsis and I’ll show you what I mean.

We start out with Captain America and the Avengers in the American southwest. They’re going to launch the final assault on Cyclops at Utopia, and so Cap has gone recruiting. We get a full page of Captain America talking to someone off screen in the mountains, laying out the plot and basically asking this person to help them.

Cap being humble does not make him less of a douchenozzle

Look at Cap’s line right there: “I’m worried that the power they’re holding is more than they can handle. In fact, I know it is. We all do. Everyone seems to know it but Scott Summers. What happens when they aren’t able to handle it any longer?”

To me, this implies that Captain America and everybody else believe that the Phoenix Force is this power that Cyclops can no longer control, and that he’s deluded if he thinks he can. It implies that everybody knows the Phoenix has corrupted Cyclops; everyone knows this except Cyclops, because he’s too far gone. So the Phoenix is this thing that has possessed Cyclops and everybody knows that he can’t control it.

Keep this in mind.

I rather liked the build up of this page. Who is Captain America talking to? What great warrior does he want to recruit to help them?

The answer is pretty damn cool.

Puny Phoenix

The Hulk is definitely still riding a wave of popularity from The Avengers film earlier this summer. Seeing him used in such a way was definitely cool. I just love references to the Hulk being the most powerful being on the planet.

In Wisconsin, Rogue and the other X-Men have broken away from Scott and Emma, and they meet up with Professor X and the Avengers to join forces. Everybody has turned against Cyclops now, and the X-Men want to help stop him. They love Cyclops like a brother, but he’s gone too far, and it’s time to stop him. Xavier is glad to have them.

Group hug!

Though it does grind my gears the way Rogue so unabashedly says what a bad idea it was to follow Cyclops, and how the Avengers were right all along. I ranted about this in an earlier review. How was it a bad thing to help the PhoeniX-Men make the world a better place? How many relief workers out there helping people in the Third World wish they had the power to make everything better all at once? Would they be evil if they used ultimate power to save the people they were helping?

In a world where superheroes exist, why must people who want to do good still be expected to toil?

We cut to Utopia, where now it’s just Cyclops and Emma Frost living in an empty kingdom. Emma taunts Cyclops, trying to goad him into admitting that he wants to take all of the Phoenix power for himself, or that they should just burn the world to cinders and start over, or that Cyclops wants to kill her. But he rejects all of that and just tells her that she’s crazy.

Then Xavier shows up standing on the beach, and Cyclops goes out to meet him – though Cyclops is already a little on edge. Xavier tells Cyclops that he’s there to shut him down. And this is where I get a little annoyed, because Xavier acts as if it’s Cyclops who has been the evil one, and not the Phoenix influencing Cyclops. They have a pretty great argument, even if Cyclops is sounding crazy and Xavier is being a jerk.

This doesn’t make up for you getting Cyclops’ brother killed, and then wiping him from everybody’s memory, Xavier

Xavier talks about wanting to help Cyclops, but in the end he just says that he’s ashamed of Cyclops. Why ashamed? Again, what has Cyclops done to be ashamed of him for? And why not continue talking about helping him? Why act like Cyclops hasn’t been warped by the Phoenix? As if he did this all on his own?

Then we get one of the great reveals in this comic. Xavier tells Cyclops that this entire conversation has been all in his mind, distracting him while the Avengers and X-Men invade Utopia and take on Emma.

Though it’s a little weird how several people are just standing around

Cyclops breaks free of Xavier’s mental hold and starts to fight back, accusing Xavier of betraying the mutant race. We get some great fight scenes as everyone does battle with Cyclops and Emma. Xavier tells Cyclops to stop this madness. Cyclops continues fighting, telling Xavier that his hand is being forced, that he doesn’t want to have to do this. But the fighting continues. The Hulk gets a moment to shine when he takes Emma out of the fight with a well-placed smash. So at least that big reveal at the beginning wasn’t a total waste. Magneto steps up and tells Cyclops that he brought Xavier to Utopia. Cyclops points out correctly that the Avengers are trying to kill them, so why did Magneto bring them there? Cyclops then just burns Magneto rather than let him speak.

The Scarlet Witch steps in at one point, and then Xavier tries again to use his telepathy to stop Cyclops.

Finally, Captain America says one of the dumbest lines in the entire series.

Now you’re just being a jerk for the fun of it, Cap

WHAT CRIMES!?

For repairing the hole in the Ozone layer? Or deposing all those warlords in Africa? For turning the Sahara Desert into usable farmland? What crimes has Cyclops committed?

And he’s under arrest? Seriously? You’re arresting him? Are you going to put him in hand-cuffs and take him downtown?

Cyclops responds by attacking Emma Frost and defeating her, claiming the full power of the Phoenix for himself. Xavier shouts at Cyclops to stop this, but Cyclops replies that Xavier is not his father. There’s a whole father/son dynamic built up between then two – and then Cyclops kills Professor X!

Cyclops tries to fight back the tears, giving one of those speeches where he says, “Why did you make me do this? Why couldn’t you leave it alone?”

Wolverine tries a Fastball Special, but he’s just blasted away. Cyclops starts burning hotter and brighter as the anguish washes over him. Until finally, the worst they could have feared finally happens…

Because we all know how everybody held Jean Grey responsible for what the Dark Phoenix did

I can’t believe I didn’t see that coming! Cyclops as the Dark Phoenix? Hells yes! I can’t wait for the next issue!

But this issue was pretty damn awesome itself. I’ve ranted enough about my position on Cyclops, so I won’t get into it too much here. Basically all of the ‘crimes’ he’s committed have been off-panel and never specifically referenced. He’s become too powerful and must be stopped simply because the Avengers say so and not because of anything we’ve actually been shown him doing. That’s no way to create a villain. Show us Cyclops abusing his power and doing evil things. Would that be so hard?

And the death of Professor X? Please. The man has been dying again and again since the 1960s. Check out this collection of all the times Xavier has died at Bleeding Cool. Not to mention the fact that Xavier hasn’t been an important character in years. He’d been in limbo up until he jumped into Avengers vs. X-Men in issue #6.

But I suppose the real impact of his death is what it does to Cyclops. Because if Cyclops is still alive at the end of Avengers vs. X-Men, he’s going to have quite the personal journey. And as long as he doesn’t stay a villain and seeks redemption, that’s a comic I would definitely read.