Avengers VS X-Men # 0

By Mark Rodriguez

This was the big storyline that helped me get back into the modern day Marvel Universe back in 2012. Mutants are barely recovering from extinction due to the Scarlet Witch, and now they have Hope Summers. Cyclops is convinced that she is the literal hope for the future of mutantkind. The Phoenix Force is arriving and Cyclops wants to use it to inhabit Hope and save mutants, while The Avengers want to stop the threat of the Phoenix at all costs. What Avengers VS X-Men becomes is every non-mutant vs any mutant in the Marvel Universe cause as you'll see that both sides have a huge amount of members.

This is issue 0, a free comic book to basically help set things up. It's basically divided into two parts. One devoted to Hope Summers and another devoted to the Scarlet Witch, probably the most powerful women of both sides.

Scarlet Witch

We start the story somewhere in the city as MODOK and a group of similar floating creatures hunt down a scientist from the A.I.M and plan to kill him due to some sort of betrayal. Before he could kill him, MODOK’s gun fails to fire… which is caused by Wanda Maximoff,  the Scarlet Witch.

As they fight, MODOK mentions that Wanda is a disgraced Avenger and she caused more hurt to the world than any villain could. She is soon overwhelmed by the monsters until suddenly Spider Woman and Miss Marvel fly into the scene. 

Back in 2012 Miss Marvel still had the long flowing blonde hair. Before Kamal Khan took over the role

After a brief battle, the bad guys are taken down, and the ladies are glad to see Wanda again. Wanda feels a bit down, thinking she was ready to fight crime again and didn’t think she would need help. She’s about to leave but Carol (Miss Marvel) wants to take her back to the Avengers mansion, since they all haven’t seen her since she left. However, just as she feared, the Scarlet Witch didn’t get the happy welcome Carol and Spiderwoman were hoping for. Vision phases through the door and tells her he can’t forgive how she used him against his friends.

 Wanda is saddened and Vision tells her she’s no longer welcome at the Avengers’ mansion.

Miss Marvel flies off with a crying Wanda and Iron Man thinks Vision was too rough on her. Wolverine points out that it was his call to make, and Tony says he always liked them together. Vision cries in silence.

Hope Summers

On Utopia, where the X-Men live, Hope is trying to use a jetpack and Cyclops shows up to stop her. Apparently she’s been sneaking off at night fighting crime. Cyclops is angry because he doesn’t want the risk of her getting hurt, since she is too valuable to mutantkind. She is the mutant messiah, the one mutant the world can’t afford to lose.

Hope wonders why Cyclops considers her so important and also wants to know about the Phoenix. Cyclops is surprised, but Hope already knows that the Phoenix is returning and is, for some reason, coming for her. Hope wants to know what will happen when it does get to her, and he doesn’t answer. Fed up with this, Hope blasts Cyclops with his own Optic Blasts and flies off.

Hope thinks to herself how she’s tired of always running and now being told what to do by Cyclops. She’s from the future and was raised by Cable. She hears of people holding hostages in a bank and sneaks in the vents to check it out. She runs into a giant snake man. We see the rest of the gang… a bunch of snake-themed villians with names like Cottonmouth and Puff Adder. 

The Serpent Society are surprised that Hope got past Bushmaster, and she told them she cut off his arms. This blonde woman with boa constrictor arms (but then again, going by the theme, maybe her name is Boa Constrictor or Python) and Hope smacks her with a headbutt. And in my favorite scene… ‘Boa’ tells her how she never understood the headbutt, since it hurts the user as much as it does the victim. Not one for words, Hope basically headbutts the crap out of her and lets her drop and says 'next.'

Puff Adder challengers her and Hope asks is he’s a mutant. He confirms it and so Hope puffs herself up, like Puff Adder would, and socks him out. Cyclops blasts his way into the building, joined by Emma Frost in time to see Hope beat the crap out of Cottonmouth. Blood still on her hands, Hope reminds Scott that she is not Jean Grey, and that she is not afraid of Phoenix. She’s ready for its arrival. Emma says it’s too much pressure for a kid. Cyclops says she’s not a kid and she will save them all. Emma adds in ‘or perhaps kill us all’. Cyclops says ‘either way…that makes her something special’.

Back at Utopia, Hope stares off into space… and meanwhile, thousands of light years away, the Phoenix has entered our galaxy…

My Opinions

Both stories were pretty interesting and showed something that I later realized we'd rarely see, later on. Good guys actually beating up bad guys and stopping their evil plans. You'll see in later events that I cover that most of the time it's just the heroes fighting each other constantly. There are just too many factions that just can't get along.

The stories were both good in their own way. The art was awesome on both of them, possibly better than some of the art of the actual event, as you'll soon see. Hope's story was fun, and I especially liked when she headbutt the crap out of Boa. Scarlet Witch was also cool, though it did have a downer ending with Vision telling his... I guess ex wife that she is no longer welcome with the Avengers. 

This was a free comic and these freebies are always good at setting things up. While I didn't see too much focus on Wanda until later on, the X-Men story with Cyclops putting so much pressure on Hope is what really leads into this story. Stay tuned as all hell breaks lose in the Marvel Universe in 2012.