A.X.E.: Judgment Day--Week 1

I'll admit it: I'm a mark for Marvel's particular brand of event comics. Since the mid-2000s, Marvel's doubled down (and then tripled down, then quadrupled down, then--) on the Big Superhero Event Comic. At their best, Marvel events are bombastic, powerful capstones to eras of Marvel history, definitive statements on what stories worked at the time of the event--see Jonathan Hickman's 2 excellent 2010s events, Infinity and Secret Wars, or the capstone to Jason Aaron's Thor run in War of the Realms. At their most aggressively mid (Fear Itself, Avengers vs. X-Men, Original Sin, Empyre), they're still dumb fun, capturing the infectious joy of smashing action figures together. In my eyes, there are only a handful of Marvel event stories that have been properly miserable (both Civil Wars, Shadowland, AXIS, and Secret Empire, FTR)

A.X.E.: Judgment Day, then, will probably be an easy win. How can it not? Half of the event's issues are being written by Kieron Gillen, one of the best comics writers working today, and the main event book itself is being drawn by current Hot Shit Marvel Artist Valerio Schiti. Both are building off of the visual and thematic language established by the recent relaunches of the X-Men line and the Eternals (the flagship books of both currently being written by Gillen as well), game-changing realignments of ailing pillars of the Marvel universe that have, collectively, redefined the nature of the Superhero for the 2020s in the same way as The Authority in the aughts and Fraction and Aja's Hawkeye in the '10s. If I am an easy mark for the Marvel Event, I am an especially easy mark for Judgment Day.

It's for that reason that I have decided to cover the whole damn event (give or take a few issues) as it's coming out, issue-by-issue, week-by-week. I'll be prioritizing the issues written by Gillen himself first, the other X-books second, and the handful of other tie-ins third, so I make no promises that you'll see coverage of the involved issues of Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, Iron Fist, or Captain Marvel here. I'll also not be discussing the one-shot preceding the event, AXE: Eve of Judgment, simply because it mostly just serves as a recap to get people up to speed if they haven't been keeping up with Eternals or X-Men stuff.

A.X.E.: Judgment Day #1

Written by Kieron Gillen

Art by Valerio Schiti

Colors by Marte Gracia

Lettered by Clayton Cowles

It should not be surprising that A.X.E.: Judgment Day #1, by Kieron Gillen, Valerio Schiti, Marte Gracia, and Clayton Cowles, rules. Utterly. Boasting a level of creator pedigree not seen since Secret Wars in 2015, Judgment Day's first issue is a thoughtful, meticulous setup of the board that leaves nothing off the table.

The setup--and this first issue is mostly setup--is simple, but effective. Druig, essentially the Eternals' answer to Loki, has been elected Prime Eternal and wants an easy win to cement his reign. To that end, he targets the mutant nation of Krakoa, on the grounds that the now-immortal mutants count as Deviants, whom it is the Eternals' grim mandate to kill en masse whenever "excess deviation" occurs. He's aided by his captive genocidal grand-uncle Uranos, whom Gillen often calls the Eternals' Logan Roy, and Moira Mactaggert, the mutant-Machiavelli-turned-sentinel working on behalf of Orchis.

Caught in the middle of this mutant/Eternal conflict are the Avengers and a cadre of heroic Eternal characters--the cast of the recent MCU film, sans Druig. Oh, and said Eternals, during a recent conflict with Thanos, discovered that the Deviants are the true source of metahumanity, the important ones in the Eternal-Deviant dichotomy created by the Celestials. That last thing isn't directly talked about in this first issue, but it's clear that Gillen intends to let that particular sword fall upon the rest of the Eternal population later in this event.

Valerio Schiti is a master draftsman, second only to Pepe Larraz in defining the visual style of modern Marvel comics. Every huge moment, from the psychic assault of the Uni-Mind to the haunting aftermath of Uranos' assault on Arakko, is rendered beautifully--Marte Gracia's brilliant-as-usual lighting completes the package. Schiti is especially good when it comes to drawing faces and is quite skillful in his use of shadows, making talkier scenes like Druig and Moira's meeting at the Damocles Foundation building still feel dynamic and interesting. I especially love how Schiti draws the villains, like Jack of Knives and Uranos.

What's probably the most visually exciting part of this event is the debut of the Hex, titanic kaiju Eternals unleashed on Krakoa by Druig. The Hex hit that sweet spot that all giant monsters should: they inspire awe and terror in equal measure. Schiti did an incredible job on them, rendering them as towering biomecha reminiscent of the angels from Evangelion or the aliens of the original Ben 10. I'm looking forward to seeing more of them in both the main book and the tie-ins, particularly the A.X.E.: Death to the Mutants miniseries which Gillen has said will flesh them out as characters.

That thing that most fascinates me about AXE #1 from a writing standpoint is the meta angle Gillen seems to be going for, questioning the nature of the modern superhero comic in the face of the sociological storytelling approach taken by the current X-Men line and by Eternals. In those books, the heroes that we follow are positioned as elements of much greater societies, distinct cultures with their own rules, customs, beliefs. This approach has led to greater moral complexity in cape comics: characters like Cyclops or Sersi, once simple paragon figures, must now weigh how their actions will be viewed by their societies, whether or not they will be considered heroes by their own people, and whether or not that matters. It's what makes books like Immortal X-Men so exciting.

Since the debut of House of X and Powers of X in 2019*, other Marvel heroes, such as Thor, Shang-Chi and Venom, have taken similarly sociological angles, but they are mostly outliers from the larger Marvel line. Books like Avengers have been much more traditional, going for the capital-S Superhero style emblematic of successors to Grant Morrison's run on JLA. Any larger, ideological questions posed by the goings-on in Avengers are incidental to the larger story being told, one predicated on big ideas and not much else.

With AXE, though, it feels like Gillen is forcing the wider Marvel universe to reckon with the paradigm shift. This is, notably, the first line-wide event to feature the X-Men since the advent of the Krakoa Era, the first time we're seeing the whole universe's reactions to the bold new status quo implemented by Hickman and co. As the event goes on and surely moves past the X-Men-Eternals war into larger, more cosmic territory (based on the end of this issue and covers for future ones, it looks like the unholy resurrection of the Progenitor by Iron Man, Ajak, Makkari, and Sinister will take center stage), it seems that the heroes caught in the middle of the conflict will have to adapt or die. 

In the face of this new superhero paradigm, who is the hero and who is the villain? Well, as the mysterious narrator at the end of the issue says, we will find out.

*It should be noted that while Jonathan Hickman popularized the sociological storytelling angle, his Marvel books weren't the first to take it--the most immediate predecessor was Ta-Nehisi Coates' work on Black Panther.

Other observations:

• I appreciate the elegance with which Gillen smooths over the drastic shift in Moira's characterization from Inferno to the Destiny of X relaunch. He chocks Moira's turn to campy supervillainy up to a manifestation of the same neuroticism that governed her role as a silent partner in the foundation of Krakoa. It is, like the rest of this issue, simple and effective, an easy fix for a character whose motivations have become increasingly inscrutable.

• Perhaps the most talked-about moment in the issue, Uranos' hourlong massacre on the mutant world of Arakko is very notable for being the first instance of mutant genocide since the start of the Krakoa Era. Gillen, Schiti et al. nail the beat by only showing the attack's bloody aftermath. The image of Uranos standing in a field of bones is haunting, echoing Cassandra Nova's genocide of Genosha in Morrison's New X-Men. I'm very excited to see how Al Ewing depicts the attack in detail in the pages of X-Men Red.
• Speaking of, I love how mean Gillen gets in this issue. The panel of the gathered anti-mutant protestors joyously celebrating Druig's declaration that he intends to genocide a people is so utterly gross and I love it.
• Gillen still finds the time to include moments of his trademark fey levity in the issue. Sersi's sassing of Tony Stark and Jack of Knives' little "d'oh" in response to Wolverine explaining how he tracked them are great moments of writer's voice that don't overstay their welcome or take away from the drama.

Up next: Week 2, covering Immortal X-Men #5 and X-Men Red #5, hopefully coming later this week and not two weeks after release like this first entry.