Remembrance Beast

[Note: this contains spoilers for the issue being covered here. I recommend reading the issue first.]   A.X.E.: Judgment Day #2 Written by Kieron Gillen Art by Valerio Schiti Colors by Marte Gracia Lettered by Clayton Cowles Over the last couple of months, I read through the entirety of what could be considered the "Golden Age" of X-Men comics--the period from 1976-1991. During this era, the X-Men line became, well, a line, primarily under the guidance of Chris Claremont and, later, Louise Simonson.  I mention this because the second issue of A.X.E.: Judgment Day hammers home the event's echoes--whether intentional on the creators' part or not--of "Judgement War," an incredibly weird little epic storyline from the latter half of Simonson's X-Factor run (it's issues 43-50, with a guest-penned interlude in the middle). In that storyline, drawn by Paul Smith, X-Factor's sentient Ship was teleported across space by its Celestial creators to bear witn...

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 Gi...