Avengers vs. X-Men Omnibus

Avengers vs. X-Men

by Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), Jim Cheung (Cover Art), John Romita Jr. (Illustrator)

Earth’s Mightiest Heroes battle the Children of the Atom in a crossover so huge it calls for Marvel’s biggest ever Omnibus! Get the whole story of the Phoenix Force’s return to Earth, an event that kicks off an all-out war between the Avengers and the X-Men! The X-Men see the Phoenix as mutantkind’s salvation, and the Avengers consider it a deadly danger. But what happens when five of the X-Men are transformed by the Phoenix…and begin to change the world?

COLLECTING: Avengers vs. X-Men (2012) 0-12; Point One (2011) 1 (AVX story); AVX: Vs. (2012) 1-6; Avengers vs. X-Men: Infinite (2012) 1, 6, 10; Avengers Academy (2010) 29-33; Secret Avengers (2010) 26-28; Avengers (2010) 25-30; New Avengers (2010) 24-30; X-Men Legacy (2008) 266-270; Wolverine & the X-Men (2011) 9-16, 18; AVX: Consequences (2012) 1-5; Uncanny X-Men (2011) 11-20; A-Babies vs. X-Babies (2012) 1

Genres: Comics, Marvel, X Men, Superheroes

1680 pages, Hardcover

First published October 26, 2022

About the author

A comic book writer and erstwhile artist. He has won critical acclaim (including five Eisner Awards) and is one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics. For over eight years Bendis’s books have consistently sat in the top five best sellers on the nationwide comic and graphic novel sales charts.

Though he started as a writer and artist of independent noir fiction series, he shot to stardom as a writer of Marvel Comics' superhero books, particularly Ultimate Spider-Man.

Bendis first entered the comic world with the "Jinx" line of crime comics in 1995. This line has spawned the graphic novels Goldfish, Fire, Jinx, Torso (with Marc Andreyko), and Total Sell Out. Bendis is writing the film version of Jinx for Universal Pictures with Oscar-winner Charlize Theron attached to star and produce.

Bendis’s other projects include the Harvey, Eisner, and Eagle Award-nominated Powers (with Michael Avon Oeming) originally from Image Comics, now published by Marvel's new creator-owned imprint Icon Comics, and the Hollywood tell-all Fortune and Glory from Oni Press, both of which received an "A" from Entertainment Weekly.

Bendis is one of the premiere architects of Marvel's "Ultimate" line: comics specifically created for the new generation of comic readers. He has written every issue of Ultimate Spider-Man since its best-selling launch, and has also written for Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, as well as every issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Ultimate Origin and Ultimate Six.

Brian is currently helming a renaissance for Marvel’s AVENGERS franchise by writing both New Avengers and Mighty Avengers along with the successful ‘event’ projects House Of M, Secret War, and this summer’s Secret Invasion.

He has also previously done work on Daredevil, Alias, and The Pulse.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread this for the first time since it came out.

I actually think I liked it more this time around.

The main book has the 5 biggest writers at Marvel working together to give us a big Avengers vs X-men story. I think Bendis and Aaron did a lot of the heavy lifting, while the Phoenix 5 does seem more like a Hickman concept. There’s a lot going on, which makes a lot of the tie ins needed and they help add to the overall read.

The highlights for me are:
* Iron Fist being a fairly prominent character and K’un-Lun being used in the story a lot, and how the New Avengers tie ins give us more history on the Iron Fist
* Spider-man’s throw down with 2 of the Phoenix 5 and finding a way to beat them
* UXM by Gillen gives us some really good X-men stuff (and lays a little bit a ground work for what we get in the Krakoa era?)
* The art work in the main series is great. Even the JRjr stuff looks good!
* the verses mini is fun, they’re not that deep with story but there’s some great art in them and some fun character face offs

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is there a good, coherent story here? It's hard to tell because this omnibus organization is such a wreck that I'm not convinced I want to keep it instead of the individual volumes. (I think my answer is that I won't.)

The problem is that the original AvX collection was already a mess because they separated out the main miniseries and the short fights AvX comic. For these omnibus they maintained that and they just stacked all of the crossovers on the back. They even choose to keep the crossovers in arcs rather than integrating them. It's a mess to read. You're constantly going back and forth over the story line, which is why this omnibus has no value as an omnibus. If they're not going to try and tell a story, then you might as well just have the individual collections.

Marvel is usually much better with their omnibus mapping. This is deeply, deeply disappointing.

As for the story: not one of the best X-crossovers, not one of the worst. The core storyline is overly decompressed, mainly to have lots of big fights. The fights miniseries, AvX, is almost total trash (especially when you don't really see where they occur in the larger story). But a lot of the crossovers are pretty good. UXM, Bendis' Avengers, even the weird cosmic storyline in Secret Avengers: it's all worth read and some of it's pretty good. Then it all ends with Consequences, which is terrific.

I'm not thrilled by the mass character assassination that happens in the story (with all of the Phoenix Five being treated like criminals despite the fact that probably every hero in the Marvel Universe has been mindcontrolled into doing terrible things at this point). But the setup for the rebel-Scott-Summers arc is nice, as is the use of the Phoenix to deal with the No-More-Mutants problem.

[Grace]

COLLECTING: Avengers vs. X-Men (2012) 0-12- 4 stars, 2017
Point One (2011) 1 (AVX story)- 4 stars, 2017
AVX: Vs. (2012) 1-6; (Jason Aaron- Hoopla)
Avengers vs. X-Men: Infinite (2012) 1, 6, 10;
Avengers Academy (2010) 29-33; (Christos Gage- Hoopla)
Secret Avengers (2010) 26-28; (Ed Brubaker)
Avengers (2010) 25-30; (Brian Michael Bendis- Hoopla)
New Avengers (2010) 24-30; 4 stars, 2023
X-Men Legacy (2008) 266-270; (Mike Carey)
Wolverine & the X-Men (2011) 9-16, 18; (Jason Aaron- Hoopla)
AVX: Consequences (2012) 1-5; (Kieron Gillen)
Uncanny X-Men (2011) 11-20; (Brian Michael Bendis- Hoopla)
A-Babies vs. X-Babies (2012) 1 (Skottie Young-Hoopla)

[Bob · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hard to say if Cap, Wolverine, or Obama come off worse in this. Only bright spot is the cool connection between the Iron Fist & the Phoenix & the fun X tie-ins by Aaron & Gillen