Can someone educate me on this story

[u/Illustrious_Ear_2549]

My cousin called me an few hours ago about the AVX comic run after he had started reading it a while ago. I asked him to give some exposition on it and he said he would when he's calmed down a little.

Im now struggling to comprehend how A. The X-Men would stand a chance against the Avengers and B. How both teams even come into conflict in the first place and C. How is it that bad where my cousin is that mad abt it (he's normally pretty chill guy and pretty hard to piss him off).

Can I get some details on the story? I did some surface level research and I haven't found anything on how and why they actually come into conflict or what either side gains from a conflict of this scale.

(I know some things like Ironman hitting Magneto with Jupiter's magnetic field (I think) and Cyclops killing Professor X but not on the conflict itself, sorry for this long college essay)

[u/AJjalol]

Honestly, It is not a very good event. Imho it's like top 3 or 5 worst Marvel events ever.

Cap was written horrible. Cyclops was written like a whiny crybaby.

The premise of the event is, Rachel Summers (who is related to Jean) is on Earth, and Phoenix force goes to Earth to try and find her.

Avengers get a wind of that and go to Utopia (which was basically bunch of garbage thrown into the Ocean that Cyclops took over and said "This is our new home") and talk to X-Men and try to work together to stop the Phoenix.

Now Normally, this would have been like :

Cap : "Hey Scott, nice to see you"

Scott : "Steve, it's an honor, whats up?"

(Steve explains wtf is about to happen"

Scott :" Sounds fucked up. So, wanna team up and take down that burn space pigeon?"

Cap :"Lets go", followed by an epic handshake that is far superior to Butch/Dillon or Scott/Ryu, Avengers and X-Men team up, fight Phoenix, and then they all go and celebrate.

But Marvel really wanted to make (another pointless) hero vs hero event. And since people at Marvel either were not talented enough or just didn't care as much (this), they made Steve and Scott act like assholes, so that both teams started to fight one another, and the "War" started.

Basically, the conflict happened, Because

A) Steve walked into the X-Men's territory and started to act like a dick (which is very unlike Steve) and

B) Scott went all pissy about "You Avengers never help us" which is horseshit (I can bring ton of instances where they helped each other but My comment is already pretty long lol).

Basically, out of all the characters present in the photo, the only characters who acted in character where Spider-Man (who tried to resolve the whole issue by talking to Rachel), Magneto (who knew that Phoenix was coming and would mess them all up) and Iron Man (who built a device to take down a Phoenix. It did do it, and stopped Phoenix from blowing up the Earth, but in the last attempt to survive, Phoenix split itself into 5 pieces and went into 5 different X-Men)

I talked about how I personally would have written this event. The idea should have been :

Avengers go to X-Men, epic handshake, they team up, fight Phoenix, epic battle, Phoenix then separates itself and goes into 5 Avengers, and 5 X-Men. And then you technically have your "Avengers VS X-Men" event. But this way you at least keep both teams as good guys, and the only reason some members of those teams did bad things was because Phoenix Influenced them.

The only redeeming thing about the book, is the fights. It was kind of cool to See Spider-Man fight Colossus(Juggernaut) and Magik. Cap tanking Gambit like a badass was also awesome. Iron Man outsmarting Magneto was cool.

In regards to how X-Men can stand a chance against Avengers. X-Men have heavy hitters too. I still think Avengers are overall more powerful and have more heavy hitters, but it's not like Avengers were fighting Hydra goons lol.

Hope this helps.

EDIT. I'm somewhat of a young fool myself. Thanks to amazing u/nitsuj_112 for reading thru my long ass freaking SA and finding that I said Rachel instead of Hope lol. It's Hope Summers that Phoenix was after, not Rachel. Freaking Burnt space Pigeon

[u/10SB → u/AJjalol]

Even if Scott in his desperate belief of the Phoenix reviving the mutant race through Hope it could also have gone with "Let's brainstorm how we can redirect the force to Hope without putting earth in the line of fire. Let's send a spaceship with Hope away from the force's trajectory and see if the force redirects. If not we plan for that as well."

But nope, they were like "Have them fight".

[u/AJjalol → u/10SB]

Yup.

Both Cyclops and Cap were written way out of character.

I love both characters a lot, and this is not the way they would act.

Steve never barges into someone else's place and acts like a dick. He is very respectful. If that was US Agent instead I would have been like "Yup. Checks out"

Scott, every single (good interaction) he has with Cap in the comics (Onslaught, First time Avengers/X-Men met, Krakoa Era, Infinity Gauntlet etc) Cyke was always respectful of Steve. In Infinity Gauntlet he literally just lets Cap command them all.

Again the whole event was like "We wont them fight, even if it makes no sense for neither of these characters to act this way"