I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed

So, now that Crisis on Infinite Earths is out of the way, I suppose I'm probably morally obligated to finish up this arc of Uncanny Avengers, right? Sigh. I guess I brought this upon myself.

Well, the cover is a pretty fun switch up of a classic X-Men attack. I appreciate that it's on prominent display here. Despite Uncanny Avengers being the "Avengers/X-Men mashup" series, it has gradually reduced the presence of X-Members so that Rogue is only on this team to justify it. Despite long ties to the X-Books, Deadpool isn't an X-Man, let alone a mutant, and Cable is better known for being a solo hero or leading very fringe X-teams than he's known for being an X-Man proper, so seeing Rogue and Deadpool take on Colossus and Wolverine's respective roles for a Fastball special is a pleasure to see. Also, kudos to Stegman for playing to his strengths-- not a close-up of an unmasked face in sight.

A brief sidenote: Apparently, Marvel packages this arc into a trade under the name "Future Lost." Quite honestly, I think it was a grievous error on their part and I will continue referring to it as "Plant Apocalypse" and will accept no substitute.

If you'll remember the latter half of last issue, just after Quicksilver ran off to get an antidote to Human Torch, who is slumming with an MIT think tank, the Shredded Man used his toxins to KO most of the team except for Synapse, who is immune, and Cable, who took his vitamins. Cable sticks around to inoculate the rest of the team and sent Synapse out to confront the villain solo only to discover that he is in fact her own grandfather.

This issue starts off reminding us of last issue's newly revealed familial relationship between our rookie and our villain by cutting back to the prologue from the first issue of the arc. This is unnecessary. Marvel has been employing a recap page across the line for years. It's just the latter half of the scene where Shredded Man wakes up, but this time we see that it was Synapse in the other terrigen chrysalis. It really is a little pointless to the narrative. We learn absolutely nothing new about the characters in this scene nor does it help progress the narrative already in progress. They do cut to yet another chrysalis in the household and establish that there is yet another Inhuman in the family. Perhaps you could argue that this scene sets up story elements for a later arc, maybe, but I'd be quick to shoot that defense down. There is no drive, no dramatic question to this scene that the plot hook, which ought to be handled with a bit of subtlety feels more like a Hidden Pictures game in Highlights for Kids after someone already has circled the fish in the tree.

I am going to be so surprised when that brick the writers threw at us finally lands.

Duggan, do you mind if I call you Duggan? Good. Duggan, I know you're far more used to writing for Deadpool, and perhaps that explains why you've embraced this "sledgehammer to the head" approach to long game storytelling, but might I advise you remember that as a storyteller in a serialized format, as a dramatist, you need a far more deft hand in the writing stage. Make a scene that is utterly essential to the narrative before trying to be clever.

Okay, for a story that is just so "meh," I've already had a rant and we're only on page one. That doesn't bode well...

We transition to the present, where Synapse tries to hearken to her grandfather's better nature, but he doesn't see eye to eye. Apparently, that's enough to get Synapse from being very blubbery to being action girl because she's tired of people yelling at her today. She takes a swing at Shredded Man, but we cut away before we see if she manages to land the punch.

Yelling is all it takes to break the ties that bond.

Elsewhere, Cable has the rest of the team up and running again. Rogue and Deadpool perform a fastball special. Say whatever else you want about this comic, but you cannot say they failed to deliver what the cover promised us. Of course, this should be a big finisher attack, but it's being used to kill one of the many, many plant monsters that it feels more ostentatious than effective. Points for the nostalgia factor.

Oddball Special: Patent pending.

Deadpool calls out to Quicksilver, presumably they're on an intercom or Quicksilver is omniscient, and asks if the speedster can swing by his armory for some ammo. Instead, Quicksilver materializes with a guns as well as a local shop owner in tow. Apparently, in that nanosecond Quicksilver had time for a conversation with a gun-owner who is not a speedster, in which he insisted on coming along, then ferry the gun shop owner over to the battlefield. Ignoring the fact that this puts a civilian at gross risk when clearly there was the far more viable option of going to Deadpool's armory like he asked, it is also is an example of the writers not telling a story in which the mechanics of their heroes make any sense. Granted, this is a superhero comic in a shared universe with 60+ years of history. Inconsistencies are bound to happen. But there is a difference between inconsistencies in power levels and baseline humans being able to able to apparently mimic their abilities for no reason.

A Plant Apocalypse is not enough to deter fanboys.

Oh, wait. There is a reason. The guy is a Deadpool fan. I'm a little annoyed that Duggan felt the need to break the physical laws of its characters in order to support a... you know, I'm not even entirely certain that I'd call it a joke, but Duggan sure seems to think so. It's probably fair to point out that Duggan is one of the two current regular writers on Deadpool's eponymous book, so perhaps he got a little confused about which book he was working on.

Back at MIT, Quicksilver has returned to see about the cure that Johnny Storm's think tank has been cooking up and again I find myself asking why is Johnny Storm there? I'll give him props for having the idea to outsource the science portion of Marvel superheroism, but what purpose does he serve staying there? He has fire powers! Anybody who has played the starter battle of any Pokemon game can tell you that grass types are weak to fire. Either he is A. a world class slacker, B. an idiot, or C. the writers need a reason for this story to last the length of an average trade paperback.

Stand aside Emma. Pietro is the
OG Jerk Hero.

I will give Johnny Storm this, however: as Quicksilver speeds away, he gives a quick little monologue that gives me all the feels about our resident speedypants. Quicksilver is one of my favorites because he falls into one of my favorite paradigms: the jerk hero. He's smug, he doesn't play well with others, he's had a few turns as a reluctant and/or conflicted villain, but he has a lot of heart, is fiercely protective of his loved ones and tries to do what he thinks is right... even if that means convincing his sister into overwriting reality. Okay, nobody's perfect.


I am only now noticing how Stegman draws Pietro's super speed and honestly, it doesn't look quite right. I think he was aiming for a creative new approach to motion lines, but the actual result creates the impression that he has sprung tentacles from his back. It's not a dealbreaker, but it is certainly a bird that wasn't meant to fly.

Back in Boston, Cable suddenly gets a psychic vision of Synapse snapping her grandfather's neck. Oh, yeah. Two volumes of X-Force ago, Cable mysteriously gained a new ability in the form of precognition. About four years of publication later, I still don't know what is causing these insights, so I'll continue to assume it was the plot convenience fairy. Anyway, Cable's time traveler insight into the future lets him know that his precognitive insight in the future is bad, so he rushes off to stop Synapse from committing grand-patricide.

Before Synapse can snap her grandfather's plant neck (which I'm fairly certain wouldn't have killed him with his far more arboreal physiology), Cable leaps forth and knocks her away, warning that killing Shredded Man will ensure that the crisis doesn't end. As he breaks up them up, he overhears the part of the conversation that they are in fact related.

A strategically calculated dick move?
Why you are Scott Summers kid, after all!

Cable confronts our villain himself. Apparently, Shredded Man has read the villain's handbook because he expects Cable to announce that his plan will fail. However, since Cable is here specifically because his plan succeeded, he instead describes his process for developing a cure. In the process, he formed a sister strain of the original virus that removes the immunity to Inhumans. Shredded Man says he's prepared to die, but instead Cable shoots Synapse.

Um, I'm not the world's biggest fan of Cable by any stretch of the imagination, but that is coldblooded. He hears them mention they're related, asks for clarification to make sure he hadn't misheard (which actually detracts from the badassitude of this scene), then two minutes later, he shoots one of his comrades-in-arms point blank. You're a sick bastard, Dayspring!

Synapse twitches about on the floor as her grandfather's pestilence courses through her body. Still she manages to sputter out a patented guilt trip. And this is what causes her grandfather to realize he in fact still has the milk of (in)human kindness coursing through his planty veins. It's like the ending of Care Bears movie. He relents and all his plant apocalypse vanishes away. Yes, our crisis is wrapped up that neatly. It's about on par with breaking a spell with true love's kiss. The terrain completely returns to normal and Synapse (and presumably all his other victims) are cured.

Funny. Guerrero doesn't sound like a Jewish family name.

Synapse reaches out to her grandfather, offering to help him find a cure for what he has become, but he declares that when he "wiped the slate clean," he undid all that he had done, including his own body, which dissembles itself in front of her, saying he can make more. So, what that tells me is that it probably wasn't even the genuine article they were facing. He was just some plant golem. That feels so less impressive when it isn't a Doombot.

"You captured their stunt doubles!"

So that was our big climax, everybody. Such as it is. Oh, yeah. I know you hardly noticed it as this story didn't peak so much as it consistently fizzled from about the halfway point onwards. It's hard to tell when the tension is rising when all you have to decipher is a steady stream of "mehhhhhhhhhh."

Now, I'm all for an emotional climax as opposed to a big, punchy kick-kick battle, but this is not earned. Our creative team waits until the final page of the penultimate installation of the story to reveal a familial relationship between our antagonist and our team rookie, neither of whom, I might have had enough characterization done in order to make us feel invested in this revelation. All we really know is the former is a genocidal maniac and the latter feels very cagey about being on a team of superheroes. That's all we know going into this revelation.

I can't even care what this means for them as people, let alone what this means for the story. And yet Duggan hinges the end of the narrative on this.

Mind you, this could have worked. There were three issues leading up to this revelation. Three issues in which we could have taken a few minutes here or there in which to get into Synapse's head or even have another character ask her something personal. She was even on a date with one of her teammates, for crying out loud. But no. The creative team concluded that any time spent setting their characters up so that this wouldn't have felt like a forced plot twist was better served by killing Quicksilver only to bring him back immediately at the start of the next issue and giving Cable not one but two painfully drawn out introductions. This issue could have have a strong emotional impact on its own, but the creative team sabotaged itself by making the two middle chapters of their narrative extremely unfocused, with the third issue being mostly a waste. It takes the wind out the sails of  what honestly could have been a decent conclusion.

Well, let's wrap up this narrative.

As the team gathers around what was once the Shredded Man (or his plant golem), Synapse asks Cable to keep her secret, but doesn't know if he can. But he tries. Keep in mind, Cable isn't terrible by nature. He's just occupationally terrible.

Good guy Cable: he shoots you in the face but keeps your secrets.

Later, we cut to the rooftop where Captain Rogers has landed the helicopter on their base of operations. A helicopter? Yeah, it's kind of weird that the Avengers are flying around in anything besides a quinjet, but I think Iron Man lost his vast wealth over the eight month gap, so I guess that means a helicopter is their way of downsizing.

Rogers is once again refusing to accept Deadpool's letter of resignation, presumably because he's running out of team members with ongoing solo titles and he needs some way of keeping circulation of this book up with the the other three (minimum) Avengers titles.

Cable and Captain Rogers have a grizzled staring contest
and the rest of the world shudders in terror.

Synapse approaches him, looking pretty sheepish, asking to talk to him about something. Rogers kind of charmingly shoots her down, saying he doesn't have time to coddle her and Deadpool. Yeah, old Cap doesn't have the time for handholding that he'd normally have. Oh, well.

Rogers recruits Cable by telling him that the Unity Squad's secret mission is to find Red Skull and retrieve Xavier's brain. They stare at each other in a panel in which Stegman perfects his talent for making grizzled elderly men look horrifying.

The final splash of their story gives you the impression that this was a "getting the band together" story. You see the whole lineup together albeit, for some reason most of the team seems to be headed towards the rooftop door, but Johnny and Pietro have assumed lifeless stock poses. Again, Stegman should be drawing action figures for a living. Also, this wasn't a "getting the band together" story. This was a "getting Cable to front our shitty band" story. On top of that, two of the team members were markedly absentee throughout the entire story. Rogers and Johnny have not been through this adventure. They weren't part of this supposed story about them coming together as a team. They just fill up the ranks. You could argue that at least Johnny was contributing, even if it was a misuse of his talents, but all Steve Rogers, Mister huge shredded octogenarian, did in this story was drive the freaking chopper.

Is it just me or do they all look embarrassed to be here...
...except Deadpool?

So did he just melt off Ultron's face to
prove a point?

Epilogue. Yes, this monumental epic warranted an epilogue. In the far reaches of space, a crew of a space vessel that all look like they are dressed like locomotive engineers have just been rescued... from something. By whom is revealed as their airlock opens and we see the telltale lights of Ultron's faceplate. As their savior steps inside the headpiece melts away to reveal Hank Pym. Yeah, I thought he was dead. Guess not. I'm a little surprised though. Usually A-Listers have the self-respect to wait at least two years to come back from the great beyond. And I'm guessing he's made a version of Ultron (or retrofitted a previous version of Ultron) to be be a space suit.
I am just shaking my head. Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of fusing these disparate parts of the Marvel Universe that don't exactly work together. As much as I hated the Remender run for making everyone overly dark and uncharacteristically confrontational with one another, at least I felt like the characters were in the hands of someone who had a grasp on what he wanted to do with them. I feel like Duggan and Stegman were handed this assignment a week before the deadline and were told to do whatever. And that's the only word I use to describe how I feel about this arc: whatever. It isn't incredible, nor is it utterly loathsome. It's filler. Make me love you or make me hate you, but make me feel nothing and that's how you fail as a form of art/storytelling.

Next week, I'm taking a trip on the cinematic way-back machine as I watch one of the most important superhero-inspired films of this or any other generation, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3.