Uncanny X-Men (2011) #12

When choosing which issues to pick up and review during the recent sale on X-Men digital books, the one below was pretty much a no-brainer.

This is only my second foray into the Avengers vs X-Men story. The first was issue #1 of the VAC: VS mini series, reviewed here.

Looking back, while I recognized at the time that the AVS:VS book acknowledged its own pointlessness, X-Men 12 underscored it in spectacular fashion. AVS: Vs #1 was published one month before the above issue in which the same two characters were going to throw down anyway. Again, it may be that greater exposure to the story as a whole makes VS more worthwhile but that isn't the sense I get right at this point.

But enough about that. What about this book?

Well, Namor gets plenty of face time, which is good. It's not particularly good quality time though.

The X-Men are looking for a character named Hope that I know next to nothing about. They are split into teams which leads to this exchange.

Okay...Not only is artist Greg Land notorious for tracing his art from pornography, it appears that writer Kieron Gillen is determined to play along because this sort of thing keeps coming up (double entendre not intended) throughout the issue.

Around the same time this little group arrives at Tabula Rasa, whatever the hell that is, so does an Avengers teams of Luke Cage, She-Hulk and The Thing.

Evidently, the Avengers didn't feel the need to diversify this group's power base. It's all physical strength and, well, that's about it.

Namor uses one of his lesser-known "abilities" to try to track down this Hope character.

Yeah, that's just gross, I don't care how many boobs she has.

Anyway, they do encounter the Avengers and waste no time attacking them. Namor pounds Cage into the ground and tosses him into the nearest body of water which, unlike the one above, is sort of brick-coloured.

Land must have traced that from some porn actor who has no fingers.

Namor uses Cage's unconscious form to knock She-Hulk unconscious and just like that, we're on to our main event.

The scrap, however, is unimpressive, short-lived and interrupted by some kind of alien thing that resides in this joint.

Seriously, Gillen, what the hell is wrong with you? As lazy as Land can be though, The Thing's expression there is kind of funny.

Hope having been located, everyone just heads home. So we followed the team that did NOT find Hope.

Really then, this book is just as pointless as AVX:VS. It just gives the illusion of having a story attached to it.