Boy, was this book a disappointment.

I've never read Zdarsky before but I've heard good things about his Spiderman books, so I had fairly high expectations for this miniseries. What I ended up with was a book where the X-Men act like idiots. For what is essentially a diplomatic mission to the Fantastic Four, Prof X decides to send Wolverine, Magneto and Pyro. Considering that the FF are already trepidatious when it comes to the X-Men, this seems like a mission roster designed to provoke them and it predictably leads to the X-Men and FF mixing it up. This was a common trope of Bendis' during his long decline, advance the plot of the story by having your heroes behave in a completely stupid or irrational manner. Think Carol Danvers in 'Civil War II'. I sincerely hope that this is Zdarsky phoning it in and that he's not simply a lousy writer.

Regarding the art, I had extremely low expectations for Terry Dobson and yet he still managed to surprise me. In addition to his normally terrible art, apparently Dobson thought it would be funny to dress a few of the X-Men ridiculously. Most notably, he put Magneto in his infamous purple with a giant 'M' costume from Uncanny #200. Near the end he puts Cyclops in a similarly silly costume.

This book is unworthy of Hickman's 'Dawn of X'. more

Nova gets worried about the Olympian gods causing trouble across the galaxy. With the Guardians enjoying their retirement on Halfword, only Quill, Rocket, Moondragon, and Phyla-Vell answer his call … for now. They accumulate some more teammates (Marvel Boy and, on the last page, Hercules) and then their infiltration plan rapidly falls to pieces. A fast pace, promising plot developments, exquisite dialogue, and very strong art all combine to kick this volume off with a big bang. more

The Marauders believe they win the battle of Madripoor Bay -- but Kate's teammates unknowingly abandon her to the final, fatal part of the baddies' plan. It's a good story, eminently satisfying -- and yet, given the Capital-C-Consequences of the climax, it feels like it could/should have been pushed to greatness.

Back-forming the verb "coronate" out of "coronation" is like marrying your cousin: It may technically be legal in some places, but it's something you should feel ashamed of doing regardless.
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T'Challa is challenged for the Djalia by all the past Panthers. In the real world, the Maroons fight a desperate battle and Shuri smacks down BAST in a damned impressive rhetorical display. Great art, great plot developments -- if only all the prose matched the glory of that Shuri/Bast scene.

Carol has an extensive (too long, for my taste) discussion with Tony and Thor before getting back to her messy "pretend to kill the Avengers" plan. A brief check-in with Vox and then it's down to clobbering the Black Panther (but he has a Hulk, wuh-oh). This chapter is a satisfying intermediary and there's ample humor in the dialogue, but the pace and art make me pretty certain this won't be the arc's high point in hindsight.
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Spider-Man, Jonah, and the Foreigner run through three distinct but nicely-connected stories. It's got a great structure and scratchy but appealing art. The characters are handled pretty well, too (with the one exception noted below). But how many times is this volume gonna ring the "stop helping me, Jonah" bell?

I would have sworn it's impossible to write Jonah as TOO cranky -- but I think this issue manages the trick in the 1st scene.
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The prose is still weaker than I'd like, but the way the arc-plot ties up is cool and the visuals remain strong.

Amadeus Cho and Namor have a pretty good fight. But that's five pages and the whole rest of the issue is expository recaps covering the twisty status quo of Pan and the Agents. It looks pretty good and some basic action is woven all the way through to conceal the exposition, but this is still an awfully small baby step. The Agents as a team still suffer from a dreadful case of "and the rest," too.

When Carlos Magno comes aboard the artist carousel, well, that's the exact moment I need to get off and have a little lie-down.

Dylan and Normie have themselves a mark-one creepy child adventure playing with Dylan's leftover shred of Carnage. Normie's got himself some Goblin Childe PTSD, but Dylan has flat-out Wrongness in him. There's some pretty important plot work for the Venom-verse here, but the storytelling is the wrong sort of creepy. The B strip is a smaller, more successful, but also less ambitious bit of backstory for Sleeper.
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"Maybe if I throw a lame Cap vs. Dracula flashback in the middle, nobody'll notice that I completely failed to conclude the 'Ruins' story before moving on to the 'Reborn' story."

Gert discovers that the J-Team has been a teen-hero-killing machine for decades, which obviously worries her. We see enough of Doc Justice separate from the kids to confirm he's a baddie. Great art and smooth, natural dialogue make this a terrific pleasure to read. The subtle parallels building up between Gert and Matt are particularly nice.

Venom's powers are couched in idiosyncratic time and space-defying ways to make him immortal. This turns him into the champion of all life, fighting a doomed battle against AI at the end of time. It's packed full to bursting with cool sci-fi ideas, and the prose and art nearly keep up. It's a remarkable story told well -- but not quite perfectly. The sheer amount of imagination rockets this straight into contention for "best issue of the 'The End' series," though. more

The Doc-Team ferries Valkyrie to Death's sickbed and she cures her solo, using the power of philosophy (plus nifty continuity links). Prior to that, Cardiac screws the pooch a little. I'm okay with the team action, and I'm more than okay with the art, the philosophy, and the continuity action. "The Death of Death" isn't a novel trope, though.

Cammi whines (but charmingly) about Cosmic Ghost Rider refusing to let her kill anyone in her new role as his sidekick. And the Cosmic King, blah, bookends the "cosmic Punishment" montage by beating up Mephisto and then initiating showdown mode with Frank. I don't much like that first page; even if Mephisto is under house arrest, it doesn't feel right for him to get clobbered between issues by a born-yesterday villain who is so far perfectly encapsulated by the words "big space gangster". The art and the sass are good-bordering-on-great, the character work about innocence is good (perhaps a bit repetitive). But yeesh, this plot. more

The Avengers shout their way through non-stop Herald fights before heading to the Starbrand. It's got Grand Plot ideas and Cool Fight ideas and they're visualized with distinction (though character rendering, as usual, comes out way ahead of creating a sense of motion). As others have noted, the dialogue is pretty bland. I think that, more than anything else, is responsible for the slightly-guilty "This is stupid. Fun but stupid" reaction we're all experiencing.
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Spidey stumbles into ex-GF Black Cat in the middle of a curious caper. A large chunk of the issue is devoted to a flashback showing their flirtatious first hookup. The pace is fast and the plot is pretty interesting. The art's serviceable and the dialogue, with a few wobbles, does a good job portraying a sexy relationship. (But MJ's also in the mix to add some triangular complications going forward.) more

The robot revolution is in full swing, with Fake Tony Stark popping in to cheerlead it and Arno opposing it. This issue lays out a lot of plot points and illustrates them with shiny chrome, but it retains the signature problems of Dan Slott-era Iron Man: shallow characterization and facile "hot takes" on big ideas. Nobody takes the protagonist role, stranding this issue as a sort of survey.

The story's sound, but the words and art used to convey it are aggressively non-memorable.

Great and getting better. Still DoX's best-crafted story.

Another serving of the New Mutants' Space Yarn gives me lots of chuckles -- but it also bolsters my suspicion that this whole thing is a shaggy-dog story that's going to be a footnote in the history of DoX. It looks fabulous and this is the one place in the X-portfolio where Mr. Hickman truly puts character ahead of plot and world-building, so I don't really mind the footnote thing at all.

"Smart woman you can empathize with makes an endless stream of bad choices" is an excellent way to do a villain story. It fits well with the "Earth-woman swept unknowingly into cosmic chaos," too.

Before it kicks off an epic Hulk vs. Kaiju fight at the end, this issue weaves some brilliant ideas between multiple characters and scenes. The kaiju fight is a trap and Team Hulk knows it's a trap -- and there are far more subtle traps extending further into the cast. Both parts are great, but it's a pretty big tone jump. It's like watching a good ballet and then watching Wrestlemania.

It's great to see somebody pick up Kaare Andrews' "Iron Fist has a tween ward" ball and run with it. And speaking of moving balls, this issue feels like a series of tight running plays gradually building up yardage. Not as spectacular as a passing game, but more productive than four bad plays leading to a punt.

Gwen enjoys a little downtime, ferrying the MJs to alternate-universe concerts and then helping her Dad handle a bank robbery/hostage case. And in the foreshadowing column, we're introduced to the Awful Social Media Influencer Earth-65 versions of Sue and Johnny Storm. It's a breather episode, but it goes heavy on the charm and wit to produce a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience.

I can enjoy it for what it is -- a slightly pompous, grimdark character study -- and recognize it as a well-done comic without being tempted to crown it as profound or all-time great.

Rogue waking up is exactly what I needed. For me, her dream sequence was the visual, narrative, and characterization high point of the series so far. Here's hoping she can serve as the unifying tentpole this title needs so badly.

But on the saltier side: My optimism may be misplaced. The author has already flubbed two tentpole attempts with Apocalypse and Betsy -- and the latter in particular felt like missing an easy pitch. more

Spidey starts using the Clairvoyant to get a head start on his hero-ing (no way THAT'LL backfire), Jonah accepts a mysterious proposition, and Kindred does his thousandth bit of ominous foreshadowing. So business as usual for this series, really. It looks nice and it sounds good, it's got charm and humor. But I'm thrice bitten and very shy -- one solid issue with a few promising plot developments aren't enough to shake off the feeling that this volume is trapped in amber.
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I like the "big picture" plot and the art, but I don't particularly like either Ghost Rider. Which could become A Problem.