Here we have, to use the porno parlance that has become so popular in recent years, the money shot. . . The last splash page of the first issue of the new Marvel series, The Uncanny Avengers. The series is an attempt by Marvel to (re)combine two of their most profitable franchises (the X-Men and the Avengers) by creating a team made up of former members of both (all of which was led to by one of those huge cross-over tie-in events – this one called Avengers vs. X-Men).
Overall the issue was mostly boring, involving Wolverine as a eulogizer for a now dead Professor X, a swollen Captain America and a latte-loving Thor trying to convince Havok to lead a team, Avalanche as mutant-rights terrorist suicide bomber, Rogue getting into a fist-fight with Scarlet Witch at the grave of Charles Xavier (doesn’t Rogue have super-strength? shouldn’t she have smooshed Wanda’s head with that punch?), and then the two of them getting attacked by some group of villains including someone called “The Goat-Faced Girl” who attacks with a “living wind.”
Goat-faced girl and her allies, as it turns out, were sent by none other than the Red Skull to retrieve the professor’s body and have access to his brain. Thus the awesomely ridiculous and pulptastic splash page above.
As Red Skull cuts open that chrome dome, an associate asks, shouldn’t we maybe look for the Cosmic Cube (called the tesseract in the Captain America and Avengers movies) or the Bloodstones. . .? Calling out previous (and common) Marvel Comics artifacts of power, but NO! Now the X-Brain will be an artifact of power. . . and superhero comics being as insufferably weird as to become predictable, I imagine there will be a day when Professor X is back to life (through cloning or time travel, or psychic projection), but his brain will simultaneously exist outside of him as a dangerous item coveted by those who would take over the world!
One day perhaps a villainous Professor X driven mad by his repressed love for Jean Grey will even seek out his own brain to destroy the world in an onslaught of double-brain power!
The Middle Spaces 
That plot summary sounds great but if I understand you right… this stuff isn’t actually any good?
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Rick Remender’s work is not to my liking. Embedded in deep continuity (the Apocalypse Twins? the SWORD space station? baby celestials?) and paced for cinematic wow scenes that lack internal narrative coherence, it was mostly a yawn-fest. I gave up after about 6 or 7 issues.
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Ah, I see….Baby celestials does indeed sound tedious.
On the other hand, Osvaldo, your idea to have Professor X search for his own brain, sounds fantastic. Have you considered pitching that to Marvel?
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ha! I doubt Marvel would want me. An academic with no experience writing comics. I don’t have Ta-Nehisi Coates’ rep to get me in the door. :)
Plus, I’d want to write the a White Tiger/ New Power Man book, or Black Lightning for DC. ;)
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I liked Rick Remenders Uncanny Avengers run for the most part, it’s very silly and fantastically pulpy while also being very epic, but there is one huge problem. All that unnecessary forced conflict between the Avengers and the X-Men players. The characters are forced to bicker with each other pretty much none stop and it’s really to the determent of the book. Like I know the whole theme of the book is bass on this notion that people who don’t work well together need to get over there differences and work as a team to fell a great evil. But the “these people don’t get along” thing is pushed to the extreme of just making all these people, full grown adults the lot of them, appear downright childish.
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