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By Tim Stevens
Before they comes to blows in the pages of AVENGERS VS. X-MEN, Marvel’s preeminent groups will team up one last time on April 11, thanks to writer Kieron Gillen and artist Carlos Pacheco, in UNCANNY X-MEN #9.
“It’s the final compare and contrast,” Gillen says, outlining the arc’s significance. “It's showing everyone involved as the greatest super heroes on Earth. It's about showing how we hope they'll never fight. It's about showing why they're going to.”
The two-part arc begins with the failure of the Peak, the extra-orbital prison used by S.W.O.R.D., Earth’s first line of defense against alien threats.
“There's a catastrophic failure aboard the Peak's brig and all its prisoners are dropped,” reveals Gillen. “The main villain of the arc is actually UNIT, who I introduced in [the S.W.O.R.D. series] as a cross between CP-30 and Hannibal Lector.
“Many [prisoners] explosively decompress. The ones who don't, who fall to Earth—well, you're talking about the sort of number of threats that would make up a year of stories if we were to tell them all. There are some elements of the approach that do remind me of S.W.O.R.D. That was a book which moved at enormous pace. For a story that's only two issues, we manage to fit an enormous amount of actual story in here. If there's one part of S.W.O.R.D. which crosses over well to UNCANNY X-MEN, it's that. So it's a case that there are so many things happening, the Avengers and X-men talk to each other [and decide] ‘If we mobilize and act together, we can pull this off.’”
For a time, that agreement proves more than enough to overcome any hesitance from either team.
“It's all about saving the world,” Gillen points out. “That's all that matters. Generally speaking, Captain America seems entirely on the X-Men's side. Cyclops is a little more cautious, but that's just in his personality. The team-up works spectacularly. And then something changes, which, even if it doesn't go to blows, really does show that the teams are in different places.”
The writer makes sure to keep those conflicts boiling throughout the storyline, present but never overly dominant.
“There's obvious tension in Cyclops having to be even vaguely in the same area as Wolverine,” he notes. “It's at the level of a glance. The story's mostly about the team in action and throwing them against the threats, and seeing what they can do. Do several people not like Magneto? Sure. But that takes a back seat. This is them all pulling together.
“Until they don't.”
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