Dark Avengers # 8 - Utopia, Chapter 5

 
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I'll be honest, I read this the day it came out and was at a complete loss as to what to say about it or even what happened in the issue. Luke Ross is back & I feel like instead of giving us a copycat artist they could have given us someone who could make this book easy to follow. And while I feel that this story is leaps and bounds ahead of "Messiah War," I'm beginning to question where this is all supposed to go. I realize we've changed how mutants live, but why step into the Dark Avengers? I guess all that has described how I feel about the writing, which Fraction could have done better.

We open in Las Vegas catching up with Danni Moonstar & Hela from the last issue as Danni is asking for a bit of help in regards to SOMETHING that must have gone over my head, but I can only hope it plays off in New Mutants, which I picked up all of the current run in one swoop & loved.

We move to the Dark X-Men capturing a verse-spouting Trask and continue into a sequence displaying all the different ways these X-Men are doing everything right over the course of a week, which makes me feel more satisfied because it shows that the event as a whole happened over an extended amount of time, unlike Secret Invasion which happen in a span of time one might eat lunch in. Cyclops and his X-Men watch from the couch as everything unfolds, which I found rather boring.

Moving back to the Hammer bas, we begin to see cracks in the Dark X-Men's armor as they witness the effects the Omega Machine has on the captured mutants and we get a real idea of who has moral compasses. It was right around here I began to question Marvel's choice of artists in Luke Ross, because this stuff looks really off from anything I'm used to, like Emma in her diamond form, yuck! We get some Dark Avengers, I know what you're thinking, "In the book named after them? No way!" And then we transition to the Science Team! Okay, maybe my X-Men lore is off or something because the Science Team was acting like we should know what the hell their doing & I keep staring at pages wonder what the big deal was.

Beast gets depowered-ish. X-Force shows up & looks like crap (could Choi have just done the panels they were in or something?). Omega powers up. The Dark X-Men go to fight X-Force. Pixie does some teleporting of people "home". There, you don't need to read about 4 pages.

We get a big reveal that mutant kind has moved out to their own private island, which the Science Team lifted off the ocean floor, entitled 'Utopia' and Osborn calls the Dark Avengers to do his dirty work, end book.

Now I realize my last few paragraphs are kind of vague & that important pieces of plot and dialogue were skimmed over, but this is not to blame the writing on this one, the art is really a joke here, no lie. I can't get through this book, I have trouble understanding what is going on in panels and it's not like the art is messy or anything, it's just not using the panels to their full effect. This crossover is not a let down, it's going places, but even with the same writer across the board (which might have saved Messiah War if Yost had writing duties on both books), Utopia seems to be going in different directions in different books and I question if the Dark Avengers series even needed to play in this sandbox. Marvel, just pull an "Amazing Spider-Man" & put out Uncanny twice a month for the event!

Don't buy this if you don't want to apart of the entire Utopia event.