Giant-Size Little Marvel: AVX #3

Background

The Multiverse has been destroyed. All that remains is Battleworld, the fragmented domain of Victor Von Doom. One piece of Doom's global jigsaw puzzle is "Marville", home to the Little Marvels.

Inspired loosely by 2015's Secret Wars Battleworld and events of the 2012 Avengers vs X-Men Marvel "Event", this mini-series faces the Mini-Avengers against the Mini-X-Men in a shameless excuse for shenanigans and silly artwork.

Last issue: The (non-powered) TwinZ moved into Marville, and the X-Men and Avengers are competing to have the new arrivals join their respective teams. The fireball and nuclear explosions from last issue's fight appear to have caused no actual residual damage. I guess Doctor Von Doom builds his worlds out of easy-clean materials.

Story Details

The X-Men go first, and give Zoe and Zachary the guided tour of the X-treetop-secret-base. The 400-inch 6-D TV, an Iceman-constructed roller-coaster, and a chance at being the "ball" in the famous Colossus fastball special. The twins receive a glass of Hank McCoy's mutating potion and gain super-powers, before visiting the danger room.

Next it's the Avengers' chance to impress. Tony Stark cleans up the twins to remove their apparently temporary mutation, and the twinz enjoy a game of capture-the-flag paintball, then a trip to Asgard which is floating above Marville. They visit Captain America's (boring) boot-camp-USA training room, before enjoying a bounce in Spider-Man's web-filled bouncy-castle-room.

The final surprise planned by the Avengers is a giant two-man-controlled robot fighting machine. All the twins have to do is use the natural psionic mind-link shared by all twins to control the two halves of the robot in perfect synchronicity. (It's a "Pacific Rim") joke, just in case you haven't seen the movie. I guess the twinz haven't seen the movie either, as they can't agree on the controls and the robot explodes.

The twinz are shot up into the sky, where they meet the blue impenetrable barrier of sky that blocks departure from Battleworld. They meet Thanos and Galactus, and then meet Guardians of the Galaxy, who naturally invite the twinz to join the GotG team.

General Comments

I can't deny the sheer sumptuous richness of the artwork, nor the relentless silliness of the plotting.

But while a panto-chromatic panorama of humorously-proportioned Mini-Marvels is always enjoyable, it's important to remember that each one of these books is $4 and 10 minutes of my life invested, and I'm feeling like the returns are rapidly diminishing.

Overall Rating

More of the same as last issue, but with fewer jokes.

A slightly sub-average two-and-a-half webs.