A.X.E.: Judgment Day #5
The heroes of the Earth make a last stand against the Celestial in A.X.E. Judgment Day #5, by writer Kieron Gillen, artist Valerio Schiti, colorist Marte Gracia, and letterer Clayton Cowles. Gillen and company keep the hits coming, upholding the quality of this book.
As the Celestial prepares to destroy the world, Cap converses with Jada when Nightcrawler shows up. They teleport to the North Pole, and Cap makes a speech to the Celestial that Jean Grey broadcasts to everyone before the Celestial kills him and Nightcrawler. Working together, the heroes try to attack the Celestial again and are completely destroyed. However, following a plan Destiny gave them, a group of heroes with eggs and the Five begin resurrecting mutants for an infiltration mission into the Celestial. As that mission starts, they resurrect one more hero, breaking the rules of Krakoa to do so.
There's pretty much one problem with this comic. This is a bit of a nitpick and has to be done to make the story work, but why does the Celestial take so much time to destroy the Earth? It's a Celestial and should be able to destroy the world easily. That's basically the only problem with the comic. Otherwise, everything about this comic is stellar.
Gillen gives readers a fun battle, a rousing Cap speech, a nice twist that enables the story to go on, and a brilliant final page. What's really fun is when the Celestial describes how it is creatively killing the heroes and then seems sad that it's repeating itself. It's such a fun moment at a dark time. This isn't like an MCU movie where the characters use humor to defuse the tension. The tension and death are still there, but the Celestial believes it's a god and is trying to prove that it is by coming up with ironic deaths for its enemies. That's both in character and gives reader an into the mind of the monster. It's humorous but also terrible because the heroes are being killed, so it can prove a point. It's gallows humor at its finest.
As usual, Schiti and Gracia's art is beautiful. From the character acting to how lovely everyone is to the horrors of the battle against the Celestial, Schiti does impressive work and proves why he's now Marvel's event guy. Gracia's colors are gorgeous, but that's pretty usual for him. He's finding a way to make scenes dark but well-lit and make the costumes' colors pop whenever he needs to. The art in this book is perfect and a big factor in why this comic is a fantastic event book.
A.X.E.: Judgment Day #5 continues this event's book run of near perfection. The creative team is amazing, and this penultimate issue is terrific. Anyone not reading this book is missing out on something brilliant.
