The crossover event that's polished off Marvel's year has been pretty disappointing. The Axis premise turned out to be a little more nuanced than it seemed on first blush - rather than simply the hella boring concept of bad guys turning good and good guys turning back, the "inversion" that blighted heroes and villains alike changed their alignment. So, say, the insane Carnage would be super into saving people rather than murdering, albeit still from a totally deranged perspective - but the main series was still pretty tedious in the manner of all event books. As per the other law of event books, the spin-offs have been a heck of a lot more fun. Robot Chicken's Kevin Shinick was an inspired choice for writing the Axis: Hobgoblin series that saw original Green Goblin rip-off Roderick Kingsley as he gets out of selling supervillain identities to lowly criminals in favour of giving way hero identities to the highest bidder which, erm, is better, right? Anyway, even better is Javier Rodriguez on art duties, whose style is halfway between the more abstracted cartoony style and the more detailed-oriented artists that usually appear in the main event books. His covers, drenched in the Hobgoblin's signature pimpkin orange.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
