When I picture board room meetings for Marvel events, I usually imagine Bendis, Fraction, Aaron, Hickman, and Brubaker sitting around a long table. Not just long, very long. Each of them has a walkie-talkie for communication purposes. Each of their chairs is a different color. Which color goes to which author, I’ll leave to your imagination. But, at the head of the table is a giant, and I mean gifuckengantic purple throne. It is facing away from the table. No one knows who is on the other side. It might be Quesada, it might be Stan Lee, it might be Chris Claremont, it could be Brian Michael Bendis (the Bendis sitting in that non-purple chair is likely a Doombot); shit, it might be Dan Didio or Alan Moore. (Though, let’s be honest, it’s probably Mark Millar’s voluntarily Bobbited penis.) Each of the writers takes their turns speaking their issue ideas into their walkie talkies, and The Purple Throned whoever laughs maniacally. Even in my imagination, I don’t claim to know what drives this maybe evil, maybe insane, maybe just misguided force to make its decision.

And thus did Secret Invasion, World War Hulk, Siege, Dark Reign, and especially Fear Itself fail to live up to Marvel fans (many of whom are not actual zombies)’ expectations.

But The Purple Man learns. Maybe slowly, but (s)he learns. (Hey, it could be Oprah, she’s got a hand in everything.) So this time, they try something different: Exquisite Corpses. After a very very brief outline of the goals for Avengers Vs. X-Men, each writer completes a script for an issue, and then passes only the last page of the script to the next writer, who writes his own issue, handing only the last page of the script to the next writer.

How else do you explain how each of these writers of this series has churned out an issue that reads as though they learned everything they know about these characters from Wikipedia.*

This issue is great, if you’ve heard about the other issues from friends but haven’t actually read them. Hickman is a great storyteller, and as a one-shot issue completely disassociated from all the other books, it tells an intriguing story. And while there aren’t any overt plot contradictions from Rounds One through Three, I have to imagine that these characters merely look like the characters from the previous issues. They sure as fuck don’t act like them. They act…smarter. The curse of Hickman.

Without spoiling anything, the Wolverine in this issue doesn’t appear to have ever met the previous issues’ Wolverine in person. He Skyped him once to figure out what his purpose in the plot was, but he misunderstood some things, and outright ignored others.

The oddest, in the most pleasant way, part of this book is the fight scenes. Basically, (and this is not a spoiler if you have any idea who these characters are), Emma Frost scans the Earth for Hope, and while she’s scanning, we see Avengers fighting X-Men in various places. That’s it. You want more fight scenes? There’s a whole ‘nother book for that. ‘Nuff said.

I confusedly enjoyed this issue so much, I almost forgot to hate Romita Jr.’s art. Then I saw the way he drew Namor, and it all came flashing back. This is, though, the least I’ve disliked his art in several years. It actually works at the beginning of the book.

Definitely read this book before any of the tie-ins or you’ll s(p)oil yourself. I started reading Uncanny first and had to let out a loud “awwwwww”, and pick this up.

I am weirdly excited to read the second round of these (I know Fraction’s first isn’t out yet, but, based on his X-run, I’m not excited for that.). Will Bendis toss Jessica Jones back in the mix? Will Jason Aaron eliminate dialog completely, in favor of wall-to-wall hyperbolic narration boxes? Will Brubaker sob into his coffee when he discovers Fraction has once again killed off a character he’s writing in another book? Will Hickman have Franklin Richards from the future put a stop to this whole mess before Ahab shows up? Will Matt Fraction ignore all the other characters to write who he writes best: Tony Stark?

For those answers and more, tune in next month, when The Man In The Purple Throne turns just a little bit towards you, giggles, and then turns back away.

*- My use of Wikipedia to define Exquisite Corpses is ironic. And I mean that in the Alanis Morissette way. You know, unfortunate.