What was the best Avengers battle - and who won? The relationship between the X-Men and the Avengers has always been a troubled one. The two superhero teams first crossed paths in 1964's Uncanny X-Men #9, and needless to say, their first encounter didn't go well. It was only a brief tussle, but it set the scene for many future encounters.
Of course, over the years there have been countless different incarnations of both the X-Men and the Avengers. In 1987, there was a 4-issue X-Men Vs. Avengers miniseries in which the two fought one another over the fate of Magneto. Decades later, in 2012, the Avengers Vs. X-Men event saw the superhero teams wage outright war over Hope Summers and the future of the entire mutant race. Neither of these stories was particularly satisfactory, though; the first was a mismatched story that started out written by Roger Stern, but Marvel editorial forced a pivot, and the final issue was written by Tom DeFalco. With the latter, every issue was produced by a different creative team in order to speed up publication, but it just left the story feeling disted.
In narrative , the best X-Men versus Avengers event didn't actually feature the main roster of both teams at all. Rather, it was an event called "Utopia," published in 2009 during the so-called "Dark Reign" era. This was a time when Norman Osborn had ascended to power and formed his own team of Emma Frost struck a deal with Osborn to buy the X-Men time, ing his so-called Dark Illuminati, but it was just a matter of time before that failed.
Pressure had been building in San Francisco for months, with an anti-mutant hate group called Humanity Now launching a series of marches. The final march was unwisely interrupted by a group of mutants, led by Beast, and as a result, the tension erupted into outright violence. Riots blazed across San Francisco. As far as Norman Osborn was concerned, Emma Frost had failed in her task to keep things calm in the city, and he imposed martial law. The Dark Avengers struck hard and fast, championed by powerhouses such as Ares - the Greek God of War - and the Sentry. Worse still, Osborn had already struck a deal with the Dark Beast, a twisted version of Hank McCoy from the Age of Apocalypse reality. He was conducting experiments on mutants to take away their powers, and one of his first victims was none other than Charles Xavier himself.
The "Utopia" arc essentially set three power players against one another. Cyclops, leader of the X-Men, was the one who had brought the mutant race to San Francisco in the first place. Oddly enough, though, the potential extinction of his people had brought out the best in Scott Summers; he had grown in confidence and developed a strategic skill that Osborn knew made him a real threat. For his part, Norman Osborn cared only about his own power and sought to restore the peace with brutal efficiency and no care at all about human (or mutant) rights. Finally, Emma Frost had plans of her own, and she was placed in a difficult position when Osborn made her leader of his own Dark X-Men.
This story may not have featured traditional Avengers like Captain America and Thor, but that actually allowed it to resolve itself in an effective way. It turned out Cyclops had chosen San Francisco as the home of the mutant race because he knew he had a fallback option; years earlier, Magneto's Asteroid M base had crashed in the San Francisco Bay, and Cyclops had his people raise it to the surface. He declared the foundation of Utopia, the new mutant homeland; Osborn was left reeling when Emma Frost chose her side, freeing the mutant prisoners and taking them to their home. A furious Osborn attempted to demonstrate his power over the X-Men by launching a full-scale attack on Utopia, but Cyclops had been carefully monitoring every one of his key operatives and had prepared skillful strategies to take them down. Osborn's critical error was losing his temper and focusing on beating up Cyclops himself, unaware his forces were being routed. Osborn realized he'd been beaten when he turned around to face an army of X-Men.
The X-Men's victory is particularly striking given the Dark Avengers were at the height of their power, while the mutant race had never been weaker. The Dark Avengers, after all, including a carnivorous Venom symbiote, the literal God of War, and - most notable of all - the Sentry, a powerhouse who was able to deck Thor and who ultimately tore down Asgard. What's more, the X-Men won because of Cyclops' tactical genius; he spent days carefully observing the forces arrayed against him, and then successfully figured out how to neutralize even Osborn's most powerful asset. This was Cyclops' finest hour, and it led to the formation of an entire mutant nation. Meanwhile, unlike with many events, Marvel published just a handful of tie-in issues - and they were all well-written.
Hero-on-hero battles are a dime a dozen, and frankly, it's now traditional for superheroes to fight one another at the start of any team-up story. That's mainly because fans are eager to see their dream "versus matches" play out, but the typical problem with these stories is that the writers tend to want to please their readers. Thus, most of these matches end with a truce of sorts, with each side acknowledging the strengths of the other, and they then go on to work together. "Utopia" is different, because this time the X-Men were fighting the Dark Avengers, a twisted incarnation of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. As such, nobody was rooting for the Avengers, and Marvel was free to give the X-Men a decisive win.
