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In a spring season loaded with Batman battling to save Gotham from the Court of Owls, and The Avengers trading punches with the X-Men with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, sometimes Event Fatigue sets in. And sometimes you want a change of pace from the ongoing Superhero Apocalypse, and as you look at your normal alternatives – the Zombie Apocalypse in The Walking Dead or the Zombie Apocalypse in Crossed: Badlands are normally pretty much it – you maybe start wishing for a nice, fun, and maybe a little goofy one-and-done to cleanse the palate as a change of pace.

Or maybe you just have a thing for cats. Maybe your house smells like cat litter and ammoniac urine, the Internet doesn’t give you enough other cats to fill in the gap, and where the rubber hits the road, you’re despondent that you just can’t hug all the cats, despite oodles of free time with which you can pursue this goal thanks to the aforementioned ammoniac smell. Either way, Avenging Spider-Man #7 is the book you’ve been looking for, and between it and Versus, it is living proof that, from the standpoint of just plain fun comics, Kathryn and Stuart Immonen should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, ever.

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Versus #1 takes the Avengers Vs. X-Men event, strips out the backstory, the plot contrivances and the other useless crap that is being pounded into this event to make it hang together as a story, and it leaves us with the core idea which is all that almost anyone gives a tin shit about in this event: superheroes kicking the shit out of each other.

Let me offer an analogy: let’s say that Avengers Vs. X-Men is a Grateful Dead show. If that’s the case, then Versus is the smelly guy in the parking lot selling hits of acid for five bucks a whack: in other words, it’s far more entertaining, and if you’re honest with yourself, it’s the real reason you decided to attend the main event in the first place.

This book is fucking fun. It is meant to be fun, and it knows that it’s fun; any comic that opens on its recap page (and interesting choice for a first issue) with…

This book is about AWESOME BRAWLING! You want PLOT? LOOK ELSEWHERE, CHUM. You want a KNOCK-DOWN, DRAG-OUT WHUPPIN’? WE GOT YOU COVERED.

…is a book whose only ambitions vis a vis obtaining an Eisner Award to to snatch one out of Joe Sacco’s hands and use it to beat Grant Morrisson about the head, neck and face.