Yeah, I spent an entire weekend backreading the Axis storyline. I understand what happened but it's still a complete mess because there's way too many big events and crossovers happening at the same time:
- The Axis inversion event itself
- Steve Rogers losing his super soldier serum and growing old/being replaced by Falcon, which happened during a separate big event
- an event where Steve Rogers, SHIELD and the Illuminati discover ongoing incursions by parallel versions of themselves, and going to war with their alternate reality counterparts.
- Hulk gaining super intelligence, and then transforming into Kluh as a result of Axis
...it's made even worse because you kind of need to brush up on past events (Avengers vs X-Men, Original Sin, Thor the Unworthy) to get a full picture of what is happening in Axis.
There are also events going on that don't fit anywhere in Axis, like the Spider-Verse thingie in the Spidey titles and Wolverine's death + their Wolverine version of Return of Superman, where failed Weapon X experiments (including one that looks exactly like Logan and has his memories) get stuck in a story with Mystique, Lady Deathstrike, X-23, and Sabretooth (who is still his usual sociopath murderer self in this story even though he's already inverted on the Axis storyline.)
