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Young Avengers: Style>Substance

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Gillen, Kieron & Jamie McKelvie. Young Avengers: Style>Substance. 2013.

This fun book did have more style than substance!

Style:

Six interesting Young Avengers come together to combat an evil that Wiccan inadvertently summons into their world.

Some of the spread layouts were awesome! The two page layout of Noh-Varr and Kate escaping and then again of Noh-Varr coming to the rescue at the night club (with a numbered key!) were very creative.

Variant art and book cover were great.

When Loki breaks the fourth wall by handing out a flyer to the reader. The hero application is amusing and informative.

Wiccan’s and Hulking’s relationship.

MOTHER

 

(Lack of) Substance:

Marvel Boy has been yet again recast? This time a Kree alien named Noh-Varr, who suddenly is a good guy when he previously had been against the Young Avengers and Runaways during the Civil War epic. Kate’s cool with that?

The explanation of Speed’s whereabouts was extremely lame. In fact I thought Noh-Varr was Speed on first glance.

I can’t keep up with the Loki incarnations. This time he’s a young mischievous teen called Kid Loki.

I always wonder when a group shot is shown, why an author/illustrator picks the characters they do. When they go to the Avenger’s mansion they talk to Scarlet Witch (that makes sense as she is Wiccan’s kinda mom), Captain America, Havok, Rogue, Thor and Wolverine. Why them? Just curious.

The “parents” issue was convoluted and didn’t make a lot of sense.

Miss America seemed grumpy instead of mysterious and knowledgeable.

The inconsistencies between this story and other Young Avenger stories.

 

This was the start of an enjoyable but light Marvel series for the Young Avengers, that I feel would be appealing towards teen readers.

-Nancy

 

5

Avengers: The Children’s Crusade

Heinberg, Allan & Jessie Cheung. Avengers: The Children’s Crusade. 2012.

 

I am more familiar with the old school character list of the Avengers and X-Men, so I enjoyed getting to know these “Young Avengers”  As new characters were introduced, a brief explanation of who they were and how they were connected to others was part of the text. I liked the idea of Scarlet Witch being the mother of Wiccan and Speed, and the dynamics of Magneto being the grandfather of the twins. But I have a few nitpicks/questions: The adult Avengers make a big deal that the Young Avengers are only teens- well, so was Spider-Man, Ice Man, Rogue and Jubilee when they were introduced as characters. The Vision being the father of the twins was only glossed over, and I needed to check Wiki pages for back story on several of the super heroes and their family relationships to one another to better understand the connections to one another.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

The decades of stories with different authors have made the whole Super Hero Universe VERY convoluted. Plus, while I loved seeing so many of the hero’s in this book, at times it was just a token appearance and throw away dialogue-they didn’t really connect into the story at all. The artwork definitely elevated the story, with fresh interpretations of the characters, but yet stayed true to the original versions of them.  All in all, I felt this was a wonderful Avengers book.                                                                                                                                              

-Nancy

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