Schools Out For Summer - Review Avengers Academy #19

The best issue of this entire series to date!  When this series first started, it was in a tie with Secret Avengers as my most my likely to get dropped comic series.  The kids were weird, and sometimes a little boring, and the staff just seemed like a bunch of Avengers and New Warriors castoffs that Marvel had no place for.  If not for Justice, Speedball and Hank Pym I would have probably stopped buying this before it even had a chance to take off.  But take off it did!!

I have watched these kids really grow in the last 19 issues (plus a .1) and they have taken every opportunity they’ve had to go evil, and use it to become a better hero!  Whether its Hazmat and Mettle coming to terms with the realities of their bodies, Reptil having to give up his future form, or Finesse facing the truth about her lineage they have already earned their hero stripes just as much as a drunken Iron Man or a wife-slapping Giant Man.  This issue truly showed how each and every one of them has grown since their first appearance following Siege.  

Whereas many of the world’s heroes are battling ONE of the Worthy and they’re pretty much getting their asses kicked, these young heroes are battling TWO of the Asgardian juggernauts, Absorbing Man AND Titania, and more than holding their own!  Plus, it would be really easy to say that Finesse had all the ideas while Mettle did all the fighting, but in their own way each of them contributed to the solution in their own way.  And what a solution it was…  Had Giant Man not popped in at the moment he did, Finesse, Hazmat and Mettle were completely willing to sacrifice themselves to save an entire city, what’s more heroic then that?  

Is it any wonder that Veil reacted the way that she did??  She signed up to be a hero, the next generation of Avengers and to her it just seems like children were sent into a war that wasn’t theirs.  Now some could argue that that is exactly what being the next generation of Avengers means:  Being responsible for situations that are far beyond their years.  So will she stay with the team or stick to her outburst and leave the Academy?  I guess, we have to wait until next issue to see what happens, where we are already being warned that we are losing some cast members…