The Last Crusade? - Review Avengers: Children's Crusade #9

There are simply no words.  A year and a half, 9 issues, a one-shot and more anxiety then I can put into words here it is finally over.  And all I can say is this: What a colossal LET DOWN.  The Young Avengers have been everything that the New X-men never were and this was supposed to be the pinnacle of their story as well as a jumping off point for their future.  Instead we are given an empty issue with little no to progress, no real direction to the ending to speak of, and a number of characters left in limbo with no clue as to what is happening to them now let alone what WILL be happening to them.  We were promised a conclusion to the Scarlet Witch’s saga, a new line-up for the Young Avengers, and a lead-in to the huge Avengers vs. X-men storyline.  In my honest opinion, none of these things happened in this book.

                This entire “Crusade” was centered on the children’s journey to find Wanda, the mutant Scarlet Witch, and along the way we encountered Magneto, Doom, the Avengers, the X-men, X-Factor, and former comrade (and future enemy) Iron Lad not to mention traipsing through time and changing the past.  During all of this we were supposed to see a resolution to Wanda’s story and, possibly, and reversal of M-Day.  Well only someone who has never read comics before would think that all the mutants were going to get their powers back so that really only leaves us with Wanda’s evolution as a character to really follow and to be completely honest that stopped back in issue 6 when she realized and accepted that Wiccan and Speed were really her children.  Since then we have travelled around, fought some Beyonder-like force that Doom took a hold of and rescued Scott Lang but once she restored Rictor’s powers, Wanda almost became irrelevant to her own story.  The rest of this “Children’s Crusade” became focused on defeating Doom (like every other Marvel storyline ever), preventing the X-men from killing or capturing Wanda, and figuring out what to do with the Young Avengers.  There were many people who said that this series wasn’t worth the time it was taking, but I defended it and said that the payoff would be worth it.  I am thinking at this point that I may have been mistaken.

                Now as for that new line-up for the Young Avengers we were promised…  What new line-up!?  I have been a comic collector for about 20 years at this point and when I hear new line-up, I think of new characters, new powers on old characters and a new direction or mission for the team in general.  None of these things happened to the team this issue!  Cassie and Vision died.  They died!  Cassie from the battle with Dr. Doom while Vision is torn apart by a jealous Iron Lad.  Iron Lad (or should I say Young Kang the Conqueror at this point) then just up and leaves to go into the timestream and cause god knows what damage.  And in the aftermath of all this Elijah just quits being Patriot.  QUITS!  That’s not a new line-up, that a roster massacre!  When this issue closes we don’t see a new line-up for the team, we see a moratorium to the team existence.  In both X-men and Avenger lore, when someone dies, they get a statue in the garden so why do the Young Avengers get one if in theory they are still around with this supposed new line-up?  The only, and I do mean ONLY, possible change I see to the line-up (besides deaths and departures) could be Scott Lang sticking around as team mentor in honor of Cassie but to be honest, that would be such as stretch as to do the team a great disservice.

                I don’t know what the writers were thinking when they plotted this issue but this was possibly the worst ending to one of the best series in recent Marvel history.  It opened up with so much promise and potential for the future and a pledge to tie up many loose ends as well as lead into the next huge storyline.  Well we cleared up some important issues concerning the Scarlet Witch, but the only loose ends that were cleared up regarding the Young Avengers as a whole were the varying deaths that we were abruptly given at the very end of the series.  And regarding the supposed lead-in to Avengers vs. X-men, if I hadn’t seen dozens of promos that included Wanda and Hope with “AVX” plastered across the top, I would have had no idea that this book had any connection to the upcoming storyline.  In fact, at the very end of Children’s Crusade, we aren’t even sure where Wanda is!  All we know is that she’s not captive and Billy (Wiccan) could contact her if he so chose to…which he apparently doesn’t.  I spend a year and a half of dedication to this series and I expected a little more payoff then deaths, disappearances, a gay teenage kiss and some snarky comments from Ms. Marvel.  I guess everyone who said this series wasn’t worth the time, could quite possibly have been right after all.