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.

Parent's Sacrifice - Review Avengers: Children's Crusade #8

IT’S BACK, IT’S BACK, IT’S BACK!  I just can’t say it enough because I love this series so much and it pains me that, after waiting for these issues to come out for so long, it’s almost over.              Where to even start...so much happens in this storyline that each and every issue is PACKED with incredible-ness!  I’ve read some online boards where people say this book is too drawn out and too much going on at once.  Well to those people I say HA!  What are you talking about?  If it had 4 issues and came out every month with only big developments happening in only the last issue or two then, I tell you, these same people would STILL complain!  Well before I drone on too long about these silly people let’s get in there…

Doom gained omnipotence...again!  Anyone who has been reading for a few decades (or is really dedicated to back issue collection) should have recognized the similarities of this set up to that of the Secret Wars from the 80’s...and if you didn’t then don’t worry because they blatantly told us about it TWICE right in the issue!  I loved it!  Comics now don’t really make too many references to things that happened before the middle of the 90’s anymore (unless it’s something huge like the Kree/Skrull War) so for them to just flat out talk about parallels right in the story was possibly my favorite part of the issue.  Now moving on…will Doom ever learn?  Back when he stole the Beyonder’s power, he used the same line: “I will fix everything and rule you benevolently….just do WHATEVER I say at all times”.  It didn’t work then and I don’t know why he thought it would work now.  And there’s even a chance that he thinks he means it but let’s not forget that once again, the very first thing he did was fix his own damaged face.  In the end, despite his vaunted intellect and strong will power, he seems no more able to handle the Life Force power then Wanda could.

Moving on to the Maximoff family.  I love seeing all this gushy lovey dovey garbage between Scarlet Witch and Wiccan….mother and son witches reunited…but what about Speed??  You know, that other kid that she went crazy over?  He’s there right in the thick of the whole situation but has not gotten any face time to show his reaction over discovering his true mother.  It would be nice for the writer’s to give him a little character development in this respect…  I will say this regarding Wanda.  If they just kill her right back off or have her disappear or some crap after this is all over I am going to be FURIOUS.  They really put us through a ringer with this series and for her to just bounce right afterwards would be terrible.

Lastly, who can forget the Langs.  It’s great that Scott Lang is back, he was always a great character, but for it to come at the expense of his daughter, who is probably my favorite Young Avengers after Wiccan, is just unacceptable.  It just really seems like they are ruining and/or dismantling this amazing team now.  I’ve loved the Young Avengers for a few years now but I only recently got to pick up their first appearance series…NOW I’M HOOKED.  Please don’t let them kill Cassie, totally not the way to go here.  She and Scott deserve some time to catch up so he can hear all about what an amazing hero she has become…not to mention what he thinks of her dating Kid Kang and Kid Vision…

When Wanda came back in like the 3^rd issue of this series, people were complaining that they were moving too fast and that the last few issues would be pointless…FALSE!  I am glad they gave Wanda her powers and memory back so quickly so we were able to get into the entire battle with Doom.  If they had waited longer to bring her back in the series then we might not have had time to really get into the Lifeforce, Rictor, the twins history, or anything else that we covered so far.  This series has been a long and arduous tale to say the least but, despite what some nay-sayers thinks, it has been more than worth it.  We learned a lot of secrets and discovered a lot of history in this series, not to mention that I suspect the last issue is going to have some inklings of the upcoming Phoenix storyline that’s beginning to pop up all over the place.  I mean really….what other GOODNESS can you possibly put into one book!  I can’t wait for next issue…and since this one was a bit late, I don’t think we’re going to have to wait 2 more months for the next book.  BONUS!

Mutant Generations 4: Magneto's Legacy

In my last installment of Mutant Generations, I explored how the children of two human parents don’t necessarily guarantee human offspring.  This time I’m going in the other direction.  This time I’ll be showing how powered and powerful parents don’t really guarantee that you’ll get a super powered child as I explore the family line of one the greatest mutant terrorists/saviors of all time: Magneto.

 Anya (last name unconfirmed, maybe Eisenhardt) – After escaping from the Auschwitz, Max Eisenhardt and his wife, Magda, made their way to a city called Vinnytsia.  They had a daughter named Anya and it came to no surprise to anyone (since her father’s mutant powers of magnetism had not yet surfaced) that she was completely human.  It was Anya’s death in a burning building (having no special powers to protect herself with) that catalyzed Max Eisenhardt’s powers, which he used to raze the entire village.

Horrified by her husband’s actions, Magda ran from her husband and they never saw each other again.  What Magneto didn’t know was the Magda was pregnant with twins.  Each of these twins grew to be great heroes and villains in their own right.

Pietro Maximoff (Quicksilver) – Pietro and his sister were raised by gypsy couple Django and Marya Maximoff.  He used his super speed powers to protect his helpless and unpredictable sister as they traveled around Europe.  The twins were later recruited into their father’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (with all parties aware of their relationship) but eventually escaped his indentured servitude.  As Quicksilver he became a valued member of both the Avengers and the government sponsored X-Factor.  He eventually fell from grace during the House of M where he manipulated his sister into altering reality then followed by his subsequent theft and abuse of the Inhumans’ Terrigen Crystals.  He has since redeemed himself and is now a teacher for the Avengers Academy.

Luna Maximoff – Pietro eventually married Inhuman and fellow Avengers Crystal.  These two had a daughter and named her Luna, after the moon that the Inhumans lived on.  As Luna grew older, her parents decided not to expose her to the terrigen mist, as was the Inhumans custom, and despite her Inhuman and mutant parentage, and after being tested it was determined that the Inhuman and mutant genetic markers cancelled each other out and left her as a baseline human.  Eventually, during a bout of madness, her father exposed her to the mists giving her an unstable and addictive mutation that gave her empathic abilities which she has learned to utilize in many different ways

Wanda Maximoff – The other child of Max and Magda Eisenhardt grew into an equally powerful and tragic figure.  After running from her husband and his new powers, Magda made her way to Wundagore Mountain.  Upon reaching it, she met the bovine midwife Bova, who helped deliver the twins.  At the exact moment that the twins were born, the Elder God Chthon was being banished from the Earth and, as he left, he left a touch of his magic on the baby Wanda.  As Wanda grew, she developed not only her unpredictable hex power, but also she developed a skill at magic, tutored by her mentor Agatha Harkness.  After her and Quicksilver left Magneto’s Brotherhood, she became a long-time and valued member of the Avengers and the Avengers West, and also married her android teammate, the Vision, and the two miraculous had twins boys.  These babies turned out to be only manifestations of Mephisto’s soul and eventually disappeared into the ether.  Eventually the combination of her hex ability and her magic developed into a mastery (or lack thereof) in Chaos magic which proved to be her undoing as, upon revelation of the truth of her own children she had a nervous breakdown and, through the manipulation of her brother, altered reality and caused the depowering of 98% of the mutant race.  Recently she has resurfaced, sans her memory, during the Children’s Crusade, where the reincarnations of her lost children have been searching for her.

William Kaplan (Wiccan) – Billy Kaplan had all the regular troubles of a gay teenager, along with a fixation for his favorite Avenger, the Scarlet Witch.  He even got the chance to meet his idol outside of Avengers Mansion after being bullied by a boy at school and she assured him that everyone had a gift.  During his next confrontation with the bully his electrical powers activated and he almost killed the boy.  He joined the Young Avengers, first going by the name Asgardian (and later Wiccan), it was later revealed that, in addition to lightning, he could also cast spells and fly.  He later met Tommy Shepard, another super powered youth who was his exact double (except for Tommy had white hair as opposed to Billy’s black hair).  During a confrontation with the Super Skrull, it was noted that Billy had very similar powers to the missing Scarlet Witch.  It has since been confirmed that Billy and Tommy ARE in fact somehow reincarnations of Wanda’s dead/missing children.  There are major concerns that Billy Kaplan may become another Scarlet Witch.

Thomas Shepard (Speed) – When the Young Avengers were looking for new members, they discovered speedster Tommy Shepard.  Upon rescuing him from captivity in a high powered juvenile detention center (where he was because he accidentally destroyed his school), it was immediately noted that he had a striking resemblance to Billy Kaplan (teammate Wiccan).  The two boys, who grew up separately, consider themselves to be brothers, and the children of the Scarlet Witch.    While Billy appears to have inherited Wanda’s reality warping powers, Tommy has developed super speed like Wanda’s twin brother Pietro (he also has Quicksilver’s trademark white hair, just like he father before him)

Lastly, we have a relatively recent addition to Magneto’s family.

Lorna Dane (Polaris) – Originally Lorna Dane was a latent mutant with no powers and only green hair to show that she was any different from the general populous.  After being kidnapped by Mesmero and subjected to the psyche-generator which activated her latent powers of magnetism, and she was hailed as M-2, the daughter of Magneto.  At first this was shown to be false, and Lorna (first adopting the codename Magnetrix, and then later Polaris) joined the X-men and fought mutant villains by their side.  She eventually left the X-men but kept being dragged back in by various enemies (like being mind controlled by Erik the Red and much later, possessed by the Marauder Malice).  She joined the government sponsored X-Factor team and later rejoined the X-men again.  Following a battle with Apocalypse, Lorna journeyed to Genosha with Magneto to learn how to better use her own magnetic powers, and it was during her stay here that she learned that she WAS in fact magneto’s daughter from an affair he had had many years ago.  Since then, since being cast out and disowned by the twins, he has come to think of her as his own child and legacy, even hailing her as his one true heir. 

So this just goes to show you that having a powerful mutant father or grandfather does not necessarily guarantee that a child will also be a powerful mutant.  In the case of Anya, it is possible that she would have later developed powers but she was already old enough to where that would have happened.  With Luna, we have a case where having so many powered family members actually cancelled out her chances of getting powers of her own and left her baseline human, until of course she was exposed to the mists.  And with Polaris, it has been stated that she was a latent mutant and wouldn’t have ever manifested her powers without outside help, although her children would like have the potential to gain these powers.