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.

Hand of Deception - Review New Avengers #22

Wow, I know they’re heroes and all but unlike their slightly uppity Avengers counterpart, the New Avengers are definitely a group you DON’T want to screw with.  Between Wonder Man’s ambush and Osborn’s two-pronged attack, this team of superheroes has gotten completely fed up with the villains attacking them in their own house!  Following an embarrassing beating by the new Dark Avengers, Cage & co. are confronted by American military forces right on their own front lawn, and let’s just say it went down poorly.  I still think that this entire Osborn scenario is getting to be too much between both books but at least this half of the story is keeping things interesting.  I just wish that Luke (and Jessica) could learn to stop storming off by themselves every time there’s trouble.

Now the real star of this entire story, however, is Victoria Hand.  Major kudos to the writers for the way they have delicately plotted her course since the very beginning of this series.  We all naturally assumed that she was working for Osborn in some way, but to be honest even I didn’t see her double status working for Captain America coming.  Her confrontation scene with the New Avengers showed a new level of ruthlessness from them, as they walked her through her own faux death by falling from a window, as well as a new level of depth for Victoria herself.  Thank goodness for the living lie detector team, Daredevil and Wolverine, or who knows what might have come of Miss Hand.  Following this entire debacle I am looking forward to seeing how her relationships within the team change and grow from this latest information.

Additionally, it was nice to see some crossover between the two parts of the storyline finally.  Osborn’s grand design has been playing out in both main Avengers books but until this very issue we haven’t seen any connection between them, as though they were two completely separate stories.  Here we finally saw the leaders of the Hand and Hydra, Gorgon and Viper respectively, sowing the first seeds of their deceiving Osborn (which I think we can all agree was just a matter of time).  Then to see them both lording over the captive body of Captain America, brought a measure of continuity that I think the entire story was lacking.

And last but certainly not least, perhaps my favorite part of the entire issue, was the Avengers OTHER secret agent in Osborn’s midst: Skaar, Son of Hulk.  Personally, I was excited when I saws him join Osborn’s Dark Avengers, something of an homage to his father, the original Hulk, being a founding member of the Avengers.  Its funny because we see Skaar cause so much havoc (even if it sometimes isn’t on purpose) that we can easily forget that, when he’s not all green and Hulk-y, he’s just a little boy underneath.  Seeing him scream “Avengers Assemble!” and betray his Dark Avenger teammates was not only shocking, but also a great cliffhanger to lead us into next issue’s finale. 

School's Out! - Review Avengers Academy #26

                I was already loving the new direction that this book was taking before this issue even happened and after this all I can say is…AWESOME!  I’m a huge fan of the Avengers West Coast so I was thrilled when they brought us back to the old compound and even added Hawkeye to the faculty to give it a real AWC feel, but the one thing I wasn’t feeling was all the extraneous character that were supposed to be coming and going.  Well, this issue took care of that plus a few of the other issues (albeit minor ones that is).  I see this book taking the momentum that it has been building and going forward in directions that we can’t even guess about yet!

                First of all, thank god we’re seeing Veil again!  When she first left the team, I honestly thought it was a big set-up.  I honestly thought that she was leaving but that we were still going to be following her in the pages of this title and watching while she spied on Jeremy Briggs…but then she disappeared.  I mean, we saw her in the future flashes with the older versions of the team (minus Lightspeed and White Tiger by the way...) but she was the character with the most depth and room to grow, I felt, and she just appeared from the present timeline story.  Now not only is she back, but she brought the Initiative kids (who we haven’t seen since Fear Itself) with her AND Jocasta, returned from faking her own death.  What I didn’t count on was her coming back to steal students from the Academy with Jocasta and try to shut the school down.  I mean clearly Jeremy is up to something shady, but what is she thinking?  Even if she doesn’t agree with some of the decisions that come with being an Avenger, where would she be without the Academy?   Slowly discorporating with no idea it was happening or any clue how to stop it, that’s where!  

And as for Jocasta…talk about an ungrateful piece of scrap metal!  I have no idea if she’s under Ultron’s control or not, but for a being that thinks she’s so highly evolved she has become one of the most contemptuous and abrasive robots ever.  “I am not here to fight, but to disable the technology that I installed.  In other words, all of it.”  Last I checked that equipment was created in an Avengers lab, using Avengers supplies that were bought with Avengers funding.  So where does she get the right to just take (or some might say steal) it from them?   All while basically telling the students of this school that if they stay there they will not only die but ruin the world.  I agree with Hawkeye’s assessment that she has been “drinking Wonder Man’s Kool-aid”.  

One great thing that happened is they deflated the slightly over inflated cast of the title.  I loved when they moved to the Costa Verde compound (or I guess it’s campus now) and made it into a real school for Avengers.  What I wasn’t really feeling was all the extra characters that came with it, especially the ones that we never even saw.  It was great that they added Hawkeye, Lightspeed, and White Tiger to the cast but then we had Butterball, Batwing, Lyra, Power Man, Rocket Racer, Ricochet, X-23, Turbo, Whiz-Kid, Hollow, and Machine Teen and Rover all joining the campus on some sort of part-time basis.  Why?  So they had a huge cast to draw on whenever they conveniently needed someone to fill a particular power requirement for a story? Most of these characters have been seen only once or twice in the background of an outdoor or group scene so why bother bringing them in at all?  More importantly, why bring them in if you are going to have someone else take them away in a few issues (before even properly showing any of them on-panel)?  And the ones who don’t leave, are they going to continue to barely be background characters or will they actually become part of them team (which will swell the cast size to be way too much.  They should have just left the cast as is and added the one or two characters that they actually had plans for.

These big issues aside, the issue had a few other great moments.  Veil’s reaction to Striker telling her that he’s gay was priceless: “Well, duh”, Hank’s impassioned speech about what the Avengers mean to him (which was interesting considering the mental health and personal problems his association with the team has brought), and Haz-mat choosing at the last second to stay at the Academy with Mettle were just a few of the great smaller moments in this issue.  However, the crux of the entire issue was the reveal on the last page:  Hank Pym (20 years later) is the mastermind behind the future versions of the Academy.  What is that plan?  We still don’t know, but with every single issue I wonder more and more what the hell happened to their future that’s making them go to such lengths to ensure it happens their way.  Here’s to yet another stellar issue from this creative team and I can’t wait to see where they are going with this future storyline.

Hope's Falling - Review Generation Hope #16

All I can say is – it’s about damn time!  For months now, Hope Summers has been walking around like she’s god’s gift to the mutant race and like she can do whatever she wants since no one can stop her.  And she really crossed the line when she took physical control of Kenji to defend herself from Laurie that was the last straw completely.  Being Cable’s daughter, and therefore Cyclops’ granddaughter, doesn’t really carry much weight when you treat your grandfather like garbage and challenge his authority at every turn.  It’s really no wonder that things came to a head the way they did in this issue.

                It’s been no secret that Laurie hasn’t had fuzzy feeling for Hope for quite some time now so it made perfect sense for Kenji to go to her first.  I was even excited to see the return of some familiar faces from the X-men foes gallery, in the form of Dragoness, Random, Litterbug, Erg and Bliss, to torment and question her high and superior attitude, but I never expected to see such a full scale mutiny against Hope, especially not by half of her own team.  What did she really expect though?  She holds Laurie against her will, makes Gabriel use his life threatening powers at her whim, forcibly control Kenji’s very body, and even lies to the one person who still trusts her, Sebastian Shaw, when he asks if she knows about his past.  Something I am sure Cable tried to teach her, in their travels through time, was the importance of earning and keeping trust. So why does she feel she is above such pleasantries?  Why does she feel like everyone, even the people who aren’t directly under her control, need to simply accept her doing whatever she wants at any given time?  And unless she changes her attitude, and quickly, I could easily see a future like the one Kenji envisioned where all new mutants are enslaved to her will.  Seems like a major disaster waiting to happen.

                The big shock for me was Emma Frost in this issue.  I knew she wasn’t Hope’s biggest fan, but I never expected her to go that far to bring her down.  I’m glad that someone was finally willing to say what we’ve all been thinking since Hope appeared “the Phoenix could be lurking inside this wretched girl waiting to kill us all”.  OBVIOUSLY!  I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out that Hope was somehow (possibly even unconsciously) preventing Scott from seeing the danger surrounding her.  I suspect that Scott will be furious when he wakes up from his enforced siesta, but he will eventually see that whatever happens next is for the best and no one’s fault but Hope’s.  I can only imagine what she said to Magneto to get him to join in this rebellion, but he is the only other senior team member present during the last page’s debacle.

                I think that Hope had this coming and deserve whatever she gets at this point.  She just swooped in after Cable died and expected everyone to bow to her every whim and that was before she really understood her powers and mutant messiah rap.  She expected everyone to adapt to her methods, which were earned in one war torn future after another, rather than try to acclimate herself to her new environment and fit in with this timeline’s inhabitants.  If Cable were still around he would tell her to stop being such a brat and grow up already, but unfortunately he isn’t around right now…or is he?  Only the final issue of X-Sanction will be able to tell us.  Until then I can’t wait to see how this mutiny turns out next issue.

Date With a Devil - Review New Mutants #37

This series just gets better and better every issue!  These last few issues since ReGenesis have been just amazing just amazing, total throwbacks to the feel of the original series from the 80’s.  There’s lots of campy humor, character development and quirky mutant “surrogate family” fun all around.  To be honest I wasn’t sure that I like this line-up of the mutants when it first rolled out after Schism (after all there’s no Cannonball.  No Boom Boom.  No Wolfsbane!  And they threw Doug Ramsey in and left him there to do nothing) but they have really made the most of this “light” team and even threw in X-man as a brand new member (which they haven’t done with New Mutants (Vol. 1) #87 when they added new member Cable to the roster).  Nate Grey fits right into the crew seamlessly with the other returning classic characters as we see Magma fulfill her deal with Mephisto and go on a date with the devil himself.

First of all, I am glad they didn’t drag the “date with a devil” angle out forever.  I really thought that it was going to be some weirdness where they were in some crazy perilous situation and he popped up saying “OK time for our date”, whisking her away to some perilous solo adventure.  Oh no!  This is a completely different Mephisto, complete with nerdy glassed and loose fitting shirt and tie, and (if anything he’s said is real and true) this is my favorite version of him ever!  Secondly, WOW!  If he’s being real then he really pulled out all the stops for Amara.  The fact that the date was IN Hell itself was a pretty good jumping off point but then add in the erupting volcanos,  bright red corvette, and the band and serving staff of the damned and who could even resist?  Magma, that’s who.  Never one to be easily impressed she instantly asked “What do you want from me?  You’re the devil so you must want something to leave me and my friends alone.”  Surprisingly enough, he SEEMS to not want anything.  He even made it sound real.  According to the devil, conning people out of their souls is easy and boring after millennia of doing it and every once in a while he wants to go out and actually have some “normal” fun with a girl like everyone else (although I think Northstar may have other ideas heh).  

Well once she saw he wasn’t in it for her immortal soul; she then also wasn’t falling for his games anymore.  She quickly asserted control of the date and took them out of hell to a local diner.  From here on, it got even funnier!  Just the fact that a red skinned man can sit in a diner and have it not be completely out of the ordinary showed just how far the (Marvel) society has come.  Back in the 80’s, that still would have incited a riot if Nightcrawler sat out if the open like that.  Instead it was Magma getting the evil glares for her failed attempt at working in the same diner.  A brief explanation about the “diversification of Hell” and an ironic saucy sauce joke later, and this date ended up being an actual smashing success.  And of course, what first date would be complete without the awkward and hesitant kiss at the end of the night.  For most of the issue I thought there was going to be some kind of twist coming at the end, but this kiss and Mephisto’s sheepish reaction to it made the whole thing seem real to me.  With the epilogue of him throwing rocks at her windows to ask to call on her again made this one of the best date issues I’ve ever read.  Here’s hoping they go out again!

                Of course no date is complete without the girl’s family diligently sitting home waiting and worrying about her.  Between Dani being half interested sister and half disapproving mother and Bobby being half jealous boyfriend and half over protective father, we have the entire family gauntlet right here in our very own dysfunctional mutant clan.  I even thought that the touch of Warlock’s techtag bracelet for her was a nice touch…if it had last for longer than one block of the car ride.  One thing that I’m not really onboard with is Bobby’s intense and (in my opinion) sudden crush on Amara.  These two have known each other for years (and yeah he’s flirted but it was always in fun), but now he’s completely head over heels in love with her (and not her with him).  Also it hadn’t occurred to me until this issue that X-man joining the team is a lot like a younger Cable re-joining since they are genetic duplicates (or alternate reality counterpart or whatever) and I am glad to see him practicing his newly reduced power successfully.  Other non-date related fun:  Warlock still has his hidden hellhound hiding in a closet, thanks to Lil Loki over in Journey into Mystery.  Dani’s trying to go visit Illyana on Utopia, but unfortunately she busy being sucked underground in Uncanny X-men.  And Doug trying to track down Dr. Strange (you know, just in case).  Al while Bobby mopes in a corner.  Classic New Mutants angst and character building.  Keep it coming guys!!

The Blink storyline went on a little too long for my liking (especially since she didn’t even stay with the team) but this standalone issue more than made up for it.  It could have easily been another Hell adventure of the team, but that’s been done more times than I can count at this point so I am glad they went with this instead, and I LOVE this version of Mephisto.  His character is always handled so differently by the various writers that have gotten their hands on him, but I am really hoping that we see more of this version in the future…you know, on their next date.