REVIEW: Avengers Academy #1

Closing out our reviews of the new line of Avengers titles in Marvel‘s Heroic Age is Christos Gage and Mike McKone’s Avengers Academy #1. This is title with a bunch of new characters and seems to pick up on some of the concepts introduced in Avengers: The Initiative. We threw in some follow up on the Avengers and Thunderbolts titles as well.

Avengers Academy #1

KevinMLD: I liked this book well enough I guess. I have no investment in any of the characters so that doesn’t bode well for me sticking around, but there was a certain charm to the book. It seems like all of the Classic Avengers except Scarlet Witch and Vision are back in the Heroic Age. Though I liked the oddly villainous Quicksilver from X-Factor a few years back. I hope they don’t reimagine him again… Already.

PTB: I don’t mind the cast they’ve chosen for the instructors here. Hank Pym, Quicksilver, Justice, Speedball and Tigra are Avengers characters that I’ve enjoyed reading about for years, but I am officially done with these Avengers books that introduce teams of new young characters. Marvel seemed concerned with the mutant population boom and used House of M to rein things in. The resulting creation of dozens of new Initiative and Academy characters puts them in the same position. I can’t really name one that I care about.

KevinMLD: The twist at the end works well enough and it’s an interesting story decision to let the characters in on the decision rather than just the readers. I think it makes all of these ex-Avengers look bad that their information was so easily compromised. Unless this is another Baron Zemo-esque swerve… (let’s hope not anyway.)

PTB: It did seem too easy for them to work it out. I like the idea that Osborn was pursuing an agenda like this, but I think something could have been done with more Initiative characters rather than creating a team of new ones. Christos Gage is good and I think this book could be really interesting, but I can’t find room for it in my budget.

Avengers

KevinMLD: I don’t really have that much to add on the Avengers anymore… None of these books has worked out as well as i hoped they would…did you end up watching Next Avengers? Does that give any insight into Avengers?

PTB: I did watch Next Avengers. It gave me some idea of who those kids are, but their history is not that same as the Marvel Universe (e.g. Stark created Ultron, not Pym) so I’m not really sure where it’s going. The cartoon was just ok, nothing great. No explanation of who the girl with Hulk and Kang is, and that Hulk is not consistent with the one in the book in terms of intelligence. Kang is in a cool storybook style montage in the opening of the movie, but nowhere else.

I read Avengers #2 and another group of characters from the future show up so maybe this is going to involve a bunch of alternate futures.

Thunderbolts #145

KevinMLD: The way this issue resolves last month‘s cliffhanger return of Baron Zemo pretty much killed my enthusiasm for this title and the entire Avengers relaunch. It was the worst possible choice they could have made in my opinion.  I’ll probably stick around a few more issues just because I’m under the possibly mistaken impression that Iron Fist is joining the team and I love the idea of a team headlined by Power-Man, Iron Fist, and Man-Thing.

PTB: I don’t know if Iron Fist is going to be in this book, but he’s part of the team in New Avengers, so there’s possibly going to be even more overlap in the casts of these titles. I like some of the characters in this book, but not even to hold my interest at this point. The Zemo-swerve and the fact that they’re chasing down Asgardian trolls over the course of more than one issue means I’m out.