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.

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As is often the case, KevinMLD and I got into a discussion earlier in the week about comics. This time around it was the Heroic Age rebranding of Marvel‘s Thunderbolts, a book I wouldn’t have expected us to talk about under any circumstances…

KevinMLD: Did you read Thunderbolts?

PTB: No, you?

KevinMLD: Yeah, I thought it was kind of great for starring a bunch of characters I don’t know. It had a pretty great ending that I think you might have liked. The book might not be what it was billed as at all.

PTB: That sounds interesting…

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