By Keiron Gillen, Jaime McKelvie & Matthew Wilson with Mike Norton (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-560-4
In the aftermath of the blockbuster Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, the company-wide reboot MarvelNOW! began repositioning and recasting the universe in the ongoing, never-ending battle to keep old readers interested and pick up new ones – a problem increasingly affecting all publishers of print periodicals, not just comicbooks…
For the House of Ideas this meant a drastic reshuffle and rethink of key characters, concepts and brands and, since movie media darlings the Avengers are the most public of the company’s current super-successes, the “World’s Mightiest Heroes†understandably got the most impressive – and accessible – refit. Happily it also meant a fresh lease of life for some favourites who had been lost in the titanic turbulence of periodical publishing…
Collecting material from the anthological MarvelNOW! Point One and the first five issues of Young Avengers volume 2 (from January to May 2013), this enticingly quirky reconfiguration combines original team members Wiccan, Hulkling and Kate Bishop – AKA Hawkeye – with notional newcomers Noh-Varr (don’t call him Marvel Boy!), Miss America and a reincarnated child who used to be Loki, Asgardian god of Evil.
Following scripter Kieron Gillen’s explanatory and motivational Foreword, a prologue on another Earth introduces suave, smarmy and charming Kid Loki who tries to induce former associate America Chavez to travel to Earth-616 and kill retired Young Avenger Billy (Wiccan) Kaplan.
After Miss America gives the devious little toe-rag the sound super-thrashing he deserves and delivers a stern warning that she will be watching him, the boy-god simply moves to Plan B and advertises ‘Wanted: Young Avengers’…
Illustrated throughout by Jaime McKelvie – assisted by Mike Norton and colourist Matthew Wilson – the series proper opens on “Earth-Earth†(that’s 616, right?) with ‘Style > Substance’ as new young lovers Kate Bishop and trans-dimensional Kree warrior Noh-Varr bask in a rosy glow in his luxurious spaceship, whilst in New York Billy Kaplan realise his boyfriend has been cheating on him.
Not sex though: teenaged shape-shifting Skrull Teddy Altman has been secretly sneaking around fighting crime, even after the lovers both swore to never be superheroes again…
After all they have a good life now: Billy’s so-cool parents even let them share a bed in the family home.
After a painful heart-to-heart talk, Wiccan decides to use his incredible reality-warping powers to do something nice for his lonely, orphaned alien boyfriend and probes the infinite multiverse to find Teddy’s beloved, deceased foster-mother – or at least the closest thing to her… and inadvertently triggers the end of creation.
Close by, Miss America is still watching Loki, but soon realises that maybe this time the Trickster might have been on the up and up…
Billy and Teddy are still oblivious to the threat in ‘DYS’ as “Mrs. Altman†settles into her new existence. She is in fact a cosmic parasite: appropriating and controlling living parents and even capable of resurrecting utterly compliant dead mums and dads…
The awful truth emerges when “she†lays down new ground rules for the boys and Wiccan is unable to send the protoplasmic horror back…
Frantically fleeing they head for Avengers Mansion only to find “Mother†already there, proving to the awesome assemblage that she truly does know best before sending the boys to their room in an antiseptic dungeon dimension.
With the maternal atrocity loose, Kid Loki has moved on with Plan B. After rescuing Hulkling and Wiccan he attempts to recruit them, but the distrustful pair instead subdue him and drag the Trickster to Asgardia (currently located in Broxton, Oklahoma) where adult Norse Gods can hopefully take control of the situation.
Sadly Mother is everywhere now and the teens are ignored by the Asgardians but not the resurrected giant Laufey – Loki’s cannibalistic and extremely angry biological father…
Mercifully ever vigilant, Miss America hurtles to the rescue in ‘Parent Teacher Disorganization’ only to have her own dead and cosmically scattered matrons both appear to admonish and belittle her. In a blink Loki teleports the kids back to New York for a brief period of catching-up and temporary truces, whilst Wiccan tries to contact the only really competent teenager he knows.
Kate however is unavailable and merely sends him odd text messages…
Loki has a potential solution but nobody likes it. All he needs to do is “borrow†Wiccan’s ability to Control And Reshape All Reality for ten minutes…
Before he can convince them, the assorted enslaved and reconstituted super-parents appear with Mother and overwhelm the rebellious kids just as Hawkeye and Noh-Varr show up in ‘Deus Ex Machine Gunner’, spectacularly busting everybody loose as an army of enraptured adults and reborn zombie parents converge on the kids. Retrenching, the troubled teens prepare to make their last stand in Central Park…
With the end in sight Wiccan agrees to Loki’s terms and transfers his power in ‘The Art of Saving the World’. To the astonishment of all concerned it works and Loki honours his end of the deal.
Not as anybody expected, however, and in the aftermath the weary teens find themselves bound together in an inescapable manner and forced to leave behind everything they knew and begin a life of nomadic wandering…
As yet this corner of the World’s Mightiest superhero sub-set (the others being plain old Avengers, Uncanny Avengers, Avengers Arena, New Avengers, Secret Avengers and Avengers Assemble) are all alone on the fringes but I’m sure there will be crossover madness ahead …
Fun, frantic and ferociously thrilling superhero magic that will delight every fan of Fights ‘n’ Tights fantasy, this book includes a stupendous, sublime and expansive covers-and-variants gallery: eleven superbly playful images by McKelvie & Wilson, Bryan Lee O’Malley & Nathan Fairbairn, Skottie Young, David LaFeunte, Jim Cheung, Stephanie Hans & Tradd Moore,
There are also selections of extra content for tech-savvy consumers in the form of the now-standard added extras provided by AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which give access to story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.