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A review by meredithakatz
Young Avengers, Volume 1: Style > Substance by Kieron Gillen
5.0
This is a pretty much perfect beginning to the newer run of the Young Avengers, following after the initial 2006 Young Avengers run and Children's Crusade.
After the previous team of Young Avengers fell apart, some of them have stayed away, and others are still out living that superhero life. When a threat against the universe appears, it's Kid Loki who decides to get a new team together, bringing in the new members, America Chavez (a dimension-hopping lesbian latina) and Noh-Varr (a disaffected Kree ex-soldier with a love for earth music), as well as pulling back some previous ones, such as Kate Bishop (rich girl with a bow and Hawkeye #2), Billy Kaplan (chaos-mage and son of the Scarlet Witch, Wiccan), and Teddy (a shape-shifting skrull-kree hybrid prince and Billy's boyfriend, Hulkling).
The threat? An eldritch terror known as Mother, who has the ability to brainwash adults , a parasite who is drawn to Billy's reality-warping powers in the hopes of eating his soul.
The threat is big, but the comic doesn't lose narrative focus on the characters' feelings as they face their own parents turned against them, or dead parents brought back to torment them. And McKelvie's art fully brings in the strange, eldritch, mystical powers by breaking all the rules of paneling and coming out the better for it. The writing is snappy, funny, and just great at building off what we've already seen of these characters -- and not afraid to not be funny, too, dropping the occasional icy bomb with great effect. I've been looking forward to starting this arc for my entire reread, and I'm very glad to finally be here.
(See my reading guide to the Young Avengers, which also links to my other Young Avengers reviews, over here.)
After the previous team of Young Avengers fell apart, some of them have stayed away, and others are still out living that superhero life. When a threat against the universe appears, it's Kid Loki who decides to get a new team together, bringing in the new members, America Chavez (a dimension-hopping lesbian latina) and Noh-Varr (a disaffected Kree ex-soldier with a love for earth music), as well as pulling back some previous ones, such as Kate Bishop (rich girl with a bow and Hawkeye #2), Billy Kaplan (chaos-mage and son of the Scarlet Witch, Wiccan), and Teddy (a shape-shifting skrull-kree hybrid prince and Billy's boyfriend, Hulkling).
The threat? An eldritch terror known as Mother, who has the ability to brainwash adults , a parasite who is drawn to Billy's reality-warping powers in the hopes of eating his soul.
The threat is big, but the comic doesn't lose narrative focus on the characters' feelings as they face their own parents turned against them, or dead parents brought back to torment them. And McKelvie's art fully brings in the strange, eldritch, mystical powers by breaking all the rules of paneling and coming out the better for it. The writing is snappy, funny, and just great at building off what we've already seen of these characters -- and not afraid to not be funny, too, dropping the occasional icy bomb with great effect. I've been looking forward to starting this arc for my entire reread, and I'm very glad to finally be here.
(See my reading guide to the Young Avengers, which also links to my other Young Avengers reviews, over here.)