I’m old. Not really, but in comparison to my peers at work, I sure do feel it. It wasn’t too long ago when I, too, based my many moods upon a stray wave from a practical stranger or gleaned meaning from the minutiae of life. Those Buffy watching days are over. So when I saw yet another big two title aimed at teenagers, my natural reaction was ‘hah’. It wasn’t even the X-Men, and if the X-Men didn’t have enough operatic bombast to it, then what kind of extreme mood swing would the Young Avengers be?
It’s the covers, I’m sure. It’s true with sexy men and it’s apparently true with comic books. The title delivered all of the angst and melodrama I was expecting, and yet I kept reading, mesmerized by the waves of emotion that the characters were driven by. Sure, it was saccharine to begin with, but that’s the idea, isn’t it?
Lure the kids in with some of Dawson’s Creek and sneak some well-written plot in. It’s a little on the nose, but in an age where “It was bad because I saw it coming” is an actual criticism, it’s good to see plots that make sense.
The art is immaculate. It’s got a fresh, undeniably current look to it that works fort the series. When other artists are busy trying to capture timelessness through minimalism or just walking through paths that have been crossed before, Jamie McKelvie and Mike Norton’s clean lines manage to prove that detailed comic book art can be great.
The biggest star here might just be colorist Matt Wilson- these are what truly make the pages pop. It’s hard to find a book that successfully uses such a wide array of hues, and it’s a treat to see the product of this collaboration. The layouts themselves are worth a look- as many double pages present more like beautiful infographics or precise graphic design than a traditional comic page. They really do play to the characters’ strengths.
With the exception of Kate Bishop and Loki, I didn’t have a connection with any of the characters of Young Avengers. Why they’re called Avengers is beyond me, besides the needs of Disney’s branding agenda. Like a Selena Gomez construct, teenaged characters (not necessarily real young people) have a tendency to be incredibly annoying.
These aren’t. It’s easy to be transported back to that time when everything mattered, and Kieron Gillen makes it easier still to identify with these kids who ultimately spend five issues saving the world from themselves, in Loki’s own words. They screw up, as teenagers are wont to do, but the turning point is when they realize that this a problem they have to fix themselves. On their own. Without any help from their parental figures.
If that’s not what being a teenager is about, I don’t know what is.
Rule of three 