Young Avengers #1-2 Review

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Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: Sidekicks

Written by: Allan “The Poor Man’s Joss Whedon” Heinberg
Penciled by: Jim Cheung
Inked by: John Dell with Mark Morales
Colored by: Justin Posnor
Lettered by: Cory Petit
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Publisher: Marvel Comics

“Oh, you have got to be kidding sir. First you think of an idea that has already been done. Then you give it a title that nobody could possibly like. Didn’t you think this through? What were you thinking?”

“So what if I’m a baby bird, hanging on your every word? Nothing ever smelled of roses, that rises out of ruin…”

The Short Form
Young Avengers #1 sucks.
Young Avengers #2 shows promise, but also shows the major, definitive flaws in the book and why the premise damns the book to comic hell and cancels out the promise. And I’ll believe Vision being back when I see him up and running and beating Iron Man to death for not fixing him.

And that would be that if not for the fact that I’ve got a word quota I’ve got to fill. My hate for this book and it’s very existence is on the record and that it will take a miracle to get me to give a damn about it. Not even Heinberg (AKA “The Poor Man’s Joss Whedon”) dangling the hope of Vision being brought back into action after the unprofessional way Brian Bendis (whose recent comments on his message board and his Newsarama interview only serve to further every negative thought I have of the man) had him be destroyed and ignored by his so-call “friends” on the Avengers.

So rather than restate what I’ve said numerous times on numerous message boards (including on the V, who for some reason have taken it upon themselves to appoint me their patron saint of angry Internet fanboys, beating out Kurt Busiek’s online stalker by a large margin) and on the Roundtable, I’m going to try something different for this review. So after three completely different drafts, all of which were more and more vulgar and slanderous than the last, we’ve got this number as I look at the books one after another as if I was reading them for the first time and had a ball-gag in my mouth to keep me from screaming obscenities out loud.

Lil’ Bastard Avengers #1
First off, I have to say all goodwill Heinberg may have had is taken away from him by having him ramrod Little Miss See You Next Tuesday Jessica Jones down the readers throats and having the Young Avengers talk about how great she is. He should have gone with JJJ as the token POV character for the first issue since JJJ is a cool character whose presence would have given the book a much needed boost.

That being said, the first issue has the team showing up and quite frankly, the roster shows you why this book should never have been green-lighted. All are basic ciphers with Lil’ Cap and Thor being slightly redeemed due to their cool design. Lil’ Hulk is totally worthless and Lil’ Iron Man, that’s a whole other paragraph. If you are going to ramrod a bunch of bottom-feeding pieces of crap down our throats, I’d prefer if they would have introduced the team one-by-one so that the Poor Man’s Joss Whedon can give them personalities.

As it stands, Lil’ Thor is the only interesting one and that’s possibly because he’s unique due to the way the Marvel Universe is now Thor-less. So I would make him the centerpiece of the team and build up the notion of him getting his powers in the first issue and then using the next couple of issues establishing the rest of the characters one issue at a time, with Lil’ Thor recruiting them for his team.

And then there is Lil’ Iron Man, who is the subject of the shock ending to Young Avengers #1. Kang’s history is convoluted enough as it is, do we need another Kang? Seriously, this is a lame plot twist and God knows it makes no sense. If you have to take a character from the future, why not Spider-Girl? God knows having Spider-Girl (whose cult following and long-running series could use a boost by being a major part of this pet project of Joe Quesada) would have given this book a better twist AND a hook for longtime fans who would be willing to read the book because of Spider-Girl.

Oh and for the record, I don’t get the gay vibe from Lil’ Hulk and Lil’ Thor. And no, I also don’t buy into the theory that Lil’ Hulk’s a girl who turns into a boy Hulk. However, I will take “Lil’ Thor” is Eric Masterson’s son for a $1000 even though I secretly hope and pray that he’ll turn out to be the real Thor. But that’s just me….

Lil’ Bastard Avengers #2
This leads to issue two, with it’s introduction of Cassie Lang to the gang as their version of Giganta. In one of the few decent things about issue two, Cassie’s appearance and her being pissed off at the world after her father’s death works in this issue. It’s a shame though that they don’t have her tear Captain America and Iron Man a new a**hole for not bothering to see if she was ok after her death and such since you’d think that would have been something they would have done in the unreadable Avengers Finale one-shot.

And then we have Lil’ Kang, who’s suprisingly less of a cipher when he’s out of the God-Awful Iron Lad costume and into his schoolboy uniform and Kang helmet and harness. “TPMJW” would have been better served introducing Lil’ Kang as is instead of forcing us to put up with him as Lil’ Iron Man. That being said, I can now say at least I have a good idea WHY Immortus decided to use Iron Man as his private butt-boy for which to have carry out murders and a**holery onto the Avengers.

And as for Vision, I’ll believe his return when I see it actually happen in the pages of the book. Given that Bendis has a hard-on hatred for the character, what with the way he destroyed the character and then had everyone box up rather than fixing like they’ve done in the past, I’ll believe his return when I actually f-ing see it in the pages of a comic.