Avengers Academy 14.1

Reviewed by 20-Jun-11

This is one of the better .1 issues, on nearly every level. It introduces the characters, all of whom are pretty new to me, gives us some action, presents an interesting and ambiguous new character connected to the team, and presents some actual moral ideas for them to think about.

This is one of the better .1 issues, on nearly every level. It introduces the characters, all of whom are pretty new to me, gives us some action, presents an interesting and ambiguous new character connected to the team, and presents some actual moral ideas for them to think about.

It’s not perfect – the standard opening-page intro is dull and clumsy, there is little hint of what is to come, unless that new character will be important (and he has bags of potential to be so), and in all honesty the moral questions and ambiguity don’t seem to be troubling the team quite enough. It’s also a bit overly wordy, with some fairly heavy-handed exposition in the early pages.

Nonetheless, some of the team are immediately pretty interesting (bar two panels featuring Giant-Man’s legs, it rightly avoids featuring the teachers, all long-established characters, to give the kids more space), and there clearly has been an attempt to give them fresh powers, even if some seem a bit of a stretch. The mandatory fight scene features Ruby Thursday – I don’t know if she’s appeared since, but it brought back memories of one of my favourite superhero runs of all time, Steve Gerber on the Defenders, so points for that. The new guy introduced here – originally one of those selected by Norman Osborne, but who is now a very successful businessman – seems an extremely strong character, who could be a major player in the series and even beyond it, if handled well. I liked his raising doubts about the whole superhero/villain thing, suggesting that some of the team might make better, more satisfying and more valuable roles in the world than just getting in super-fights.

The art is pretty ordinary, though – clear enough, none of it bad, but there were a number of places where a little more nuance and feeling in the facial expressions would have added something, and there are one or two places where I wasn’t sure what the images were supposed to be telling me.

Despite the second-rate art, this interests me, and I am very tempted to keep buying; and even perhaps getting the collection of the first six issues mentioned in the hype page at the end, which is a bit cliched – ‘big exciting changes coming, honest!’ It’s nice to read a .1 issue that makes you feel like reading more, rather than wondering what they were thinking, so this is a success.

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7 responses to “Avengers Academy 14.1”

  1. Mike Teague says:

    It is a surprisingly good comic, I’ve been reading this since #1, and as you said, this is one of the rare occasions where a Point One issue does what it’s supposed to do.

  2. martin hand says:

    “two panels featuring Giant-Man’s legs”

    – dare i ask who’s giant man these days…?

    ( i know bill foster’s dead & hank pym = the wasp – unless that’s changed of course )

    ps. giant man never used to be hyphenated – is this a “signpost” that it’s a new character?

    • Martin Skidmore says:

      The hyphenation is in the comic, and it seems to be Hank Pym, though he’ll probably have another identity next month.

      • Mike Teague says:

        Hank Pym is Giant-Man – as Martin S appropriately says, for this month.
        He now wears a variation on his original Giant-Man costume, which is a vast improvement on what he had as the Wasp !

        • martin hand says:

          – thanks martin & mike

          “He now wears a variation on his original Giant-Man costume” – blimey! – with the “braces”? – i approve!

          so… is the wasp (ie janet van dyne) still dead?

          • Martin Skidmore says:

            One of the Avengers comics suggested that she still exists in some other dimension, if I remember rightly, so I’m sure she’ll be brought back before too long.

  3. Will Morgan says:

    It was Dan Slott’s Mighty Avengers which revealed that Hank’s Infinite Mansion setup was in fact a highly-contrived way of keeping a map of Jan’s neural pathways so that she could be ‘rebooted’ at a later date. No, it didn’t make much sense when I read it, either. However, since that ‘MacGuffin’ was actually used as the springboard for the Avangers Academy plot immediately prior to this #.1 (Veil, with a burst of good intentions, tries to revive Jan and instead accidentally brings back Korvac and his squeeze), I’m not sure those neural pathways aren’t paved over now…

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