Do you remember how once the dust settled, you looked back on Age Of Ultron and realized it actually DID live up to the hype that proceeded it?

Yeah, me neither.

Avengers Arena, on the other hand, not only meets expectations, it exceeds them. Case in point: A little book called Issue 14.

This issue, we learn a little bit more about Bloodstone, a character I started off not giving two shits about. Thanks to Hopeless, I’ve come to care not only about him, but about this entire cast of troubled kids.

This series was teased as “Battle Royale With Superheroes”, and I guess it is. But it also turns out that the book is a great teen drama. And by great, I mean “Believable”, which is weird when you consider the fact that the teens in question turn into dinosaurs, breathe underwater, or can recover from multiple gunshot wounds in a matter of seconds. Despite the super-powers, these characters feel more authentic than the cast of your average teen drama on the WB or CW or whatever channel kids watch today.

The art is cool. I’m not an artist myself, so I’m not going to try and describe “cinematic page layout” or critique the way lines flow from panel to panel or whatever. The colors are appealing, the trees look like trees, and there are no crazy, headache-inducing perspective screw-ups.

By the way, kudos to the cover artist for the callback to the iconic cover to Wolverine #1.

My Pick Of The Week.