Pick of the Week

WRITER: ALLAN HEINBERG
PENCILS: JIM CHEUNG
INKS: MARK MORALES
COLORED BY: JAYPO LLC
LETTERED BY: NEUROTIC CARTOONIST, INC
COVER BY: JIM CHEUNG

Size: 40 pages
Price: 3.99

When the last page reveal works, it really works.

A long time ago, Ron bought Josh the hardcover collection of the complete Young Avengers. It was a book that I had read the first issue of and liked well, enough, but not enough to continue reading for whatever reason. Josh extolled the virtues of Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung’s Young Avengers on one of our video shows and the passion behind his love for Young Avengers convinced me to buy the hardcover for myself that very day after we finished shooting. One of the reasons why Josh loved Young Avengers so much was the old school Marvel/Avengers feel. That was one of the reasons why I loved that series too. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m loving Avengers: The Children’s Crusade.

The first issue of this bi-monthly miniseries had some wonky pacing issues (they kept going back and forth from the Avengers Mansion for no seemingly apparent reason other than there needed to be action while the talking was going on) but overall I really liked it. Avengers: The Children’s Crusade #2 kicks things up a whole bunch of notches.

There were a lot of great books this week but none were as much fun as this one.

The story so far is this: two of the Young Avengers, Speed and Wiccan, believe themselves to be the missing sons of the disgraced Avenger Wanda Maximoff, The Scarlet Witch. In the last issue, the Young Avengers were confronted by The Avengers because they were a bit concerned that Wiccan might be A) As super powerful as his possible mom, and B) Might someday freak out and remake reality like his possible mom did in House of M. So the Young Avengers decided that they needed to find Scarlet Witch in order to convince the Avengers that Wiccan is a good dude. Enter last issue’s last page reveal: the sudden and dramatic appearance of Magneto, father of Scarlet Witch (and her brother Quicksilver) and possible grandfather of Wiccan and Speed.

In Avengers: The Children’s Crusade #2, and after a brief tussle between Magento and The Avengers, the Young Avengers accompany Magneto to Wundagore Mountain in Transia — Scarlet Witch’s birthplace — in hopes of locating her.

I love this development. I love it mostly because it’s rare these days that the X-Men crossover with anyone outside of their own books, at least in the books I read. Every Marvel family seems to be in their own bubble, and while the X-Men themselves don’t appear here, it’s a nice change of pace to have Magneto show up in an Avengers book.

Now let’s get back to the last page reveal. As I said before, it was used to great effect in the first issue when Magneto showed up. And it’s hard to raise the stakes when you’ve already got Magneto on your hands. In fact, there is only one man who can truly raise the dramatic stakes, SO SAYS DOOM!

That’s right. Quicksilver shows up to try to stop the Young Avengers and Magneto from finding the Scarlet Witch and in the course of doing so tries to skewer Magneto with some hastily made wooden stakes from a nearby fence. (You can do that kind of thing when you have super speed.) One of those stakes goes wide of the target and impales a comely and innocent girl who was just minding her own business walking through the village square. That girl looks a lot like Wanda Maximoff. But she’s not! She’s revealed to be a Doombot! (Doombot!) And then the last page reveals that Doctor Doom has been keeping Scarlet Witch has his prisoner!

That last page reveal literally made me giddy. “Doctor Doom! Yes!” I squealed to my empty apartment.

Allan Heinberg does a fantastic job with these characters. It certainly helps that not many other writers have been able to do much with the Young Avengers. Heinberg has given each of the Young Avengers a distinctive voice and a vibrant personality and he’s created a team that’s just a lot of fun to be around. I laughed heartily when Wiccan conjured up undercover clothes before they entered the small Transian village and everyone ended up dressed like a character from The Sound of Music. The way the rest of the team bitched and moaned and made fun of Wiccan felt very authentic in the way friends will rib each other.

What else can be said about Jim Cheung’s artwork? It’s amazing and we don’t get enough of it. He does great character work, he does great action, and he does great storytelling. He’s basically all you’d ever want out of an artist. His pages are full of detail and depth — he doesn’t skimp on backgrounds except when drama dictates it, as when Doombot Scarlet Witch got skewered in the stomach in this issue. I love that Heinberg plays to Cheung’s strengths and makes sure to always drop in a double page spread — in this case, the Avengers dropping in on the Young Avengers and Magneto — because that’s one thing tha Cheung really excels at: the show stopping, dynamic double page spread. They are always ooh and aah worthy. Let’s face it What else can be said about Jim Cheung’s artwork? Hell, I don’t think we’re saying enough about it.

The Young Avengers books really do have that old school Marvel vibe that Josh described all those years ago. And I think that many of the current crop of relaunched and/or new Avengers books have that old school Marvel vibe too, but Avengers: The Children’s Crusade has it even more so. There’s big globe spanning action, there’s young heroes trying to make their way in the world, there’s romance, there’s humor, there’s drama, and there’s heavy doses of classic Marvel villains.

Between Avengers: The Children’s Crusade and all of the other Avengers books (that I’m reading) this Avengers fan really hasn’t been this happy in years.

Conor Kilpatrick
The Von Trapp children don’t play. They march.
conor@ifanboy.com