Wait – this is what Chris Yost can do when he’s not killing dozens of X-children or making every character unnecessarily “hardcore”?  Where has this Chris Yost been all my life?

This series is approximately a thousand times better than the last Young Avengers/Runaways event tie-in crossover, about which the less that’s said, the better.  Here, the characters all feel right, despite the absence of Heinberg and Vaughan, the jokes are funny and clever and inoffensive, and the story itself deals with the two most major non-invading Skrull characters in the current Marvel U in a thoughtful, believable, and compelling way.  This isn’t just the two teams meeting to compare their similarities and differences and beat up a bad guy; it’s the teams working together organically for a cause that directly affects all of them, and delves into Skrull culture more deeply than even some of the most “core” of Secret Invasion books.  It’s also possibly the first good Xavin story that’s been told.

It’s nice, too, to see Miyazawa; while his art in Vaughan’s run was a bit of a jarring and disappointing break from Alphona, here it feels like a nostalgic return, and his pencils serve the Young Avengers well, too.

While this story isn’t going to change the status quo of either title, it’s a solid miniseries that fills in some nice characterization gaps and certainly gives writers of both Teddy and Xavin fodder for future tales.  I couldn’t ask for more from an event tie-in.