Avengers: The Children's Crusade #3 is STILL awesome!

Overall: We kick things off with Magneto and Quicksilver arguing about whether or not the Scarlet Witch has been captured by Dr. Doom, while the Young Avengers stand around and observe. Magneto is of the mindset that Doom has kidnapped his daughter, since Doom is already one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe, and holding Wanda, potentially THE most powerful being in the Marvel U would solidify Doom's position. On the other hand, Quicksilver doesn't believe that his sister is the captive of Doom, he still feels that Magneto is behind Wanda's disappearance, and that Magneto is running everybody around in circles. Magneto decides that the only logical course of action is for himself, Quicksilver and the Young Avengers to invade Doom's home country of Latveria and attempt to rescue Wanda. Quicksilver feels that that plan is insane and says as much. After listening patiently for a while, Patriot chimes in and announces that the Young Avengers were not stupid enough to storm Latveria and potentially begin a world war with Dr. Doom of all people. All of the Young Avengers seem to agree with that line of thought except for Wiccan, who wants to head to Latveria himself just to do some scouting. Nobody agrees with that idea, with Patriot not wanting to split the team up and Magneto feeling they could make more of a dent in Doom's defenses together. With no conclusion reached, and the day turning to night, Magneto takes the young heroes to one of his hidden bases near Wundagore Mountain to sleep so they can plan anew the following day. Before arriving, the motley group of characters realize that Wiccan was no longer traveling with them, and that Quicksilver had also vanished. It turns out that Wiccan stayed back and was trying to teleport himself to Latveria, and that Quicksilver had discovered him and was encouraging Wiccan to head to Doom's castle alongside Quicksilver. Before Wiccan is able to complete the spell, the rest of the Young Avengers arrive on the scene and Hulkling threatens Quicksilver to cease trying to manipulate his boyfriend, lest he wants to become a legless speedster. From there we head to New York, where the Avengers have assembled to discuss what to do about the Magneto/Scarlet Witch/Young Avengers situation. Iron Man figures that the Avengers have their best shot at finding Wanda with the help of Wonder Man, who was once resurrected by Wanda, and as such still has some of her magic within him. Wonder Man inquires what the heroes plan on doing with Wanda once they find her and Wolverine blurts out that they need to kill her, which leads to Wonder Man knocking the diminutive mutant through a wall before leaving, informing the Avengers that he'd find Wanda on his own. Wolverine also leaves the rest of the Avengers, informing them that he would find Wanda and kill her, and possibly kill Wiccan as well. Later on at Magneto's base, Wiccan waits until everybody else is asleep before leaving a letter for Hulkling, informing him that he was going to go ahead and teleport to Latveria simply to get a lay of the land. Upon arriving near Castle Doom, Wiccan is almost immediately discovered by some patrolling Doombots, but he manages to trick them by transforming himself into the Scarlet Witch, at which point he tells the robots to take him back to his room, since he had gotten lost. The robots comply, and bring Wiccan to a bedroom, where he comes face to face with Wanda(!!). Wanda acts as if she has no idea who Wiccan is, and mentioning Quicksilver and Magneto also has no effect on her, leading Wiccan to believe that she's either pretending that she doesn't know anybody in order to distance herself from her past life/actions, or that she is truly an amnesiac and really doesn't recall the events of her life. Regardless, Wiccan tells her it isn't safe to remain in Latveria, and that she has to escape. Wanda doesn't want to escape, informing Wiccan that her wedding was the following day, and when Wiccan asks Wanda who she was marrying, Dr. Doom enters the room and tells the shocked Wiccan, “Me.”

Um, do you even need to ask what I thought about this issue? Anybody who has ever come to this blog KNOWS that I LOVE the Young Avengers. More than that, I love the Young Avengers when they are written by their original creators(Allan Heinberg: writer & Jim Cheung: art), who seem to have a better feel for these characters then any other writer who has tried writing them. This issue was, in a word, perfect. The story is moving along at a brisk pace, the artwork is crisp and beautiful, and the dialogue is well done, with a perfect mixture of drama and humor. I guess if I had a complaint, it would be that some of the characters didn't have any speaking roles(Hawkeye, Stature & Vision), but even that is fine, because they really didn't need to speak. Everything that needed saying was said by one of the other characters. So gushing aside, what's next here? Well, we now know that Dr. Doom has indeed captured Wanda, and intends on marrying her. We don't know what frame of mind Wanda is in, and whether or not she remembers her past, or is just pretending that she doesn't. Wiccan now appears to be a prisoner of Doom, which will undoubtedly bring his teammates(as well as Quicksilver and Magneto)to Latveria, which should lead to quite the battle. Besides that, we also have the Avengers, Wonder Man and Wolverine all searching for Wanda separately and for differing reasons. The Avengers want to find Wanda, but have already admitted that they're unsure as to what to do once they find her, Wonder Man wants to help her in any way he can since he's always had a flame for her(as well as the fact that she did bring him back from the dead)and Wolverine wants to kill her before her powers get out of control and she creates another House of M type of situation again. Whew! So THIS issue was fantastic, there are storylines aplenty going on here, and it goes without saying that going forward things should only get better! Needless to say, THIS is my favorite mini-series of 2010, period, the end.

Score: 10 out of 10. That's the second straight perfect score for this mini-series, and quite frankly, I expect the perfect scores to continue rolling in! And since I love this mini so much, here are a few images from this comic.Score one for Magneto!

Magneto was SO awesome here it makes my teeth hurt from smiling so hard!

Okay, Magneto was on FIRE in this issue!

Magneto may have been on fire in this comic, but Quicksilver was also getting a few great lines in as well.

Ahhh... Where would Marvel be without that murderous little Canadian?

The next issue can't get here soon enough...