Young Avengers #1

Now THIS is the series I've been most looking forward to out of ALL the Marvel Now! titles.  Around the same time I got into comic books(the second time around...), the original Young Avengers came out.  And I LOVED it!  It was everything I wanted in a comic book!  Young Avengers, and Morrison's New X-Men run, are probably the two books that had the most to do with me becoming the comic book reading machine I am today.  Now, this Young Avengers series doesn't have the original creative team(Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung), but it does have Kieron Gillen as the writer...  Gillen was really good on Journey Into Mystery(dare I say great?), but I wasn't a fan of his Uncanny X-Men or Generation Hope work(which is no fault of his, I hate Hope and didn't really like any X-books post-House of M).  Now he's getting to write several of my very favorite comic book characters(Hulkling, Wiccan, Hawkeye, Marvel Boy), I am REALLY hoping this series is good.......

Young Avengers #1

Summary: This issue gets started with Kate Bishop(or Hawkeye, if you prefer), waking up in some guy's bed...  Huh.  While Kate tries to figure out what she was doing there and what she should do next, the guy in question strolls in the room.  And that guy?  Marvel Boy!  Marvel Boy seems more... hippy, than last we saw him, and starts dancing like Mary Jane Watson circa 1970 to some oldies music(?!?).  Kate and Noh-Varr(that would be Marvel Boy's real name, fyi) talk a bit before Skrulls attack his spaceship, because that's what Skrulls do.  From there we head to the streets of New York where some punks are mugging a woman.  Spider-Man appears on the scene to stop them, but ends up getting shot, much to the punks' surprise.  However, "Spidey" hops up and attacks the two with shape-changing abilities before vacating the premises.   It turns out that "Spidey" was indeed Hulkling, who had been secretly going out to do the superhero thing since his boyfriend(that would be Wiccan), had basically forbidden the two of them from being superheroes after the events of Avengers: Children's Crusade.  Hulkling climbs in the window of Wiccan's parent's house(which is where he was living after the death of his mother), where he finds an angry Wiccan waiting for him in his bedroom.  Wiccan rants about how "they" promised not to be heroes anymore because of all the deaths they had seen.  Hulkling tells Wiccan that he was through living a lie and was a hero, and that he fell in love with a hero, not whatever Wiccan had become.  With that, Wiccan realizes how selfish he had been, and promises Hulkling that he would support him with his super-heroics   From there, Wiccan heads to his own bedroom and begins searching through other dimensions...  Next we head to (the maybe evil, maybe not evil) Kid Loki, who senses that Wiccan was using his powers, and as such he had to do something about that...  Kid Loki teleports to the roof of Wiccan's apartment and prepares to unleash a magic spell against the unaware Wiccan.  Before he can though, he is confronted by Miss America, who warns Loki against doing anything to Wiccan.  That leads to the two having a bit of a skirmish.  Hulkling hears the disturbance upstairs and heads to the roof, just in time to see Kid Loki teleport away, while Miss America flies off, not telling Hulkling what that was all about.  From there, we head back to Wiccan, who finds what he was looking for and manages to transport Hulkling's mother from an alternate dimension to his room.  Hulkling heads back downstairs and is shocked to see his formerly dead mother standing in the hallway.  The two embrace and eventually Hulkling heads back to sleep.  Later on, Hulkling's mother tells Wiccan's parents that she didn't approve of Hulkling wasting his time on Wiccan, and proceeds to smother the Kaplans(not "Caplans", Kaplans!!).

Thoughts: Well, you know what?  I really enjoyed this comic!  Gillen did a really good job with characterizations(Although Wiccan and Hulkling could turn down the drama just a bit) and I have to say, I was thoroughly impressed!  I'll admit, when I first opened this comic and saw that Kate was having a random fling with Noh-Varr, I was a bit... let's say taken aback.  But the more I thought about it, the more it worked...  I mean, why not?  The hero she looks most up to is Clint Barton!  Or Hawkeye, for those of you not in the know...  Hawkeye is... well, he IS rather promiscuous   On top of that, Kate is comfortably over 18, as is Noh-Varr, so why not?  If anything, I hope this isn't going to end up a one night stand, because Kate and Noh-Varr actually work for me.  Two of my favorite characters hooking up?  Yeah, I can deal with that.  Wiccan and Hulkling were also written very well, as you had Wiccan still acting up due to Stature's death at the end of Children's Crusade, while Hulkling was trying to keep the peace with Wiccan by sneaking around to help people, because that's who Hulkling is, a hero.  And it was Hulkling who reminded Wiccan that he too was a hero.  I mean Gillen wrapped up the whole, "Wiccan's self-loathing" storyline in a few panels.  And he did it in a way that made sense to all the characters involved.  The ending was also great, because while Wiccan may have though he was bringing back Hulkling's "mother"(actually a random Skrull who raised him), he was bringing over an alternate version of that woman, and alternate versions don't always equal identical version...  I mean, this comic was great!  Now the question is, is it perfect...  And after literally sitting here for several minutes after typing that last sentence, for me personally, as a fan of these characters?  Yes, it was perfect for me.

Score: 10 out of 10.

Those wacky dancing Krees...