Avengers Academy #20(Fear Itself tie-in):
Summary: This issue gets underway by telling us what we already know after Fear Itself #7... The heroes have won, the Serpent is dead, his Worthy have lost, and Thor sacrificed himself for the planet. With all that fun stuff out of the way, Veil still wants to leave the Academy since she didn't want to spend the rest of her life killing Nazis and fighting crazed super-villains. To that end she gets in touch with Jeremy Briggs(Finally!), to see if his offer(from Avengers Academy #14.1) still stood. Upon learning that Jeremy's offer to join with him was still on the table, Veil decides to leave the Academy. Besides Veil deciding to go, Speedball has decided to leave the Avengers Academy staff to go back to being a full-time hero again(Finally!). Justice also decides to leave the faculty, wanting to travel across the country with his buddy, Speedball. As for the remaining team members, Pym decides that he did wrong by the students by secluding them in the other-dimensional Infinite Avengers Mansion, and that they needed to be around other teenagers. To that end, Pym decides to move to the old West Coast Avengers Compound(!!!!!), and also decides to welcome any super-powered youth who was looking for training. This issue ends with several new students arriving at the WCA Compound.
Thoughts: This issue was kind of bittersweet... On the one hand, we're losing three characters who have been major cogs in this series since day one(Veil, Speedball and Justice). I'm honestly going to miss each character, which shows you what a great job Christos Gage has been doing with this series. On the other hand, I am SO glad that SOMEBODY is FINALLY using the West Coast Avengers Compound again! I've stated it repeatedly, but in case you don't know, my all time favorite Avengers run was the West Coast Avengers series... I loved everything about that series. Hawkeye and Mockingbird's horrible marriage, Pym trying to commit suicide, Quicksilver acting insane, Tigra becoming more and more feral by the issue, US Agent being a jerk, Wonder Man being Wonder Man, that series had it all. So taking this series back to the Compound is a fantastic decision in my opinion. Besides the location change, I am excited by some of the new students I saw at the end of this issue. Who knew anybody but me even knew that kid from the Sentinel series still existed!? So yeah, some things WILL be different going forward, but with Gage still writing it, and most of the characters still sticking around, I'm definitely not fearing for the future of this series.
Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.
The best thing? Everything Tigra said here REALLY did happen in the West Coast Avengers series! I love that series...
I am trying to place who those kids are. I see Lyra(?), the Hulk's daughter, and the kid with the sentinel. I am not sure about the rest. Is the girl with the wide face part of the Power Pack? White Tiger I am guessing (don't know much about her).
ReplyDeleteYup, you're right with the first two, Jermox, as for the others, I THINK(and I may be wrong) that the White Tiger is a new character. The bat guy and the fat guy(I really couldn't think of a nicer way to put it...) are both from Gage's awesome run on Avengers Initiative. The flying girl with the rainbow is def one of the Power Pack kids. Is that all of them? I don't have my copy of this issue(I lent it to my sister), so I can't check it out, but going by memory, I think that's all of 'em.
ReplyDeleteThere is one more guy that looks like he has a Grifter mask on with goggles and a hammer. He may be from the Initiative as well. I think those might be on the Marvel online comic site so I may have to sign up for another month and read them.
ReplyDeleteOh, that MAY be Thunderstrike's son... But that's one I'm not sure about. I think he ended up with his dad's hammer and a mini-series not that long ago.
ReplyDeletehere is another to play Who is Who
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newsarama.com/php/multimedia/album_view.php?gid=3733&page=18
I barely can recognize someone
From a google search I can tell you it is Thunderstike's son. Some of those others in that image look like Avengers Initiative people since I did a previous good search the night before.
ReplyDelete...and it looks like Spider-Girl joins up so she can get some sweet sweet Reptil love. There is a list on Wikipedia. The list includes "Spider-Girl, She-Hulk (Lyra), Power Man, Machine Teen, Batwing, Butterball, Wiz Kid, Juston Seyfert and his Sentinel, Thunderstrike, Rocket Racer and members of the Loners". White Tiger and Julie Power is joining the core team. X-23 I guess is coming around in a later issue.
ReplyDeleteI kind of hope some mutants join up thinking "Scott or Logan? Screw being an X-man, I want to be an Avenger."
Machine Teen?! Hot damn is Christos Gage busting out characters that I haven't thought about in YEARS! I'm kind of intrigued by the "members of the Loners" line, because I LOVED that mini-series... I know he's probably a bit old for the squad, but I'd be overjoyed to see Ricochet as a regular here. Man, with my love for b and c-list characters, this series is going to be an absolute treat for me! Thanks for the info guys!
ReplyDelete"Scott or Logan? Screw being an X-man, I want to be an Avenger." Agreed 100%, Jermox! Seriously, if you were a mutant, would you rather stay on Utopia to be menaced by Sentinels, head to Westchester to be menaced by bigots, or join the Avengers and gain the respect of the world? I mean honestly, the decision seems rather easy to me...
Well, Riccochet is in the image Alien posted having a tug-of-war match with power man and a couple of the loners against Lyra.
ReplyDeleteI completely missed that link! That is awesome! And to make it even better is the Hawkeye appearance! With a cast like that I get the feeling this series is gonna end up as my favorite ongoing title...
ReplyDelete