Written by Christos Gage
Penciled by Tom RaneyKorvac has defeated The Avengers… now the world’s only hope lies with the students of the Avengers Academy, who have been grown to adults! With time manipulated, the team gets a glimpse of what the future might hold for them. For some it’s a revelation…for others a life sentence! Can they overcome their personal demons and master unfamiliar abilities in time to defeat a foe powerful enough to conquer Earth’s Mightiest Heroes? Find out in the book that Newsarama’s Best Shots calls “one of the best Avengers books — and, for that matter, one of the best Marvel books — on the stands.
We’ve reached the end of Avengers Academy‘s freshman year, and the inevitable question arises: so why the hell have none of these kids gained the “freshman 15,” anyway? Fortunately, though, Christos Gage and Tom Raney have other questions they can answer — and ask — in its stead. After the jump, let’s talk about how life is always terrible, especially when you’re a hero.
By now, it’s not exactly a spoiler to talk about the core concept from which Avengers Academy gains its dramatic momentum. It’s a spin on the original pitch for the Thunderbolts: instead of being the next generation of heroes, the kids in Avengers Academy are there simply to prevent them from being the next Masters of Evil. Their psychological profiles are a bigger and more varied list of damages than an insurance claim after a tornado. Striker is narcissistic, opportunist, and cowardly; Finesse is somewhere between autism and psychopathy in her inability to understand or relate to other humans; Hazmat is bitter over the possibility that her powers will kill everyone she cares about; Veil is resigned over the inevitability that her powers will kill her; and on, and on. These are not shiny, happy teenagers, and they have more problems going on than romantic angst and seven Deathstroke guest-spots a year.
This modern approach to the idea of “with great power comes great weltschmerz” — the key Marvel innovation, as far as costumed heroes go — has made Avengers Academy sit alongside Thunderbolts as one of the best superhero things that you’re not reading. (Or maybe you are reading it. In that case: good.) Largely free of the constraints that come with the spotlight, Avengers Academy has spent its first year slowly building a complex web of dynamics between its cast of characters, teachers and students alike. It’s only now, deep into the book’s run (further than other teen titles like Spider-Girl had a chance to achieve, anyway), that we’re seeing the kids face off against truly impressive threats that don’t come from within themselves. Perhaps surprisingly, they’re up to the challenge. Unsurprisingly, not all of them come out better people for it.
The series’ point of view rotates, and this issue, narration comes from Veil. If this was an anime site, the word for her would be “moeblob” — Veil is the most outwardly insecure member of the group. She’s a study in contrasts with teammate Hazmat: where Hazmat’s uncontrolled lethality causes her to compensate for her vulnerability with spite and misanthropy, Veil turns all of her fear and sadness inward. Her powers will one day kill her by making her dissipate into nothing, and her response is to collapse in on herself. This makes her a good choice for narrating a fight against the recurring cosmic mad-god Korvac, of course, because her internal monologue is the one most comfortable with exaggerated melodrama.
It’s also Veil who makes one of the most staggering changes in this issue — not quite “everything you knew is different now,” but inching toward it, just like teenagers grasping at the identities they want to construct for themselves. Without spoiling it, Veil gets the chance to do anything, and she uses that chance selfishly. One wonders if, going forward, her existing tendency to quietly agonize over things will flood her with guilt… or if benefiting from selfishness will cause her to try and do it more in the future. The uncertainty of who these characters will be in the coming months and years is perhaps the secret weapon setting Avengers Academy apart from more lackluster “teen books.” Rather than being slightly less physically developed adults running through the motions of school-age drama and freedom like LARPers pretending to be vampires, these characters genuinely don’t seem to know who they are yet. Luckily, Gage does, and he’s playing off of these true-to-life (as far as “giant metal skull faces” and “science class with Hank Pym”) problems with the skill and confidence of a concert pianist.
Continued below
The teachers barely play a part in this issue, because obviously, having the Real Avengers rush in would leave the book in a bind — they could have the big guns stomp Korvac and thus marginalize the kids in their own book, or they could have the kids show up the big guns and undercut the premise that these kids are possibly too messed up to ever be ready for prime time. Besides, the problems faced by Pym, Tigra, Speedball, and Quicksilver are more “adult” ones — mourning, trauma, self-harm, blackmail — and just flat-out less fun to dwell on than the ones the teenagers face. (I use “fun” in a vaguely sadistic sense there, I suppose.) Instead, we’re treated to visions of the kids as adults, or at least the kids in their future adult bodies (“There’s no more time to explain the situation,” per the wizard what did it). Their problems remain largely unsolved in these forms, their powers still their curses.
I only can assign two faults here. For one, the obvious parallel between the students and their teachers is an obvious point that didn’t even seem to get addressed. Sure, having someone with the pedigree of Hank Pym or Justice or Quicksilver teaching you how to be a hero is cool, but you have to think about what this means for these already broken children. Of their teachers, at least three have displayed certifiable mental illness in the past, one of them killed their own stepfather, and in general, their lives have been filled with terrible stuff. As models for the future of the Academy students, all signs would seem to point toward things never quite getting better, only more self-sacrificing. Obviously, when Korvac needs to get sent packing, there’s not much time to get into whether Future Finesse has ever had her heart grow two sizes; her total fascination with fighting techniques that don’t even exist yet would seem to indicate that no, her brain chemicals never quite evened out — just like Hank Pym’s, the next time a writer wants a relapse.
Two, between the book’s two regular artists, Tom Raney was probably the wrong choice for this one. This is not to slight Raney as an artist at all — he does great, kinetic action, and the way his characters brazenly and powerfully emote what they’re feeling makes him ideal for a book about Teens With Problems. The problem is that in an issue that hinges, in large part, on the bizarre circumstances of these teens being stuck in their adult bodies, his “adult” versions don’t look too different from the “teenage” versions. Striker has a goatee; Finesse has longer hair; Veil has bigger boobs. (He gets a pass on Mettle, because c’mon.) Still, there’s just not enough of a difference. If it was a minor story point, that’d be fine, but when so much of the issue hinges on it, it’s a little glaring.
So, let’s bring all these things together. What we have, in Avengers Academy #12, is a comic book that maybe could have been drawn a bit more sensitively, but which by no means looks bad. We have a comic whose fault, writing-side, is that some of the ideas it raises are so fertile as to be impossible to deeply probe in 22 pages while still getting in a satisfying fight. (Given Gage’s approach to subplots in the book thus far, I wouldn’t be shocked to see later payoffs to elements that seem to go unheralded here.) We have a surplus of interesting characters, so much so that there’s not enough room to fit them all. Finally, we have an issue that resolves many of the concerns of the first year — characters’ loneliness and insecurities — while setting up plenty of complications for the second.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: you’re not reading this… why?
Final Verdict: 9.0 – Buy
