|
By Jason Bourgeois
First off, wow. It looks like the comic companies are indeed justified in their continued hiring of Rob Liefeld, and the constant restarting and #1 issues. Last month saw this column get quite a number of hits. Maybe I should shut up about Liefeld. Maybe he is actually sales gold. Maybe I should let him be, and stop making fun.
Nah, where's the fun in that? Liefeld's a hack artist who needs to be taken down a few notches, and the companies need to stop hiring him until he can learn that women's arms do not grow out of their backs. And...oh, forget it. I'm not going on two Liefeld rants in as many months just because he keeps scribbling out more work. Maybe next month.
For now though, let's take a look at Marvel's other current favourite appellation along with New, Young! In fairness, they only have one comic with that in the title, and it's actually rather quite good.
That's right, this month I'm going to be saying good things about a comic again, and up on the block is Marvel's minor hit, Young Avengers.
While the sales haven't been burning up the charts, the title has made a very fair showing, starting off quite strong towards the top of the pile, and is already starting to settle into the sixty thousand range, although it is still too soon to tell if it will level off or drop, just yet. All of which is quite amazing for a book populated with mostly new characters, and an unknown writer in the comic world.
Allan Heinberg is joined by Jim Cheung doing the pencilling, whom some may remember from CrossGen's Scion comic, but Allan would only be known to fans of the FOX drama, "The OC", and other things here and there in Hollywood. He also recently started cowriting an arc over in DC's JLA comic.
When the book was first announced at last years Wizard World Chicago, it was met with a general sense of derision and shrugs by many fans, as the concept, at least in name, sounded like just another rip on a DC comic, Teen Titans, or even Young Justice are brought up as the usual suspects.
While I wasn't one to be quite that extreme about it, I will admit that the concept didn't exactly thrill me, either. The only reason I continued following the project as it developed was for Cheung's art, which I've liked since he did a lengthy run on X-Force a number of years ago. Unknown characters, an unknown writer, was a hard sell for me, and others.
More preview art got out as the months went on, and it maintained my minor interest in the property, until a several-page completed preview hit the net a few weeks before the release, and I decided I was definitely going to check out the comic. And it didn't even include any of the characters from the title!
Allan nailed J. Jonah Jameson. In the span of a few pages, he was spot on, as the hardass we all know and love, but with a human quality to him that sneaks out on occasion. it's easy to make him a bit of a one-note character, but Allan got him completely. I was definitely intrigued in what else he could pull off with the book, just from that, and his use of the long history of Marvel.
The first issue blew me away. Cheung's art was spot on, dynamic, clean yet detailed, with a strong sense of anatomy and storytelling. His faces tend to get a bit generic at times, but most artists fall into that trap on a team book with a monthly schedule. Allan's writing continued to impress me. The guy knows the Marvel Universe; its characters, its locales, and its history. He gave just enough of the Young Avengers to give you a brief glimpse into their personalities, drawing the readers in via other characters in the story, while leaving who these characters were as mostly a mystery for now, slowly leading the readers along as they were expanded upon in later issues.
Now, this may make the book sound slow-paced, or decompressed, but it's not. The story doesn't feel padded out so far, and each issue has had a good deal of both action, adventure, characterisation, and mystery. The base comparrisons to such books as Teen Titans and Young Justice are only applicable to the surface. This is no more Young Justice than the X-Men are the JLA, or the Avengers are the Legion of Super-Heroes.
This title strikes me as being most like Thunderbolts. Both titles make heavy use of the backdrop of the Marvel Universe, drawing and building upon continuity, and throwing surprise after surprise at the readers, although Thunderbolts wins out for bigger surprises. It seems like no one in the New Avengers is quite what they appear, and we're finally getting hints of just who and what they are, as up to this point, many of the team have been pretending to be younger versions of characters they have no true connection with, to throw off suspicions. A very subtle, and well-done trick on Heinberg's part.
It's always nice to see such a well-crafted book succeed in this market, where unknown properties tend to sink quickly into the bottom of the sales charts, if they don't start there initially. If you're not already checking out Young Avengers, and New Avengers isn't your thing, then you can also get some good stuff with Captain America and Iron Man running around as support characters in this opening arc. Young Avengers is a great book with already a good fanbase, but it could always use a few more readers. Check it out.
Jason M. Bourgeois
|
