The Kids Are Alright

Young Avengers #1

I heard lots of folks recommend this one recently, so I’m gonna give it a try.

Most of this is focused on getting everyone re-acquainted with the characters from the original Young Avengers series. Kate “Hawkeye” Bishop wakes up in Noh-Varr’s spaceship, and they almost immediately have to fight off a Skrull attack. Hulkling and Wiccan are living together — well, living together in separate rooms in Wiccan’s parents’ house. Hulkling is fighting crime behind Wiccan’s back, and Wiccan decides to go surfing the multiverse to try to save Hulkling’s mother. Kid Loki, meanwhile, wants to keep Wiccan from doing anything in the multiverse, but ends up tangling with Miss America. Wiccan ends up finding Hulkling’s mom — but it may not be the mom anyone was expecting to find…

Verdict: Thumbs up. A lot of this is really grand — Noh-Varr’s enthusiasm for ’60s girl groups is fairly awesome. Hulkling and Wiccan’s affection is well-handled. Kid Loki is darn funny. And Kate’s all-giant-font monologue before going out to fight the Skrulls is one of the greatest mission statements about superheroism I’ve seen in years.

Young Avengers #2

While Teddy is glad that his mother is back, he gets considerably less glad about it when it becomes clear that she’s controlling Wiccan’s parents’ minds — or has replaced them entirely! All that plus she can defuse Wiccan’s spells and reshape reality! Hulkling and Wiccan run off to get help from the Avengers, but get a nasty surprise when the heroes turn them back over the Hulkling’s mom — somehow she’s controlling the Avengers, too. Heck, she’s controlling almost everyone. She stuffs both of them into an empty, featureless limbo, but Kid Loki pulls them out and reveals that Hulkling’s mom is actually an interdimensional parasite of some sort. But they suspect that Loki may be behind the whole thing somehow, so they drag him off to Asgard — and that’s when things go from bad to worse…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nicely done desperation, and Kid Loki continues to be wonderfully hilarious. I do hope we see the rest of the team soon — they’re completely absent in this issue…