I Got Two Things Way Wrong About Young Avengers

A little more than a week ago, I did a Dirty Dozen post on Young Avengers. Since then, issue #13 has come out and totally blown up two of the twelve things I said about it. Luckily, they were both good things to have been wrong about.

First, there's this longish complaint about Ultimate Nullifier's characterization in the series:

I hate this book's treatment of Ultimate Nullifier. He was the best character in Vengeance, which is one of my favorite Joe Casey superhero comics ever. In that title, UN was a ballsy young warrior and a bit of a visionary, leading a team of idealistic teen heroes who operated under the radar, more interested in saving the universe than getting any glory or even recognition for their do-gooding. Here, he's demoted to the role of whiny ex-boyfriend, so upset at having been rejected that he becomes a petty supervillain helping Mother attempt to destroy the universe. He completely reverses his entire worldview and overturns all of his priorities because the girl he likes doesn't like him back. It's a total misfire, so I choose to believe Gillen's UN is a different characters entirely than Casey's, since that's how they read.

Turns out, they ARE different characters entirely. Ultimate Nullifier is one small part of a massive lie Loki has been telling for the entire series. I suppose I should've given Gillen & McKelvie more credit, but there were a bunch of ex-lovers of the Young Avengers who all showed up at once, and Nullifier was the only one I had any previous experience with, so I had no real reason not to accept the others at face value. And Nullifier is a new and minor enough character that making huge changes to him would certainly be within the normal bounds of the genre. Still, this is a book where Loki is the main-est character, so if someone seemed to be acting strangely, it would've been a safe bet on my part to guess it was some sort of deception. Anyway, very glad to know the real Nullifier is still untainted and awesome.

Secondly, we have this bold prediction:

Wiccan's probably not going to make it out alive. That's been apparent from the get-go, and has only grown more likely with each new chapter.

This was me assuming that Wiccan was going to have to sacrifice himself, or at least some part of himself, in order to access the amount of power he'd need to finally defeat Mother. Turns out, the real solution was more logical and probably even more foreseeable: love. Hulking accepting his love for Wiccan and fully letting go of his fears and doubts is what defeats the villain in the end. Cornier, but more fitting than another "meaningful" superhero death like I anticipated. Again, I was under-appreciating the thought and care Gillen & McKelvie put into this title.

Back when it was a relatively new series, I was slower to warm on Young Avengers than many others. And now, even as a totally converted fan, I still find myself expecting less of it than it actually delivers. Young Avengers #13 wasn't the best issue of the series, and on the whole it was a pretty unthrilling climax to the enormous mega-arc that it's taken all thirteen of these issues to tell. The good guys win, everyone's happy, the day is saved...it's hardly the most groundbreaking conclusion to this kind of story. Still, it surprised me in a couple nice ways, so here's a tip of the hat for that and a brief but sincere apology for my previous underestimation.

Dirty Dozen: Young Avengers

Dirty Dozen is a semi-regular feature with twelve disconnected thoughts on the first twelve issues of a current ongoing series*.

*I know that calling Young Avengers a "current ongoing series" is kinda-sorta a stretch considering it's going to end with issue #15, and the whole thing has basically been one long story. But I think it counts because its endpoint wasn't predetermined when the series began—the story dictated its own length to some extent, as opposed to this having always been planned and announced as "a fifteen-issue series."

1. Loki is the star, right? The story is centered on Wiccan and his relationship with Hulkling, yet Loki is still somehow the main character. He knows the most, he does the most, he's the funniest, the most likable, the least trustworthy, the best. I very much think of it as an ensemble cast, but he's the breakout character and also the anchor.

2. Love and sex are both handled very well. Hulking and Wiccan have a different kind of totally equal, two-way affection than Kate and Noh-Varr. They're both healthy relationships, sincere and therefore valid. But the two couples aren't looking for the same things, so what they offer one another differs, too.

3. Young Avengers does credits pages like nobody else.

4. All the endless hype Jamie McKelvie gets for his layouts/page designs is more than deserved. It's not just that he does something innovative almost every issue, he also keeps finding new ways to do it. The two-page spread of Noh-Varr fighting his way across a room with numbered movements creates an extremely different effect than the page showing more or less every teenaged superhero in the Marvel Universe connected through the world's most well-built social-media-based flow chart. McKelvie is a powerfully creative cat. That said, there is never any way of knowing how much credit goes to writer or artist, and Kieron Gillen's close collaborative partnership/friendship with McKelvie is well-documented, so the praise goes to both to some degree, I'm sure. When the thing that knocks me out is the actual physical structure of the page, though, I have to assume the artist gets a bigger nod. Also, of course, major kudos to Mike Norton, who inks and/or finishes McKelvie's art depending on the issue.

5. The mystery around Miss America Chavez's exact place in all of this needs to be cleared up posthaste.

6. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I quite like Gillen and McKelvie's approach of telling a single, finite, longform story in fifteen issues and then calling it quits. It's true that sometimes this has made individual issues seems slow or light, but ultimately this has been a rewarding narrative told well, and when it does hit its natural endpoint (which you can feel it getting rapidly closer to all the time) I much prefer to have the book end, even temporarily, than keep going just because the sales justify its continued existence. If you've told the story you set out to tell, then by all means, take a bow and get the hell off the stage.

7. The weird, itty-bitty subplot where Kate was worried that when she turned 21 she would count as an adult and therefore not be able to help fight Mother was sort of botched. It was only barely hinted at for a few issues, then suddenly Kate stated her fears out loud, had the rest of the team shoot them down in no uncertain terms, and blammo, the problem was resolved. I would've liked a bit more tension, or, even better, for this silly and inconsequential detail to have never been introduced in the first place. 

8. Young Avengers is classic and modern at once. There's a whole lot of social media, teen slang, pop culture references, etc. that make the comic feel very now. There's also an unthinkable, world-ending threat that a group of heroes band together to defeat, which creates a more old-school vibe. The book's prioritization of inventiveness and, more importantly, fun, feels like more of a throwback attitude, yet it can also be a powerfully dismal comic when it wants to be, grimming and gritting with the best of 'em. The mashing of retro and neo elements is one of the title's biggest draws.

9. I hate this book's treatment of Ultimate Nullifier. He was the best character in Vengeance, which is one of my favorite Joe Casey superhero comics ever. In that title, UN was a ballsy young warrior and a bit of a visionary, leading a team of idealistic teen heroes who operated under the radar, more interested in saving the universe than getting any glory or even recognition for their do-gooding. Here, he's demoted to the role of whiny ex-boyfriend, so upset at having been rejected that he becomes a petty supervillain helping Mother attempt to destroy the universe. He completely reverses his entire worldview and overturns all of his priorities because the girl he likes doesn't like him back. It's a total misfire, so I choose to believe Gillen's UN is a different characters entirely than Casey's, since that's how they read.

10. Wiccan's probably not going to make it out alive. That's been apparent from the get-go, and has only grown more likely with each new chapter. 

11. The idea that Prodigy not only retained all the skills and knowledge of a slew of other super-people, but also their sexual proclivities, intrigues me to no end. What about their tastes in food, entertainment, fashion, etc.? Does he find himself simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by basically everything he encounters? What about political views, prejudices, misconceptions, etc.? Even if he doesn't believe them all, does he KNOW what most of the rest of the Marvel U thinks about these topics? Trying to imagine what it's like in his head is the world's best thought experiment. Dear Marvel, please give the guy a mini-series, if not an ongoing, so this can explored!

12. No matter what happens in the final fifth, I will miss this volume of Young Avengers. It did stuff I liked reading, looking at, and thinking about.

I Didn't Love the Story, but Defenders Looks Amazing

Yesterday, I was all, "Boo! Hiss! Defenders is lame!" Although, really, I was just complaining about Dr. Strange's role in the story. As a whole I think it's so-so from a narrative standpoint, but it's made much better by being a great-looking comicbook. And what makes that even more impressive is how many different artists contributed to the consistently beautiful run. I referred to the book in my previous post's title as "Matt Fraction's Defenders", which is wording I chose because Fraction writes all twelve issues, but in truth this series belongs to its many artists. So let's talk about them team-by-team and see why they're so strong individually and together.
     The first three issues, and also #7, are drawn by Terry and Rachel Dodson (pencils and inks, respectively) with colors from Sonia Oback. This is the group that establishes the tone for the rest of the book, and they set the bar mighty high for the artists who follow. The Dodsons deserve their reputation, and their style is particularly well-suited for superhero comics. I like how the super-people still look like people, slightly grander than normal but not overly distorted. Even Namor looks human in his own way, as does the Hulk to the degree that he can. They stand out in a crowd, but they're not totally disconnected from the rest of us, either. In a story that is particularly larger than life, even for the genre, I liked having the heroes be a little more subdued in their appearance. They still completely kick ass, and their immense power is always evident, so it's not like they aren't clearly superheroes. They're just not as broad in figure as such characters can often be.
     Another reason this aspect of the Dodsons' art works so well is Oback's shimmering colors. You expect it from, say, Silver Surfer, but everybody has their own glow. Red She-Hulk's skin looks stiff and a bit metallic, highlighting her indestructibility. Iron Fist shines most brightly in the gold pieces of his costume, making them the catchy visual flare they should be. Black Cat's suit is oil and her hair somewhere between smoke and silver. It's bright and shiny pop comics art, matching the Dodsons' fluidity and energy measure for measure.
     Not going chronologically but instead by quantity of issues drawn, Defenders #8-10 are drawn by Jamie McKelvie, credited as usual "w/Mike Norton," which I think means they both do pencils and inks but McKelvie does the bulk of the work, based on something Norton once said on Twitter. McKelvie and Norton actually remind me of the Dodsons in a lot of ways, but with slightly crisper lines. Not more detailed, necessarily, just a little more present. The Dodsons tend to get sketchier with background figures or shots from far away. Less so McKelvie and Norton.
     Anyway, these issues are deeper in the series, so there are more moving pieces and giant moments, making them my favorite, visually speaking. The big alternate reality S.H.I.E.L.D.-Hydra-Defenders battle, Silver Surfer being barraged with nothingness when the Omegas contact him, and John Aman's treasure room—these are giant single images burned in my brain, but the overall storytelling from this artistic team is also superb. The pace is lively, making the action feel almost non-stop, but it's always doing new things and a load of fun to look at. Also they draw like the best Ant-Man (Scott Lang, if it matters) ever in issue #10. I can't put my finger on why, but I think it has to do with how disheveled and frantic he looks.
     The first two McKelvie-Norton issues are colored by Dommo Aymara, whose work also reminds me of Oback's but is not quite the same. Aymara's characters do have a certain sheen to them, but the colors are not quite as bright. It's a gloomier time in the narrative than it was at the beginning, and Aymara's hues complement that.
     Jordie Bellaire colors issue #10, as well as #11, acting as the transition between McKelvie and Norton and the artist who brings the series to a close, Mirco Pierfederici. Here's how you know for sure that Bellaire is a grade-A colorist: her palette, texture, and technique changes to fit the penciler(s) of a given issue. So with McKelvie and Norton, Bellaire continues the classic comicbook coloring tradition. Her colors don't have the glimmer of Oback's or Aymara's, but they're just as bold and eye-catching. They're flat, solid tones, especially fitting since this is the issue with the most active use of white space. When Pierfederici takes the helm, Bellaire adds grit and anger to her colors, and uses fewer of them on each page. Other than blacks and white to outline the figures, the first five pages go: 1. dominantly red and orange with a section of green-brown in bottom corner, 2. entirely orange with one spot of blue (Silver Surfer's eyes), 3. washed completely in blue, 4. half washed in blue, half in yellow, 5. all yellow. It's stark and it attacks the senses, but it's in service of Pierfederici's lines. He, too, is rougher and more furious than his predecessors on the book. His cast is still distinct and all believably built, but definitely not as firm as any of the already-discussed artists. This is not because he has less control over his lines, just that he is intentionally going for something a bit more jittery. At least, it seems intentional when paired with Bellaire. It comes across as a hair more sloppy in the final issue of the series, #12, colored by Veronica Gandini.
     Gandini's work isn't inherently worse than Bellaire's. It has more of a painted feel, soft and fuzzy but very deep. That's all well and good, but it clashes with Pierfederici's tone. Where Bellaire leaned into the skid of his shaky lines, Gandini seems like she wants to smooth them over, and instead ends up highlighting their wobbliness. It's not a bad-looking issue, but it might be the worst-looking in this volume of Defenders.
     But I'm not supposed to be negative here, so let's rewind back to issues #4-6, each one handled by its own artistic team. First up is #4 with Michael Lark on pencils, Stefano Gaudino and Brian Thies on inks, and Matt Hollingsworth on colors. Story-wise, this is my least favorite issue (Dr. Strange at his worst from cover to cover), and it's the least active chapter, so the art doesn't have a ton to do. That said, it's appropriately moody and grim for scenes of Strange being super serious, sad, and in love. And it's the most grounded artwork in the book, also tailored to its issue in that way. Everything is drawn and colored realistically, because except for a few brief flashes of magic (which get more psychedelic shades) there's nothing exceptional or super going on here. So the visuals are perfect for the glum chapter they're for, and capturing the precise mood of an issue is a good deal more than many artists seem capable of doing.
     For Defenders #5, hooray! It's the Breitwesiers! Mitch does the pencil-and-ink stuff and some of the colors, with wife Bettie tackling the rest. It's their coloring I really like the most. Very muted, natural, and alive. Mitch is a good artist, too, but a little unfinished for my taste. Nobody looks the same from panel to panel, and there's an overall feeling of impermanence to everything. So the colors totally make it for me. They're soothing, they warm me from inside even though most of the issue is set in the cold dark of the depths of the ocean. I'm comforted by Breitweiser color, calmed by it, which makes me take my time when I'm reading the issue and really absorb every page. Since this issue seeds a lot of really important stuff for what follows, it's the best place for these artists to be.
     Last but not least (or, well, actually tied for least in terms of issues drawn) is issue #6's team of Victor Ibañez and Chris Sotomayor, with Tom Palmer and Terry Pallot credited as "finishers." Not sure how to know who's responsible for what, but regardless, this issue is the one that stands out most from the pack. Not the best, but the one most unlike any other issue. Ibañez's work is a couple of steps closer to the cartoon end of the comicbook spectrum. You see it right in the first panel, where Iron Fist and Misty Knight are looking totally dumbfounded with these giant bug eyes. Nothing is wildly unrealistic, mind, but it's further off the ground than the rest of the series. And I think it's good, especially right here in the middle, and coming after the two issues I just talked about. They were both the most subdued beats of the story and therefore had most restrained art. Swinging as far in the other direction as you plan to go before diving into the second half of the book makes perfect sense. And this issue also introduces John Aman as the villain, and features the Defenders' first tiny taste of combat with him, so it needed to get the energy back.
     Sotomayor's coloring is reliable and actually a bit more true-to-life than Ibañez's stuff. What I like most about it is the way he makes everything looked naturally aged during the flashback scenes. And when John Aman arrives in the present day, everything glows green from him and his crazy billowing smoke, and I always like to see a single color take over for a little while when it's done well. All told, this issue is, like the two before it, a beautiful single installment.
     But wait, before I go, I'd be the worst comicbook blogger on the planet if I spent all this time naming every creator responsible for Defenders without talking about letterer Clayton Cowles. He did all twelve issues just like Fraction, so whatever creative successes or failures this series has are on his shoulders, too.
     And he does marvelous lettering all the way through. There are a lot of places where Fraction will have omniscient third-person narration intercut with one or more characters' internal monologues, and Cowles' choices about how to color and shape each caption box always make it glaringly clear who's saying what. Not that he created that solution, he just gets it spot on every time, and spaces things out in an easy-to-follow way. His best spots are when he gets to introduce a new hero to the cast, though. They always get a full-on, logo-style namecard, and everyone's is designed differently to match their character. It's a fun and funny little running gag, which only works because Cowles puts so much effort into it. He also must have been responsible for placing all the little phrases/ads in the bottom margins of the pages, so it was just a very demanding and detailed lettering job. But he stuck with it from start to finish and never dropped the ball (that I can remember noticing).
     So there you have it. Defenders is an aggravating story with one horrible main character, put together in an extremely attractive package for your reading pleasure.

Good, But Not Great: Hawkeye & Young Avengers

It's like when you hear a joke that only makes you smirk while everyone else is in stitches. Though you can understand conceptually what makes the joke funny, and even pull some personal amusement and pleasure from it, you still feel like you're not getting it in the same way as those people around you. This happens in any and every medium, and it can make you question your competence and intelligence, even if only for a moment, when your own feelings seem to be counter to those of popular opinion. Right now, for me, this is happening in comicbooks in a big way with Matt Fraction & David Aja's Hawkeye and, to a lesser extent (because it is only two issues old) Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie's Young Avengers.
     Let me be clear: I like both of the books in question. Like them a lot, even. Visually they have each had some pretty stunning moments, there's a good deal of tight and funny dialogue in them, and I'm into their respective casts. But I don't think of them as the highest in current superhero comicbookery, nor have I ever considered them deserving of that level of acclaim. Are they more solid and better-looking than the majority of titles available today? Definitely. They belong closer to the top of the list than the bottom, but I don't LOVE them.
     I might grow to love Young Avengers over time. It's still so new and has been good thus far, but it's also immensely decompressed and has a sizable cast, so not that much has gone down as of yet. The first issue got more than one perfect review online, but in my eyes it came across as a pretty standard debut: we got brief glimpses of the current lives and personalities of all the main characters, and it ended by introducing the threat of the opening arc. Not every first issue is smart enough to do this kind of common sense groundwork, so kudos to Gillen for starting at the beginning, but still, the result was too many threads established too briefly for any of them to fully capture my attention. The issue had ADD; the opening scene of Kate Bishop and Noh-Varr was the best and most fun, but it was never returned to, abandoned in favor of meeting the rest of the cast. Even in Young Avengers #2, which was considerably more focused, there was but a single throwaway line referencing the characters from the debut's first scene, so in more than 30 pages Gillen has yet to get back to the most interesting story he's introduced. Yes, this is how comicbooks get written nowadays more often than not, aiming for the trade rather than satisfying single issues. And that's fine, and I like the other threads of the book, so I'm happy to follow those instead of the one I really want for now. But my mind isn't ever going to be blown by a book that, in two full issues, can't completely wrap its arms around or explain ANY of its myriad plot points, especially if it flat out ignores some of them for the sake of developing others at a snail's pace. When this arc wraps and I do have all the answers, I may well be thoroughly wowed. What bugs me is that so many reviewers online are already wowed, and I can't place why. It feels to me like Young Avengers isn't even expecting to drop its readers' jaws yet, that Gillen & McKelvie are taking their time in the beginning so that the latter half of their story can really go nuts. Nevertheless, the overwhelming praise continues to pour in, and though there MUST be people online talking about the title's flaws, too, they are much harder to track down than those folks enthusiastically waving the Young Avengers banner.
     Hawkeye is a stickier wicket, because my problems with it vary from issue to issue. Very much not written with the collected volume in mind, this series does mostly one- or two-issue stories, and while some of them have been a load of fun, there have also been a few duds already. And though I credited it above to the initial and most regular artist David Aja, it has also been drawn by Javier Pulido (#4-5), and Steve Lieber & Jesse Hamm (#7), and where Aja kicks ass the others only punch it lightly. So it is a less stable, reliable title than I want it to be, and even though I have seen this fact acknowledged online in places, the majority of what I've read has had a higher opinion about each issue than I.
     I never really thought the villains with broken English who say "bro" at the end of every sentence were especially funny, so maybe I'm just not the target audience, because those guys show up in the debut. But the story around them in that first issue was a strong one, showing Hawkeye's toughness along with his genuine altruism. And Aja's art was stellar right away. So I stuck with it, and though they had some rough spots, issues #2 and #3 were both more good than bad by far (even when the "bro" guys returned). Nothing that melted my face in the stories, but consistently great artistic work, from Aja and colorist Matt Hollingsworth both, and some impeccable humor from Matt Fraction. It was off to a strong start.
     But the Javier Pulido-drawn "The Tape" story was of lower quality on all fronts. The plot didn't ever grab me and then resolved on a cheap fake-out kind of ending, Madame Masque has never impressed me as a villain, and Pulido is similar to Aja in some ways but far less polished and detailed. His characters' expressions are wilder, and their appearances more prone to shift or morph from panel to panel. As much as I had enjoyed the opening three issues, I never raved over them the way I saw others doing, and then during "The Tape" I could feel my interest waning rapidly. But the promise of Aja's return kept me around, only for Hawkeye #6 to be another "bro"-fest. An entertaining, beautiful one, absolutely, but this being their third issue, the gang of tracksuit-wearing thugs began to feel like one-note clowns.
     #7 was the Hurricane (Superstorm?) Sandy issue, and even though it was inarguably awesome for Fraction to donate the royalties, the stories themselves felt a little cheap and like they were pandering. I'm not sure that could have been avoided entirely in the telling of Sandy stories about superheroes, but that didn't make it any less grating. Also, again, the art was not as strong. It's good, clear, emotive stuff, and both artists fit nicely with their respective stories, but it's a dip for the series, which doesn't help the weaknesses of the narratives.
     And that brings us to Hawkeye #8, another one centered on the "bro" dudes that seems to be leading us into a longer arc centering on them. Damn, now that I think about it, those jerks are the main baddies in half of the issues so far. Maybe that's the only reason I don't like this book as much as other people.
     Whatever. I'm still reading it eight issues deep so I must be enjoying myself. I don't eagerly anticipate it every month but I do look forward to seeing what it'll deliver. And I never know exactly what to expect, which is a point in its favor for sure. As for Young Avengers, I think I'm committed to the full first arc already, no matter how long that ends up being, after only two chapters. So even if I'm not trumpeting it as the next big thing in superhero books, I am glad to be reading it and excited to see how it plays out.
     But I'd love to love these series with the same enthusiasm I seem to find around every corner of the Internet. I want to feel like I am in on the joke, but I just don't yet get what the big deal is.