REVIEW: Young Avengers, Volume One: Style > Substance

PLOT: Legacy isn't a dirty word...but it's an irrelevant one. It's not important what our parents did. It matters what WE do. Someone has to save the world. You're someone. Do the math. The critically acclaimed team of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie reinvent the teen super hero comic for the 21st century, uniting Wiccan, Hulkling and Kate "Hawkeye" Bishop with Kid Loki, Marvel Boy and Ms. America. No pressure, right? As a figure from Loki's past emerges, Wiccan makes a horrible mistake that comes back to bite everyone on their communal posteriors. Fight scenes! Fake IDs! And plentiful feels! (aka "meaningful emotional character beats" for people who aren't on tumblr.) Young Avengers is as NOW! as the air in your lungs, and twice as vital. Hyperbole is the BEST! THING! EVER!

REVIEW: Yet another Marvel NOW! title that I just don't understand. I suppose that Young Avengers is supposed to rock with a younger crowd, and probably appeals to teenage kids looking for a comic book that they can relate to their lives. There's a lot about this story that I just didn't find appealing to myself, and I am pretty open to anything but a lot of this felt forced for the ability to be marketed at a younger audience. First of all, the gay relationship presented from the beginning with Wiccan and Hulkling I just didn't get. It felt so forced to pair these two together, and really just to use as a marketing tool to appeal to comic readers of a younger age in high school. I know that writers have been trying to be inclusive in comics as of late, and I applaud them for that but I really don't feel like it was necessary in this story. I didn't think they were a good couple, nor was I invested in either character because all you know about them was that they were gay. There needed to be more of a set up as to who these two characters were, and what drew them together in the first place. It just starts out with "hey our comic book has two heroes in the Young Avengers that are gay! Look at us, we're all inclusive!" I know it sounds like I was offended, but really I would have been fine with it had there been more development leading up to why they were a couple, which would make it seem like less of a gimmick. Also, the other characters were pretty minimal in comparison, which compounded the problem. The only character I truly enjoyed was Kid Loki and that was because he had a sense of humor and he obviously plays off of the already known grown up characters of Thor and Loki. The villains were kind of neat, but I'm still kind of unsure what to make of the whole story because really the biggest plot of this whole book was the relationship between Wiccan and Hulkling. I think they could have spent a lot more time on other characters developing them just as much as the other two, and maybe it would have felt like there was an entire team in this book. The title was appropriate though I suppose, because substance took a backseat to style in this one. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention, but I really didn't see too much in this book that appealed to me and made me want to read more.

WRITING : ( 7 / 10 )

ARTWORK : ( 8 / 10 )

STORY : ( 4 / 10 )

COVERS : ( 7 / 10 )

AWESOME : ( 5 / 10 )

FINAL RATING : ( 5 / 10 )

REVIEW: Iron Man, Volume One: Believe

PLOT: Tony Stark is Iron Man: Technological visionary, wealthy playboy, unparalleled engineer, and armored Avenger. But in one terrifying instant, his greatest invention becomes his greatest mistake. The lethal techno virus Extremis is out in the wild and out for grabs to the highest bidder! Introducing the Circle, a mysterious high-tech brotherhood of mech-knights, as Tony's hunt for the rogue Extremis Units takes him to the island of New Camelot! As he dogfights the secret Russian Black Exoskeleton Academy's greatest pilot, Iron Man must act fast...and Tony Stark must build faster! It's up to Tony to contain Extremis, and that means creating a new suit of armor...NOW!

REVIEW: This is my first go at any of the new Marvel NOW! titles, and I can't say I was all that impressed. The story revolves around Extremis, which seems to be all that Iron Man is about in 2013 and I'm just going to guess that that has something do with Iron Man 3. The story in this volume was just pretty mediocre in my opinion. It wasn't very fun to read, and I can't say it was all that easy to keep track of either. The only thing I can recall liking was in the first issue contained within, where Tony Stark uses a liquid metal suit that just looks really cool on the page. The book is nice, the art is passable, but I just couldn't find myself interested in the story of Iron Man here. I haven't been a huge fan of any of Kieron Gillen's work so that may be the problem. I would say give it a read if you're just a die-hard Iron Man fan and you have to check this out, otherwise it can wait until you don't have much else left to read.

WRITING : ( 4 / 10 )

ARTWORK : ( 6 / 10 )

STORY : ( 3 / 10 )

COVERS : ( 7 / 10 )

AWESOME : ( 3 / 10 )

FINAL RATING : ( 4 / 10 )