The Young Avengers. I think I’ve mentioned them in passing a few times, but there’s been no reason to get them on the blog until the tail end of their series. Created by writer Alan Heinberg and artist Jim Cheung, the book was widely derided upon announcement, and I must admit, I was among the skeptical. And then it turned out to be great, which just goes to show, you can’t judge a book you haven’t read. All we knew going into it was it was teen versions of Avengers. It looked like Marvel was giving half the Avengers Robins. It sounded bad. It was not! Heinberg came to comics via TV, because it’s the 2000s, having written for things like Party of Five, Sex In the City, Grey’s Anatomy, and a Bendis favorite, Gilmore Girls. I was kind of bowled over when this random TV guy crafted a story that was both deeply indebted to past continuity and also firmly entrenched in the current continuity. Young Avengers began during the period when the Avengers were broken up, and heavily featured Jessica Jones. When a team of teens who looked a lot like Bucky, a young Iron Man, a young Hulk, and a young Asgardian showed up on the scene, Captain America, Iron Man and Jessica tried to track them down and get them to stop superheroing. The Bucky lookin’ guy turned out to be the grandson of the first Captain America, Isaiah Bradley, on whom the super soldier serum was tested before Steve Rogers (Long story!). The magic guy & a later introduced fast guy with white hair were revealed to be brothers, and just maybe the spirits of Scarlet Witch’s children, traveled back in time and reincarnated (Spoilers: they are exactly that). The Hulk guys turns out to be a shape-shifter, and also the lovechild of the original Captain Marvel and a Skrull princess. And most shockingly, Iron Lad turned out to be Kang the Conqueror, but a younger version, from before he turned into a dictator, who learned who he would become and chose to rebel by going back to the so-called Age of Heroes and joining them, which naturally brought them into conflict with the adult Kang. Over the course of the series, they picked up Stature, Scott Lang’s daughter, and Kate Bishop, the future 2nd Hawkeye, now a star of the MCU. AND they reactivated the Vision, and he kind of became the team’s mentor. At this point in the story, Iron Lad has been revealed and returned to his own time. Patriot has been forced to reveal he has no powers, and kicked off the team. And Hulkling has been kidnapped by the Super-Skrull, who revealed half his fabled parentage to him. But as we pick things up, the Kree have just arrived, claiming Hulkling as one of theirs, as well. This series had a notoriously bad shipping schedule. Between Heinberg’s TV commitments and what would become Jim Cheung’s well-known slow working speed, it would take them 16 months to produce 12 issues, with a gap of 3 months between the 2 we’re looking at today. As a result, this issue has five inkers in Livesay, Jay Leisten, Dave Meikis, Matt Ryan and Jamie Mendoza. Plus colors by the late, great Justin Ponsor.
The Kree give Teddy there the rundown, placing his conception right in the thick of the Kree-Skrull War, and declaring that since he’s half-Kree, he is Kree, and since his dad was a soldier, so is he. They expect him to come soldier up with them, and when he says he doesn’t want to, they try to take him by force.
The kids and Vision steal a Kree spaceship, but they’re split about whether to go to the Avengers for help. Meanwhile, the Super-Skrull tells Teddy about an unseen moment during the Kree-Skrull War wherein Captain Marvel tried to get him to join forces, and Kl’rt couldn’t do it, but he did shift into Mar-Vell to cover him & Princess Anelle escaping.
So, there’s the first intimation of what they were. Tommy and Billy, who barely know each other, at this point, grapple with the idea, and then Vision is zapped when a Skrull warship arrives and fires on the Kree ship they’re all hanging out in. So Teddy flies out to try to get them to stand down, and then another Kree ship shows up and zaps the Skrull ship, and things are escalating really quickly…
Oh, look, it’s some New Avengers.
It’s pretty easy to see why Jim Cheung’s immaculate pencils made him a star. And took so long to produce. His is one of the major styles that influenced the look of Marvel Comics for years to come. And 3 months later, he was back with the final issue…
…which features inks by Livesay, Dave Meikis, Mark Morales and Cheung himself. Cap gives Patriot to Sentry to rush to the hospital as the battle begins in earnest.
Kate initially went by the terrible moniker of Hawkingbird, a mix of husband & wife team Hawkeye and Mockingbird, both now presumed dead. Several more of these wildly dense 2-page spreads teaming up New Avengers and Young Avengers follow, including an exchange wherein Billy runs his theory that he and his brother are Wanda’s kids by Cap. Meanwhile, Teddy gets grabbed by some Kree, and the Skrulls are ready to shoot everybody to end this, but Super-Skrull gets back in the fight and rescues Teddy from both sides. But things are looking pretty grim, and Teddy decides on the only course of action he sees:
Cap was unwilling to let Eli be Patriot when he didn’t have powers, but now, thanks to his grandfather, he will. Kate Bishop tells Cap they’re gonna keep superheroing no matter what he thinks, and if the Avengers had taken them in instead of trying to stop them, maybe Eli wouldn’t be in surgery. Cap can’t say much to that. Later, we find the Young Avengers at the ruins of Avengers Mansion, rebuilding the statues of fallen Avengers, and Billy creating one for Scott Lang, to Cassie’s amazement. Their quasi-mentor, Jessica Jones, is also there.
Teddy releases his mother’s ashes. Then the team starts trying to decide what to do, when an explosion gets everyone’s attention, and…
So, that’s that. A new super team is born. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t get to do much. Heinberg & Cheung always planned to continue this series, but it just wasn’t feasible. And yet, Marvel was hesitant to give the property to anyone else. Heinberg says in the letter page that this issue was the end of “Season One” (Dessssspise comics being called “Seasons”), and that he and Jim would be taking “a few months off” before beginning work on “Season Two.” They would eventually reunite for a 12-issue series called Avengers: The Children’s Crusade more than 4 years after YA #12. Whoops. By then, the property had lost a lot of momentum. That series was still a big seller, due in no small part to the appetite for Cheung’s art, but the Young Avengers’ window had kinda closed. When a new book about the team finally did surface, it was a markedly different line-up. But most of the characters still kept popping up places. Wiccan and Hulkling became the most prominent gay couple at Marvel for awhile, and the latter ends up ruling a combined Kree/Skrull empire by the 2020s. In addition to being a great story with a lot of fun twists on old ones, and in addition to showcasing the crisp, clean art of Jim Cheung, making him a superstar, this series has a long tail in continuity. Next post, an actual Spider-Man comic.