Comics / Comic Reviews / Marvel Comics

Avengers Academy #1

By Hervé St-Louis
July 10, 2010 - 18:55

Young powered kids enrolled by Norman Osborne’s Initiative are taken under the wing of veteran Avengers to be trained into super heroes. But the Avengers are keeping things secret for the kids by not telling them why they were really recruited. Will the next generation of Avengers find out why they are here and what the old Avengers want with them?

This series is similar to many others before which featured the Avengers Initiative. As a jumping point, it’s a good one because the characters are mostly new and thus easy to follow. I like the mix of old character with them too. This series has a good mix of character that can propel it if given enough time. It seems that Gage likes to write such series. Some of the things I miss is the extensive development done on Doctor Pym in the last series he appeared in, The Mighty Avengers. There was a lot of work done to better define him and I feel it’s bad that this was ignored here. He’s back to playing the role his Skrull double played before in the old Avengers Initiative series. At the very least, I wish there had been more motivation shown to explain why he would want to move and help the next generation of heroes.

About the new characters, their powers are repetitive and not original at all. For example, Finesse is another deadly martial artist. Do we need more of those? A guy who produces electricity, a strong indestructible guy and a shape shifter. Anything new?

McKone is a solid and very good artist whose work shines netter when he has the right inker. Here he inks himself which makes for a happy medium. Cox is a great match and solidifies his work instead of propelling forward the fine lines that McKone is known for. The series seems interesting, but it’s one too many Avengers series for me, so I’ll skip it in the future, not because it’s bad, but because I’m not convinced it needs to exist.

Rating: 8 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12