Young Avengers Mic-Drop at the Edge of Time and Space by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie

Rating: WARTY!

Having been thrilled with Marvel's "Ms Marvel" - the teen version, not the absurdly disjointed, brutal "Civil War" version - and having really enjoyed Marvel's Runaways, I made the mistake of thinking this success could continue. I brought home the first three volumes of the Young Avengers. Was that ever a mistake! The series is boring, ridiculous, bland, and nonsensical. Fortunately, I brought them home from the library and not from the bookstore, so I didn't waste any of my money on these. See my review of volume one in this series for some background.

This series features the bizarre "Hulkling" (Theodore Altman), the childish "Kid Loki" (Loki Laufeyson), the ridiculously named "Marvel Boy" (Noh-Varr), the absurdly named "Miss America" (America Chavez), the completely pointless "Patriot" (Elijah Bradley), the only one with a decent name, "Prodigy" (David Alleyne), the unfortunately named "Speed" (Thomas Shepherd), and the inappropriately named "Wiccan" (William Kaplan) who has nothing to do with the religion of Wicca.

Volume three was pretty much a clone of volumes one and two, which featured pointless and unentertaining traipsing through other dimensions by these supposed heroes, fighting, and eating breakfast. There was no story. This was garbage. Period. The baton was dropped. Nothing else.

Young Avengers Alternative Culture by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie

Rating: WARTY!

Having been thrilled with Marvel's "Ms Marvel" - the teen version, not the absurdly disjointed, brutal "Civil War" version - and having really enjoyed Marvel's Runaways, I made the mistake of thinking this success could continue. I brought home the first three volumes of the Young Avengers. Was that ever a mistake! The series is boring, ridiculous, bland, and nonsensical. Fortunately, I brought them home from the library and not from the bookstore, so I didn't waste any of my money on these. See my review of volume one in this series for some background.

This series features the bizarre "Hulkling" (Theodore Altman), the childish "Kid Loki" (Loki Laufeyson), the ridiculously named "Marvel Boy" (Noh-Varr), the absurdly named "Miss America" (America Chavez), the completely pointless "Patriot" (Elijah Bradley), the only one with a decent name, "Prodigy" (David Alleyne), the unfortunately named "Speed" (Thomas Shepherd), and the inappropriately named "Wiccan" (William Kaplan) who has nothing to do with the religion of Wicca.

Volume two was pretty much a clone of volume one, which featured pointless and unentertaining traipsing through other dimensions by these supposed heroes, fighting, and eating breakfast. There was no story. This was garbage. Period. No culture in evidence!

Young Avengers Style (something) Substance by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie

Rating: WARTY!

Having been thrilled with Marvel's "Ms Marvel" - the teen version, not the absurdly disjointed, brutal "Civil War" version - and having really enjoyed Marvel's Runaways, I made the mistake of thinking this success could continue. I brought home the first three volumes of the Young Avengers. Was that ever a mistake! The series is boring, ridiculous, bland, and nonsensical. Fortunately, I brought them home from the library and not from the bookstore, so I didn't waste any of my money on these.

Why graphic novel series creators are so dead-set on confusing their readers, especially ones who come late to a series, and are so insistent upon dedicatedly keeping potential readers and fans in the dark about which volume is which is an enduring mystery. Is it really so hard for the publisher or the cover artist to take the perfectly logical, helpful, and simple step of putting a number one on the front cover of volume one? Or would they much rather waste people's time and money? Is it so hard to put a short text reading "Collects Issues 1 through 5"? I guess it is, because the designers here found it far less demanding to put "Style > Substance" on this cover. What does that even mean? Style is greater than substance? It doesn't mean Style over Substance, because that's not the symbol they used! Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. The title doesn't even apply to the story within, which is more like Silage > Frustration.

The goodreads page for this makes it crystal clear how confused the publishers are. The title there is listed as Young Avengers, Vol. 1: Style > Substance (Young Avengers Vol. II #1). Seriously? Someone is very confused and I think it's the graphic novel creators/publishers! Say what you mean, mean what you say. It's that simple.

So, for the uninitiated, Young Avengers was created by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung to appeal to a younger audience than comic books evidently do, and features teen characters who are essentially unimaginative rip-offs of more mature and established Marvel characters from The Avengers. Some of these teens are offspring of unholy unions between mature "super heroes" although since none of the "super heroes" ever have sex (or swear! LOL!), it's quite a mystery as to how these offspring were actually conceived. It's not even possible genetically.

Our closest relative on Earth is the chimpanzee with which we share nearly all our genes, yet it's not possible to conceive offspring between humans and chimpanzees even if you could find some low-life chimp who would be willing to volunteer to have sex with an ugly and disgustingly bald human! It's sure as hell not possible to conceive with someone from a different planet. Not after millions of years of divergent and unrelated evolution. Maybe super-heroes have super-eggs or super-sperm?

Evidently the original launch of the Young Avengers was so unsuccessful that it had to be relaunched in January of 2013 by Kieron Gillen who wrote the tedious text, and Jamie McKelvie who did the average art. There's nothing of interest here. Nothing thought-provoking. Nothing engaging. The stories are disjointed and bland, even where they make any kind of sense. There is often little connection between one panel and the next let alone between one part of the story and the next. None of it made any sense or provided any entertainment.

This series features the bizarre "Hulkling" (Theodore Altman), the childish "Kid Loki" (Loki Laufeyson), the ridiculously named "Marvel Boy" (Noh-Varr), the absurdly named "Miss America" (America Chavez), the completely pointless "Patriot" (Elijah Bradley), the only one with a decent name, "Prodigy" (David Alleyne), the unfortunately named "Speed" (Thomas Shepherd), and the inappropriately named "Wiccan" (William Kaplan) who has nothing to do with the religion of Wicca.

The first volume puts the team together despite the team supposedly having been put together earlier during the Heinberg and Cheung era. We get to know nothing about the characters except what we're begrudgingly told, which is very little, so not one of them seemed like a real person to me. They have no personality. In the end, these "heroes' were only their powers, and their power seemed entirely restricted to fighting and mischief - oh, and and eating breakfast. Boring.

The only other thing which featured was that there were a couple of gay or bisexual guys, and those felt like they'd been put in there for no other reason than to ride the LGBTQIA bandwagon. They had nothing else to offer. None of these characters did. Loki was pathetic. Miss America had one trait and one trait only: violence. Not one of them had a life outside of their little clique. it was like a pathetic high-school melodrama.

So what was the story? There was no story. The entire volume was the same as the next two volumes in the series, which consist of pointless traipsing through other dimensions, fighting, and eating breakfast. There was no story. This was garbage.

The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen

Title: The Wicked + The Divine
Author: Kieron Gillen
Publisher: Tim Nolen
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!

Artwork by Jamie McKelvie (website worth a visit - I love the opening page (as of today's date the girl on the telephone pole)
Coloring by Matthew Wilson
Lettering by Clayton Cowles (another amusing website - as of today's date, Empire fighter craft versus a witch on a broom?)

This is an amazingly original story about gods and humans. Note that this is a compendium volume featuring the first five issues. I love that it was subtitled "The Faust Act"! Anyway, these gods are reincarnated in young human bodies every ninety years, but they only live for two years before the human body dies and they go dark again. They don’t know when they will be reincarnated because not all of them are incarnate at once. The gods are treated like celebrities - music and movie stars. They hold concerts and the younger generation flocks to see them

I love that Luci (guess what that's short for!) was female. She was by far the most complex and intriguing character, especially when she was arrested for exploding the heads of two people who were firing automatic rifles into her apartment - the problem is that during her trial, the judge's head also explodes in a similar fashion, and she's immediately imprisoned.

A girl whom Luci earlier befriended now takes up her cause, and seems to be the only person interested in doing so. None of the other gods seem to care. The conversations between these two, and between Luci and a blogger-journalist are fascinating. The fun really ramps up though, when Luci loses patience and breaks out of jail.

One problem I had with this graphic novel was that on some pages, the text was rendered in such a tiny font that it was really hard to read, even in a full-screen Adobe Digital Editions reader ebook. Fortunately it wasn't that many pages, so it wasn't a huge issue. Other than that, the artwork, coloring, and lettering were exemplary: beautiful, bright, brilliantly colorful, clean and sharp - and really eye-catching. It was a joy to see as well as to read. I was spoiled for choice in trying to narrow it down to my usual two or three samples that I post on my blog, so I tried somehtign brand new (for me!) this time and put all my faovrites into a GIF. This is the first time I tried this, so I hope it works OK.

I read some other reviews after I wrote mine, and I noticed that some people were confused by this graphic novel. It really isn’t confusing at all, but I grant that it does take a while to get into it. Other reviewers bemoaned the fact that they didn’t have enough background on the gods: why do they come, why do they have to die? The god who started it all, Ananke made it quite clear why they come and what they want: they want to be adored, but these reviewers were right in one regard: it didn’t explain why the visit was confined to only two years. Maybe it’s explained later in the series (this compendium covered only the first five volumes and had a great "ending"). I'm guessing it’s because they don’t want to devalue the currency! Or maybe the presence of a god in a mortal body burns it up really fast. A better question is why they need the physical body.

I recommend this for a really good read, and for an original story, and for something which was truly creative, imaginative, and inventive. This is everything a really great comic should be.

Three Volume 1 by Kieron Gillen

Title: Three Volume 1
Author: Kieron Gillen (not to be confused with Karen Gillan!)
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: warty

Drawing: Ryan Kelly
Coloring: Jordie Bellaire
Lettering: Clayton Coles
Graphic design: Hannah Donovan

Note that this graphic novel is gory! It contains adult material, and is not suitable for younger readers!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

I did not like this graphic novel. The layout and art work were fine as far as they went, and the writing was technically fine, but I simply could not follow the story no matter how hard I tried to figure out what, exactly was going on, or where it was supposed to be heading. I found myself drifting and skimming in a place or two, but worse than this, the story itself drifted and skimmed, jumping from one thing to another and introducing character after character after character for no evident reason.

There was no real flow or logic that I could see. Each new character's name appears alongside them in their first panel as though the writer actually knew it was going to get larded and confusing. I soon stopped paying attention to who was now appearing on stage because I doubted I would see them again after the next couple of pages, and this probably didn’t help in trying to divine a coherent narrative from what was happening in each panel.

The general story concerns three Helots, two guys and a woman who are set upon by the Spartans for no apparent reason. One of the three (Klaros) happens to be an invincible warrior who is "in disguise" as some sort of employee on a farm(? I don’t know - it wasn't clear) run by Terpander, an air-headed smart-mouth who is apparently married to Damar (I don't know - it’s not clear), who is also apparently pregnant, although that wasn't clear to begin with either.

Klaros predictably if inexplicably leaps bloodily to their rescue, and the three are then the subject of pursuit by a veritable army of Spartans. No reason is offered for Klaros's beneficence, or for the dedicated pursuit - a pursuit which seemed improbable given that Klaros had initially killed everyone who was wearing a red cloak in his vicinity. The rest of the story consists of the three escapees agonizing over their lot in life, and trying to avoid and out-run their pursuers, as new characters continue to pop-up like hungry hippos every couple of pages.

There's one scene reminiscent of the 300 where Klaros makes a stand, and the result of this I openly laughed at. The entire story is gory - lots of spears through body parts, severed heads, and blood spurting. This wouldn’t have been so bad had there been other things going on to engage my attention, but there really wasn't anything going on. This story has nothing really to do with 300, so I'm not sure what the deal is with this. I honestly can’t recommend it.

For those who are interested in the technical side of things, there are copious notes in the final pages detailing how this story came about and also some of the history of the time period in which it's set, but even given my interest in the technicalities of graphic novel creation, I’d have been more impressed with a more gripping story and no notes than I was with the way this was actually done.