Style > Substance indeed! This book is certainly stylish, even creative, in the way it approaches each page and each panel. The art itself is beautiful, I mean it's just fantastic, I'm a huge fan of McKelvie from here on out. He's very detailed and where most comic artists struggle with faces, in giving them detail and distinction from one another, McKelvie excels, giving each character a certain life of their own just from his drawings. What really pushes his art from good to great, or even great to amazing, is the brilliant panel work done throughout the entirety of this book. Some of my favorite examples of this are: a page in which we see Loki and Billy navigating through identical black panels on white page, climbing them, walking across them, it’s a brilliant splash page; another splash page where we see Noh-Varr (Marvel Boy) rescuing fellow member of the team from a nightclub where they are being held hostage. The scene unfolds through a diagram with a key to accompany it, which corresponds with the diagram through numbers, telling us what is going on. My explanation was likely just horrible, the page itself is brilliant, trust me; and lastly one of the final pages, again a splash, shows Loki in the middle in the middle of the pages with a spell circle around him and panels shooting off from this circle showing the effects of his spell. These were my favorite examples but the whole book is filled with this type of creativity.So yeah the book is beautiful and full of style, but uhhh, onto the substance, which was, welllll, not so good.It starts with Kate waking from having a one night stand with Noh-Varr, which turns into the two of them being a couple for the whole run of the series. Can’t say I’m a fan of the relationship, but I’m really really really not a fan of our introduction to Kate being her waking up from a one night stand. It’s not who she is, in fact none of these characters behave like who they are, Gillen has absolutely no respect for the many issues involving these characters that have come before his run, he essentially creates new, archetype, personalities for all of them. But back to Kate for now, in both Hawkeye and the previous Young Avengers run she has been hesitant to form emotional bonds. She’s weary of relationships; even if she’s had very few, jumping into bed with someone is simply not something she’s going to do. If Gillen wanted to do this, he should have worked up to it, starting the book of that way just makes no sense. Cue random Skrull attack and then cut to Teddy, who is also a shell of his former self, he’s been reduced to someone that is solely defined by his relationship to Billy and his role in the Young Avengers, look deeper and you will find nothing. Billy is mad at Teddy for still being a super-hero…even though this was already resolved in a previous mini series featuring the Young Avenger….but hey what does it matter to Gillen what these characters are all about. The entire premise of this series is Billy doing something I don’t think he would ever be stupid enough to do, never has Billy been the type to abuse his powers in this way, so why, out of the blue, would he decide to abuse them. I have nothing to say about Miss America, I don’t understand who she is apart from being the “tough girl” because all she ever does is stare people down and call “Chico”. Her powers are badass but her personality is just ass. Noh-Varr is too defined by his “foreign guy comes to America” personality for me to like him. All he does is speak in somewhat broken English and make weird 20th century pop culture references. Him and Kate stay together for the entire book although it’s not exactly made clear why, you just have to accept that they like each other and are dating, there’s barely any 1 on 1 scenes between the two where we can develop the relationship and learn more about what’s drawn them to each other, it just straight up artificial, shameless, let’s put the two most attractive characters together nonsense. I don’t even know what to say about Noh-Varr’s ships engines running on belief besides “that’s stupid”. All in all I actually like the old Marvel Boy who wanted to kill everyone a lot more. Then there’s Mother, who is a virus of some sort but Gillen can’t take two sentences to actually explain why all this stuff happens because of her. They can’t be near their parents or they turn evil, when they turn evil they get all gooey and you kill them…but then the when you leave they are all A-OK. Mother can do this to everyone who is an adult, even the Avengers, but not the kids, for some reason that isn’t given. Billy has lost the ability to use his powers well; he can still use them but barely. There is nothing in this book that explains any of this, you simply must accept it and move on. I hate that, because this isn’t a book that has the right to do it. A book like Prophet where everything is really vague and you just kinda go along with it, then it’s ok, when it’s a serious plot device you need to tell your readers what in the hell is going on.Oh and Loki breaks the fourth wall sometimes which is actually pretty cool and fun.Just me being picky, but I hate Kate’s new bow, don’t know why she couldn’t use her regular one. And I hate the new Wiccan design. His costume is weird but I really really miss the metal headband he used to wear, now his hair is just always like it was with the band on.So the last thing I want to touch on is the teenspeak. Too many unnecessary pop culture references. There is more to teens than pop culture, and making your characters pop culture savvy doesn’t make the dialogue witty. Referencing Game of Thrones because it’s “in” right now isn’t cool, it just screams “hey look at us, look at how inexplicably nerdy AND cool we are, like Game of Thrones”. I like pop culture references but this was just every other line, too much is too much! Teenagers talk like regular people, you don’t need to dumb down everything they say like Gillen has, it makes it all seem superficial and fake and it made really hate the dialogue. There were things I liked about this. I have enjoyed most of the previous Young Avengers stories that I have read, and some of those characters' stories continue here. Some new characters are added in. I have a pretty good handle on Loki, since I have read a fair amount of Thor and Journey Into Mystery. I have at least encountered Noh-Varr before, though I didn't get a lot of information about him. Miss America, I have nothing for (she's a Hispanic Wonder Woman? From Space?). I guess she can fly, is strong and indestructible, and just happens to be named America, which I guess is fine. Maybe she will make more sense as the series continues. Overall, I liked that they included some characters that I have read to latch on to, but I felt like they were trying a little too hard to be hip, and it kind of fell flat for me. I enjoyed some of the weird elements, like characters interacting with panels, but others were a little disorienting (unlike some other readers, I didn't much enjoy the diorama panel). I still liked the story fairly well, but I hope that it calms down into something else. I guess my issue is just that I prefer substance over style.
What do You think about Young Avengers, Vol. 1: Style > Substance (2013)?
So fun and wonderful! Also, good, diverse characters. I am in my happy place.
—naflower05
love love love teddy and billy omgand Kate because she's a Kate
—Snoopy
kept skipping pages on accident. Recommended. 3.5 stars.
—SmileyZee
