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Young Avengers #1

Jan 2013
Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie

Young Avengers #1 cover

Story Name:

Style > substance


Synopsis

Young Avengers #1 synopsis by Rob Johnson
Rating: 4 stars
Kate Bishop wakes in a unfamiliar bed and hears last night's date in the shower. She's happy about it and wonders how things will progress when she pulls aside a curtain and sees that the room is in orbit around the Earth. The guy exits the shower and she has to admit she can't remember his exact name. When he tells her it's Noh-Varr she remembers a previous occasion when he fought the Young Avengers (including herself) (in the Civil War: YA & Runaways mini-series), and he was later in the Avengers as Marvel Boy or Protector. He admits to all that but it ended badly, and both the Avengers and his own Kree blame *him*. But Kate can't hold anything of this against him, not even that he seems to like music from her parents' era (the 60's).

Then space-suited Skrulls attack. Noh grabs a device which warps into a gun that surrounds his hand and he starts shooting. Kate runs to the ship's control room and automatically knows how to drive it away from a big Skrull cannon aimed at it. And that's all we see of these 2 this issue.

In New York Spider-Man gets shot saving a woman from 2 muggers. But he shrugs it off and sends elastic arms to punch the villains in their faces. Then he leaves before the cops arrive, and we see him on a rooftop shapeshifting into Hulkling. Next we see him creeping in through the window of his bedroom in Chelsea to find his boyfriend Wiccan waiting for him. Billy Kaplan is angry because they'd *agreed* to give up superheroing after Young Avengers broke up in the Avengers: Children's Crusade limited series because Stature (Cassie Lang) died and Vision (Jonas) was destroyed by Iron Lad (the future Kang).

Teddy Altman isn't repentant. They were both born with superpowers. Billy's 'real' mom is the Scarlet Witch and his foster parents are great. They let Teddy stay with them (the boys not sharing a bedroom of course). They were so nice that Billy's 'brother' Tommy Shepherd (Speed) had to leave or die of saccharine poisoning. Billy has awesome magical reality-warping power that he's afraid to use and a boyfriend who would do anything for him. But Teddy is a shapeshifting Skrull-Kree half-breed whose parents are all dead, including the Skrull woman who raised him on Earth. But he has Billy and he's not going to live a lie. Billy is shamed and swears to be the best boyfriend ever from now on. But for now he'd better get to his own room.

In that room he uses his magic to scan alternate realities. But before we find out what for we'll visit ...

... Kid Loki in a nearby diner with articles of food arranged on the table which suddenly rise into the air and intone "The Wiccan child. The time cometh." A spoken runic word takes him to Billy's roof and he prepares a spell to stop what he's doing. But *he*'s stopped by the arrival of the super-powerful America Chavez (variously called Miss America and Ms America) who thinks he's going to kill Wiccan. She attacks and Loki uses his teleportation spell to keep out of the way. But a Gorgon (of the Inhumans)-like stamp knocks him off his feet and she has him.

Meanwhile Billy has located a version of Teddy's mom who's just been killed, but he needs something different. And he finds a moment before the death. But the noise on the roof has awoken Teddy and the Kaplan parents. Teddy rushes up the stairs to the roof.

Loki casts another rune spell as Wiccan does what he meant to do resulting in a woman appearing in a blinding light. And Teddy reaches the roof to yell at America (who he doesn't know) to stop choking Loki (who he recognises) and who uses the opportunity to teleport away. America also flies off. And Mr Kaplan calls Teddy down to where we see that Billy has rescued a 'Mrs Altman' from the multiverse. Teddy doesn't know she's not *his* mom and he just holds her tight.

Later when Billy and Teddy are asleep Mrs Altman rejoins Jeff and Rebecca Kaplan to talk to them about the boys. She bluntly says they're too young to be living together and in fact she's unhappy that Billy is in a relationship ata ll when he should be studying. The angry Kaplans think that the boys' happiness is the best thing but Mrs Altman says she's the kind of mother that knows best. And fleshy tendrils from her hand smother the other 2.


 

Review / Commentaries


Young Avengers #1 Review by (March 12, 2022)
Mike Norton helped Jamie McKelvie with the art.

This series had a prologue in Marvel Now Point One where Kid Loki invited Ms America (America Chavez) to a Korean barbecue on Earth-212. She was suspicious of him after their previous encounter when she was in the Teen Brigade in the Vengeance mini-series. He tried to persuade her that Wiccan of Earth-616 needed killing before he became something that America knows is dangerous. She wrecked the restaurant beating him up and swore to keep an eye on both him and Wiccan to make sure he didn't try anything. Then she left and Loki ticked an entry on his list of Avengers he was gathering together. (It's a Loki tradition, but this time he's on the list himself.)

The 6-issue Vengeance series and the Point One are America Chavez only previous apps. They showed that she's superstrong and invulnerable, she can fly and she has an attitude. But so far we know nothing of her origin. This series will get into some of that.

Kid Loki is not the Loki you knew, who died heroically(!) at the end of Dark Reign in Siege #4. A new version appeared as Kid Loki in Thor #617 who wanted to do good, although no-one believed him. He met an echo of his old version in Journey Into Mystery #622 but he trapped him as a magpie and called him Ikol. But this was all part of old Loki's scheme, and in JIM#645 Ikol replaced Kid Loki. Ikol began as a young Loki but grew up and evolved into the neither good nor evil, much more interesting, post-Hiddleston Loki that we have today.

It will be made clear later in this series that it's the later Kid Loki (Ikol) that we have here.

Marvel Boy (Noh-Varr) is a Kree from an alternate timeline who crashlanded on this Earth in his 6-issue mini-series. He became an Earth hero during Secret Invasion but then fell into Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers until he quit and became new hero Protector in their Annual. He then joined the post-Dark Reign Avengers until #27 during the A Vs X event when caught between his loyalties to Avengers and Kree he betrayed both sides and has been on the run since then.

Hulkling and Wiccan are here after the end of the Avengers: Children's Crusade limited series which shut down the 1st Young Avengers group. Hawkeye (Kate Bishop) has already started a new career as Hawkeye (Clint Barton)'s sidekick in his (their) 2012 series. The Marvel Chronology Project has this issue after #5 of that series.

Hulkling is the son of the original (Kree) Captain Marvel and the Skrull Princess Anelle. Wiccan's parentage is more confusing. Scarlet Witch and the android Vision had twin children Billy and Tommy, conceived by magic, but they 'died' in a way to complicated to go into here. But they were then preincarnated (ie reincarnated earlier in time) as Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepherd (Speed) to 2 different families. They met during the 1st Young Avengers series and now consider themselves brothers and Wanda Maximoff as their other mother.



> Young Avengers comic book info and issue index

Elektra

Excelsioring your collection:
statue
Holy smokes, Batman!
(The Boy Wonder)

Jamie McKelvie
Jamie McKelvie
Matthew Wilson
Jamie McKelvie (Cover Penciler)
Jamie McKelvie (Cover Inker)
Matthew Wilson (Cover Colorist)
Additional Credits
Letterer: Clayton Cowles.
Editor: Lauren Sankovitch. Editor-in-chief: Axel Alonso.

Characters

Listed in alphabetical order. All stories.

Hawkeye
Hawkeye

(Katherine Elizabeth Bishop)
Hulkling
Hulkling

(Theodore Altman)
Loki
Loki

(Loki Laufeyson)
Marvel Boy
Marvel Boy

(Noh-Varr)
Ms. America
Ms. America

(America Chavez)
Wiccan
Wiccan

(William Kaplan)
Plus: Young Avengers.

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