Spotlight: Young Avengers

The Ronin here,

Welcome to the spotlight, a new series were we examine some part of comic books further, and hopefully introduce people to some new stories and characters. Today we are putting the spot light on Marvel's Young Avengers.

Avengers Academy 14.1

The Ronin here,

I love this series as you might of read in my "Why aren't you reading Avengers Academy" post. So it will be harder to put my self into the mindset of a new reader, but I shall try.

Avengers Academy 14.1, like the others is marketed as a jumping on point. However this book has a harder job to do then "Secret Avengers" because unless you've been reading Avengers Academy you will recognize none of these characters on the cover. Aside from a few issues of "Avengers: The Initiative" which had Reptil in it, these are all characters new to the Avengers franchise.

The cover is nothing amazing it is just the characters running at the reader, however it does a good job showing off all of the characters. You get a good sense of what they can do from their look, and they are all very colorful and don't blend together like poor Beast did while hanging out in Steve Roger's arm pit in "Secret Avengers".

Secret Avengers 12.1

The Ronin here,

In February Marvel started their "point one" program, the idea was to release a new .1 issue for each of their lines that would serve as a jumping on point, It would bring new readers up to speed so they could jump in with this issue then start buying the regular series. It is not a terrible idea. Although I have to wonder, how did they expect new readers to know this? I mean 614.1 is not exactly an inviting number.

That said the .1 issues were hit and miss, they sold about as well as their regular counterparts, which I am sure Marvel does not mind, but I'd guess the regular readers are the ones who bought them. Only time will tell. So Today i am re-reading two .1 issues I picked up. One from a series I was unfamiliar with and wanted to try, and the other a series I love and own all of.

Why aren't you reading Avengers Academy?

The Ronin here,

No one is buying Avengers Academy.

In a way we are fortunate, Marvel likes this series. Which is probably the only thing keeping it from suffering the same fate as 'Young Allies' and 'Spider-Girl'. Of course it is also better then 'Young Allies' and 'Spider-girl'. Not that Young Allies actually had much of a chance to shine. the titular allies barely come together by the final issue of the series.

I understand why people aren't giving it a try. For one there are a lot of Avengers titles right now, 'Avengers', 'New Avengers', 'Secret Avengers', 'Avengers: The Children Crusade', 'Ultimate Avengers', 'Avengers: Rehab', 'Avengers: Cleveland' and finally 'Avengers: Daycare'. Some of the real ones even sell quite well. Actually there is a lot of good stuff out there for today's busy Avengers fan.