Inhumans vs. X-Men explodes, Hawkeye takes aim, and two big holiday specials are among this week’s new comic book picks of the week:
Guardians of the Galaxy #15
Grounded begins. The space-faring heroes came to Earth to help Captain Marvel. Now they’re stuck and a team no more? Brian Michael Bendis breaks up the band as final arc begins for some Guardians. Continue reading New Comic Book Picks December 14, 2016
Jeff Lemire (Green Arrow) and Ramon Perez (Wolverine and the X-Men) will launch a brand new Hawkeye #1 after Matt Fraction and David Aja conclude their run.
How will the new team approach the Avenging Archer (when he’s not on duty as an Avenger) and his protegee Kate Bishop?
“To me Kate is an equal to Clint in terms of who is the ‘star’ of the book is. It’s equal billing. It will be as much Kate’s story as it is Clint’s. Continue reading HAWKEYE & KATE BISHOP in 2015
Young Avengers was missing from Marvel’s February previews. It’s not Loki’s fault! The critically acclaimed series from writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie will end with January’s issue.
Gillen confirmed via his tumblr that it’s the end…of the season.
“Those who closely follow solicits have noted the absence of Young Avengers from the just-released February set. They’ve been wondering if that’s the end of our run.
In short: yes. Continue reading YOUNG AVENGERS Ends?
An all-new Young Avengers #1 arrives this week. Kid Loki assembles the teens for a nefarious purpose. Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie shared their plans for the powerhouse kids on Marvel.com.
Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung’s Young Avengers is highly acclaimed and loved (especially by yours truly.) Gillen revealed how this new team and title are different.
“Any time I try to describe Young Avengers I sound like I’m having a full neurotic breakdown. I loved Allan Heinberg’s Young Avengers and would never try to duplicate it. That was a book about being 16, looking up to the Avengers like parents. This is a book about being 18 and entering the world on your own terms.”
The Heinberg/Cheung team broke up after Avengers: The Children’s Crusade. The new kids are brought together by Loki (like the original Earth’s Mightiest Heroes) but with a wicked twist.
“The other Avengers books are about big organizations. Young Avengers is about the ideal of Earth’s mightiest coming together.”
“At the end of Children’s Crusade, the traditional Young Avengers agreed they shouldn’t be doing this anymore. The prime mover in getting everybody back together is Kid Loki. He’s recruiting Miss America and people to essentially kill Wiccan.”
One of the new faces is Miss America from Joe Casey’s Vengeance series.
“Miss America is very…violent. She’s been a super hero longer than anybody knows, and she’s not doing it to be famous. The question of what she knows about Wiccan is the big mystery of the book.”
The earlier volumes were recognized by GLAAD for their portrayal of young gay heroes Wiccan and Hulking. The troubled teens in love will be part of the new team.
“Wiccan and Hulkling are the core romantic couple of Young Avengers. Wiccan is phenomenally powerful in ways people don’t understand. He makes a mistake early on and that drives the book. It’s almost a Hank Pym plot in how he creates all his own problems.”
“Hulkling is creeping out at night to do super hero stuff. He figures he has a talent and should be using it.”
“I love drawing Wiccan and Hulkling, their emotional interactions as well as the punching,” added Jamie McKelvie.
Kate Bishop was attracted to Patriot but Gillen has recruited the fiery former Marvel Boy to be on the team and her potential love interest.
“Kate Bishop starts the book off to one side with Noh Varr. They’re a B-plot to the first part. Noh Varr has been kicked out of both the Kree and the Avengers, but he’s back on Earth, because nobody ever told James Dean what to do. He’s a hipster alien.”
Gillen stresses this book is not just about teen romance.
“I’m trying to create a book that covers anything connected to youth in the Marvel Universe. I have ideas of a larger infrastructure down the line. I don’t want to over promise though. It’s a book with a focus that can move. You’ll see with issue #6.”
“I knew how the book felt before I knew what the story was. I saw Marvel Boy and Hawkeye waking up. The first night with a strange new boy. She pulls the curtain and they’re in orbit. It’s a perfect metaphor. You take teenage emotions and transform them into the hyper real.”
Gillen wrote about Kid Loki’s search for identity in Journey Into Mystery and will continue exploring that them in this book.
“The question of ‘who can I become?’ remains key to Loki and to the book. Not quite in the same way it was in Journey Into Mystery, but still there.”
Wiccan is on the team but what about his brother: Speed?
“Hopefully. There’s a reason he’s not there to begin. I didn’t want to overload the cast and not just have somebody there to have them there. I like them Speed. I plan to come back to him around issue #6. Where he is gets covered briefly in the first issue.”
Like most teens the young heroes will have a hangout – a diner.
“Super powers is the most important thing in Young Avengers. The second most important thing is breakfast.”
The Young Avengers often clashed with their elders in the previous volumes. Will the kids meet the adults in the new series?
“The Avengers are in issue #2 briefly. It’s hard to explain without giving away the plot…where the Young Avengers are going, they can’t be helped. I don’t want to say much more than that. Parents and growing up are key to the book.”
For the entire liveblog here’s the Marvel.com link.
Young Avengers #1 arrives this week.
By Editor
Earth’s Mightiest Archer gets his own series this August. Clint Barton takes Young Avenger Kate Bishop under his wing for all new adventures by Matt Fraction and David Aja (The Immortal Iron Fist).
Marvel.com provided this sleek Hawkeye #1 variant cover by Adi Granov. Here’s the post with Fraction and Aja discussing the upcoming series. By Editor
Matt Fraction reunites with David Aja for a brand new Hawkeye series debuting this August. The duo (along with Ed Brubaker) last worked together on The Immortal Iron Fist. The announcement was made at C2E2 in Chicago.
Aja told Marvel.com his lifelonglove for the Avenging Archer is what led to the reunion.
“Hawkeye was one my favorite characters when a kid,” he recalls. “One of first Marvel comics I read was Avengers #25, and I [fell] in love with [the] guy; he acted as real person, was a complete jerk, so I suppose I identified with him.”
For Fraction Hawkeye represents a challenge after taking on the X-Men, Iron Man, and Thor.
“Never had the chance to write a character like him, or to do a book like this before,” the writer reveals. “And I wanted to chronicle him in an ongoing series because it’d keep me from getting bored. Repetition bores me to death. I had this idea for how to do a book that wasn’t like anything else we’d seen him in before, wasn’t like anything I’d done before, and couldn’t stop thinking about.”
Fraction went on the describe this series as Clint’s life outside of team and what drives him after the events of AvX. I was excited that Kate Bishop (you could call her Lady Hawkeye of the Young Avengers) will be in the series.
“She’s his junior partner, his apprentice,” says Fraction. “It’s a very Avengers relationship—meaning Steed and Peel—and she’s as adrift as he is. What the hell are these two doing with their lives? Turns out, helping people is what they have to do to get through the night. In costume, in life, doesn’t matter. Good guys don’t punch a time card at 5:00.”
For the more quotes from Fraction and Aja here’s the Marvel.com link.
Fraction is one of the luckiest writers at Marvel. Iron Man and Thor movies were released during Fraction’s early runs on the those series. I don’t remember his clever quote exactly (at an Emerald City Comicon panel) but I think it went something like “nice of Marvel to do a million dollar promo for my comic book.”
Hawkeye awareness will be at at all time high with Marvel’s The Avengers out May 3rd and then Jeremy Renner (who plays Clint Barton) is on the big screen again in August for The Bourne Legacy. Good timing for a Hawkeye launch.
Hawkeye is currently leader of Secret Avengers under Rick Remender but that book is changing direction to tie-in with AvX. I hope after the event Hawkeye and his covert team return to their secret missions and Remender can continue The Descendants plotline he started.
By Editor
Katniss Everdeen is the amazing heroine of the epic and emotional The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins and the smash hit movie. If you like Katniss I think you will enjoy the adventures of Marvel’s Kate Bishop of the Young Avengers. Katniss and Kate’s backgrounds are very different but they young heroines share a lot of similarities besides their archery skills.
Kate is tough, independent, blunt and an excellent archer. Kate was born rich but dedicated herself to charity like her late mother. The Young Avengers were an all boys team until a rescue attempt lead them to meet the level-headed and tough under pressure rich girl. Donning parts of the costumes once worn by Hawkeye and Mockingbird, Kate became part of the team of found a secret place for the team to train.
In Young Avengers Special Kate confides a dark painful secret to reporter Jessica Jones. We learn Kate was brutally attacked in what appears to be Central Park. Kate was traumatized and inspired undergo intense martial arts and weapons training like fencing, archery, and swordsmanship.
I don’t want to give too much away but Kate’s best friend becomes Cassie Lang, the daughter of Ant-Man who goes by the code name Stature. Kate’s testy and sexy relationship with Eli Walker aka Patriot is part of the ongoing appeal of the series. The two teens are stubborn, independent and it’s a joy to watch their “will they or won’t they” relationship evolve.
Kate wasn’t born with super powers but holds her own as the team confronts villains, gets caught up in Marvel’s biggest epics. She takes on the code name Hawkeye, stands up to Captain America when he orders the team to shut down and eventually meets the real Hawkeye (Clint Barton, played by Jeremy Renner in Marvel’s The Avengers.)
Allan Heinberg (a writer on Sex & the City, Grey’s Anatomy, Gilmore Girls, Party of Five, The O.C.) and artist Jim Cheung created Kate and the Young Avengers. I’m a huge fan of the Young Avengers. The Children’s Crusade is one of the most beautifully drawn and written stories in modern Marvel history. Here’s the Marvel.com link to learn more about Kate’s team, The Young Avengers.
Here are Amazon links to the big Young Avengers story collections. Hope you enjoy!
This Young Avengers collects issues 1-6 and the special edition. Sidekicks, Family Matters, Young Avengers Presents, Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways, Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers, Dark Reign: Young Avengers, Siege: Young Avengers, Avengers: The Children’s Crusade.