Avengers The Children’s Crusade #6 – Review

By: Allan Heinberg (writer), Jim Cheung (pencils), Mark Morales, John Livesay & Dave Meikis (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Cory Petit (letters), Lauren Sankovitch (associate editor) & Tom Brevoort (editor)

The Story: Now that the Young Avengers have found the Scarlet Witch, what do you think will happen?

What’s Good: How sneaky good and (possibly) momentous was this issue?  The cynical comic reader will look at this issue with a jaded eye and think that the events that seem to be taking place in this issue can’t be real.  Surely, if this was going to happen, Marvel would have had a press release hyping the issue or structured an event around the concept.  One could argue that this maxi-series is kind of an “event”, but it comes sans all the hype and tie-in miniseries that bloat most events in today’s comics.

Clearly, I’m being incredibly vague about this story because an event this cool that was completely unspoiled in this day of the internet, doesn’t deserve to be spoiled by a mere review.  And, it may not even hold up.  We might get to issue #7 in a few months and have everything reversed, but until then, this sort of spontaneous surprise in a comic reminded me of reading comics when I was a kid.

Aside from the big event that takes place, it is just a really nice comic that features the Young Avengers (who are just fun as hell), the Avengers and a bunch of stuff from the Avengers going all the way back to Disassembled.  No Avengers fan could fail to enjoy this comic.

Avengers: The Children’s Crusade #1 – Review

by Allan Heinberg (writer), Jim Cheung (pencils & inks), Mark Morales (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), and Cory Petit (letters)

The Story: A sudden outburst of power from Wiccan and a temporary loss of control sparks questions about his relation to the Scarlet Witch.

What’s Good: It’s great to see the gang back together again and certainly, the team dynamic is just as strong as ever.  This is thanks in no small part to to Heinberg’s dialogue, which is tight, natural, and humorous, and at different turns evocative and light-hearted.  It’s by far the best part of this issue, mostly because of how human it is and how well-managed the voices of the various team members are.  Each characters is well-defined and their close relationships with each other are clear just through Heinberg’s tone.  The conversations are a joy to read.

Of course, this issue also marks the return of Jim Cheung and, as expected, that means that this issue looks absolutely gorgeous.  Cheung’s style, to me, represents the pinnacle of what Marvel’s “house style” would look like, were there such a thing.  Everything is well defined and, well, heroic with a very light anime touch.  Essentially, this looks like the greatest Saturday morning action cartoon to never exist.

As far as the book’s plot goes, it takes a while to be really pulled in, but by the book’s final pages, the team’s dynamic and their new, troubling position had me eating out of Children’s Crusade’s hand.  While this issue in itself wasn’t the fastest or most engaging overall, in itself, I feel sure that this series as a whole, and most likely every issue after this one, will be awesome and of the standard we were expecting.  By the end of the book, I really, really wanted more and it wasn’t just due to the massive cliffhanger at the end.