Hulkling (and I love the character but what a stupid name!) doesn’t have parents and is living with his boyfriend Wiccan and his family who’re super-cool with the setup and their kid’s sexuality. The Young Avengers are: Wiccan and his boyfriend Hulkling, Kate Bishop/Hawkeye and her boyfriend Marvel Boy, Kid Loki, and Ms America. Part of this success is how well Kieron Gillen’s captured what it feels like to be a teenager – turbulent mood swings both up and down, along with the exciting potential of the future, and the screw-it-all attitude that powers you through anything.

Nobody wants to be Jar Jar Binks or kid Anakin, they want to be Obi-Wan! Young Avengers somehow subverts that rule by making their teen characters the characters teens – and adults! - would want to be. You know how certain stories feature kids or teens in them because the storyteller somehow thinks that kids/teens won’t identify with the grown-up heroes and need someone relatable? That’s generally bogus – nobody wants to be Tom Cruise’s whiny kids in War of the Worlds, they want to be Tom Cruise. Thanks for giving me the nudge I needed to go ahead and track this one down, Sesana. The plot is great, but the genius lies in the dialogue, in the interactions, the reactions, and the inner thoughts of the characters. Now, his real mother died, so Wiccan snatches this one from her dimension right before she would have been killed.Īs in, a parasite who's been waiting for someone like Wiccan to fuck up, and let her in the door.Īnd now she's gonna suck the life out of them.and their friends. So Wiccan wants to make his boyfriend, Hulkling, feel a little less alone in the world, and casts a spell to bring his mother to him from an alternate reality. In fact, if I have another kid, I've decided to name it Loki. Is he good? Is he bad? Or is he just as confused as we are? It's funny, smart, touching, and full of action.

Style > Substance is nothing short of complete awesomeness. However, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why my friends were rating this one so highly.

Volume 2 didn't make me stand up and cheer (possibly because I was missing relevant plot points), but it wasn't awful, either. 2: Alternative Culture, before I read this one. Because I'm me, and my library likes to order books is some wonky order, I had to read Young Avengers, Vol.

Young Avengers, Vol. 3 by Kieron Gillen