getting up to date with academy

[owene]

Got upto date with this yesterday, just can't seem to find the time for even the handful of new books I read.

And it was really great, at the start I found it a really well written and drawn book with a nice LSH feel (McKone's influence mainly) and I liked what it did to the tutors, none of whom were really favourites but i was doubtful if it or I would stick around long enough to care about the kids.

It's very hard for new characters to make enough of an impact on me these days for me to think they will matter. The slow pace of waiting a month for another 20 pages on 5 or 6 new characters means you rarely ever get to actually know them that much.

But it's worked, I really like the mix of characters and they all actually seem unlike things I've seen before. I really like Veil even if she keeps making stupid choices and the less likeable characters are well developed too. It gives them real issues without seeming preachy or without them making many right choices or even learning from their mistakes and it develops a bunch of badly served long time characters at the same time.
Gage has done a great job of mixing in older characters and using their history from the fairly recent period when I wasn't reading without making me just recoil going 'why the hell would .... do that, that doesn't make sense' which has been my usual reaction to the events of the last decade. It's made me feel that all those characters are still out there in a usable form for a good writer who actually wants to build on what has come before.

Which makes it seem like an old fogeys book, a respite from the faults of the current MU but it's not really, it's a vital vibrant book starting something new from the ground up. I'm really enjoying it.

And he gets to play with the avengers big guns next issue

[starfoxxx]

Yes, Academy is one of the 3-4 books on my pull-list these days, and Gage is doing a nice job. I like Veil, too. I hope Gage keeps her a some-what "ditzy" character. It seems like writers these days are reluctant to write a female as dumb, but why not? There's plenty of dumb male characters.

<Spoiler Alert>

The latest news from Academy concerns the return of Janet/Wasp.

I think it would be great if Gage used Academy to right all the stuff Bendis screwed up! Ha!

(oh, i guess he's STILL screwing with the Avengers, but from what I hear/read BMB rarely includes any Avengers in his books)

I was reviewing Avengers Academy pretty regularly, but I felt not alot of AA was reading it. Maybe I'll get back to it next issue---esp. if the "resurrection" is for real. I hope so.

[Shiryu]

Uhm, judging from the teaser at the very end of last issue



SPOILER


things may not go as planned ^^




BIGGER SPOILER


It looks like Korvac comes back instead of Wasp!

[owene]

spoilers




Another good issue, a strange one in that I really enjoyed it despite not being all that interested in the Korvac saga and kind of hoping that Pym had found the Wasp. I'm also not that sure about the kids learning about their older selves, basing stuff on the future of new characters who only one writer cares about never seems a good idea. There also seems to be the large possibility of a fanficy 'thor, Iron Man and Dr strange have all failed but Veil will save the day' mary sue ending.

so while on paper I wasn't sure about large aspects of the issue I still really enjoyed reading it, the interaction between the kids was good, the slightly critical look at the motivation of the characters in the korvac saga (which i've never been that big a fan of, although paradoxically this story made me want to go back to it) suggested someone who had actually read the back issues and thought about them which feels quite rare and the art was fine

I would have liked to see gage get a bit more to do with Thor and co but they will still be around next issue