Yes, the cast have superpowers, but they’re more interested in each other than hunting down super-villains, and pretty uninhibited about it. McKelvie characterises the cast as much as Gillen, through posture, gesture and expression, and makes excellent use of double page spreads. Gillen’s previously most acclaimed work has been with Jamie McKelvie on board for the art, and even if you’re familiar with his work and expect good things you’re still likely to be impressed. In the UK, the team would now all be of legal drinking age, but as this set in the USA the final party sequence is strictly alcohol free. They go dimension-hopping, are separated, learn about life and each other, and if not quite back at home in time for tea, then their aftermath party settles all outstanding questions. This gesture initiated with the best of intentions, it transpires, was not the most advisable course of action, and the ensuing complications it generates occupy the team for most of the book. He’s upfront pretty well from his introduction to the team, yet time after time he manages to surprise both readers and other cast members.Īlthough previously available as three volumes, this incarnation of Young Avengers is pretty well a single continued story with coda, set in motion when Wiccan scours alternate dimensions to find one in which his partner’s mother hasn’t died.

Gillen’s characterisation of Loki has no element of deceit. Motivating everything, though, is Loki, now very young indeed and claiming to be reformed and repentant of past deeds. He’s no longer a mutant, but retains memories of everything learned while he was, so buttressing a formidable intellect. To the team as previously constituted writer Gillen adds disgraced former proper Avenger Noh-Varr, powerhouse Miss America, visiting from another dimension, and, later, Prodigy. They’d taken a collective decision to hang up the spandex, but some of them find it’s in their blood, and are furtively out there fighting crime at night. These are young superheroes, conflicted and confused after one of their number didn’t make it to the end of The Children’s Crusade (but don’t worry, they’re better, just not here). The secret, though, is that Kieron Gillen all-but dispenses with the Avengers aspect of the title to concentrate on the remainder. Yet the concept of Young Avengers is so threadbare, but for the second time, and under a different creative team, it’s proved that these characters have a life beyond their unpromising title.

If only all comics were this engaging and inventive.

Young Avengers, Vol. 3 by Kieron Gillen