Avengers Academy: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1

Avengers Academy (Collected Editions) #1/3

by Christos Gage, Paul Tobin (Writer), Jeff Parker (Writer)

Norman Osborn subjected six superhuman teenagers - Veil, Finesse, Mettle, Hazmat, Reptil and Striker - to torturous training to mold them in his image. Now, they've been rescued by Hank Pym and his fellow instructors - Tigra, Justice, Speedball and Quicksilver - and enrolled into Avengers Academy! They've been told that they're the most promising heroes of the new generation - but the shocking truth is that they may be the most deadly future threats to the Marvel Universe! Now, it's up to each of the Academy students to decide whether they will join the ranks of Earth's Mightiest - or become the villains of tomorrow. So how will they react when they meet the scared-straight Thunderbolts, or face foes including the Hood, Taskmaster and Korvac?

COLLECTING: AVENGERS ACADEMY 1-12, AVENGERS ACADEMY GIANT-SIZE 1, THUNDERBOLTS (1997) 147, MATERIAL FROM ENTER THE HEROIC AGE 1

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Superheroes, Graphic Novels, Young Adult, Fiction, Comic Book

400 pages, Paperback

Published February 27, 2018

About the author

Chris N. Gage is a writer for comic books and television.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can pretty much think of this as an extension of Avengers: The Initiative. Most of the same teachers are involved. After Dark Reign, it's discovered that Norman Osborn tortured and experimented these kids to bring out their powers. They are all in danger of breaking bad. Each issue focuses on a different student revealing their backstory and personality. I like Mike McKone's art and character designs quite a bit. I also like Gage's focus on character over fights.

This complete collection has a couple of things not in the original smaller collections, an issue of Thunderbolts that is a flipside issue to issue #3 where they take a field trip to The Raft. Also included is Avengers Academy Giant-Size #1 where the kids team up with the Young Allies to escape from Arcade's Murderworld.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Avengers Academy: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1 is full of world building, team dynamics, heroics, rib breaking humour, three-dimensional characters, great art, character development, epic camera angles, break necked paced stunts, cunning, daring do, plot twists, old and new plots, adventure and action! Brilliant and highly recommneded! Crisp high five! Get it when you can! :D

[Emilie]

I liked this follow-up to Norman Osborne's Dark Reign, which I had read enough of that I understood much of this. This takes six teen superbeings, some of whom were tortured quite a lot by Norman Osborne and his scientists, and has some of the Avengers and surviving New Warriors characters trying to train them and guide them to be superheroes instead of villains. Their main teachers had issues of their own, like Hank Pym, justifiably infamous for beating his wife Janet. Hank had had a least a couple of mental breakdowns. Other adult characters here mention that he has severe mental illness, and that he needs to take care of himself.

Tigra has had her share of trauma. Quicksilver has done a number of Heel-Face and Face-Heel turns. Speedball was revealed to have survived the explosive event leading to the Marvel Civil War, and now he's trying to teach others not to make the kinds of mistakes he made.

One of the students has no understanding that other people have feelings, or at least no understanding of how to predict what those feelings might be. She goes to look for a teacher who can give her more explicit and scientific lessons on how to interact with people and how to get some sense of what their feelings might be on various topics. Her teacher's pieces of advice to her are really pretty interesting.

Veil does understand that other people have feelings, but sometimes she's just tactless and/or desperate to accomplish something notable. She gets herself and her teammates in a lot of trouble that way.

Reptil is basically a nice kid, but is trying to deal with a lot of trauma. He's still more stable than most of his teammates usually are. I will note that dinosaurs and humans didn't exist at the same time. Mettle's temperament was pleasant and low-key before his physical changes. He's got the same sort of issues about his appearance and the changes to his body to deal with that The Thing does. Mettle still mostly tries to keep on an even keel emotionally, though, considering.

Other Avengers drop in as special guest teachers. They teach the students some of their skills and share some of their philosophies of life with the students. Amusing line from Steve Rogers to Hank Pym after Steve's interactions with the students, especially Striker: "I've been taking attitude from new recruits since Hawkeye joined." That was in the 1960s in real time. He wasn't too worried about that, but some of the students are obsessed in extremely unhealthy ways with being celebrities. That's a concern for the teachers.

I thought this was a pretty entertaining book.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ended up really enjoying this graphic novel. At first, I wasn't completely sure; I liked the concept: a school for super-powered teens that weren't the best and brightest of their age, but instead, the most likely to become super-villains. That core concept was an intriguing one and actually pretty well-fleshed out, discussing self-fulfilling prophecies and such. However, while I was interested, I had a difficult time connecting with the overall plot and characters. All of them were either new characters or new-to-me. (Even Hank Pym was a slightly different take on the character than I'm used to, as I've only really encountered him in the movies and in older comics.) And the characters existed in two extremes: Immediately likable or immediately unlikable (especially the students). But, as the story continued, I found myself, if not liking all the character, then at least liking what the author was doing with them. In the end, this story was about damaged people coming together in the hopes of becoming better--even if those definitions of "better" varied from character to character. The end result was a moving one in many cases and ultimately about reaching out to others for help. That's a nice message, and it was nice seeing so many broken people--victims hurt in so many different ways with so many different ways of attempting to deal (or not deal) with their issues--work through all of those many dilemmas. And all of that was alongside some pretty solid comic book action, too. So... why not five stars? Well, again, it took a while to connect with the characters, and while I liked the end result, I can't say I reached the same kind of connection that I do with other characters. Plus, some of the artwork didn't hit it with me. Some of the panels looked like those funny faces when you pause a movie at random times. And others--particularly during "deep" conversations--weren't quite as dynamic as they could have been. The emotion just didn't come through as much as I've seen in other comics--which was a shame because this really was an emotionally (and psychologically)-driven story. Still, all of that aside, this was a solid read with an even better concept--and, for the most part, the writer really delivered on that concept's potential. I'll probably keep an eye out for volume two.

[Lincoln · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I enjoyed it. Liked plots, although they were not as arching as I would have liked, but that works better for different people. Characters are well established and interesting. Dialogue was a bit awkward at times, but not enough to detriment the entire story.

[Jdetrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are good comics. Gage has a good hold on the existing characters and has created an interesting and diverse team of new characters as well.