Avengers Academy is the school kids title of the Avengers. It often involves an Avenger mentoring the education of gifted teenagers leading to arcs involving B level heroes and the loss of innocence. There are a total of ten kids in this issue and three further bad guys! This is the second part of an arc revolving around the recent closure of the school (an AvX tie in) and an offer of normality from a billionaire industrialist. It’s a classic storyline, which allows heroes to question their respective powers, and how their lives would be better off without them. Of course it is never that simple and the ulterior motives of the super intelligent bad guy are revealed.
Christos Cage has written a number of tie in titles to main blockbuster storylines. Recently he has become well know for this book and also X-Men Legacy. Both titles have been strong with regard to personal tragedy and relationships and I personally have loved his work on Legacy. This issue is a difficult one as there are three group conversations going on at similar times. Each revolving around different aspects of having powers; those that want them back, those that are happy to leave them gone and those that are involved in the grand evil scheme. On the whole it is written well but background knowledge of the characters is necessary to understand their reactions. These separate sets of dialogue are finely balanced and reach differing conclusions just enough to keep the reader satisfied.
The artwork is reasonable especially considering the lack of action and heavy dialogue. The inking is a little thick, which lends to the few action panels but makes facial expression difficult to appreciate. This would be the most important feature of this book and it falls short. On the whole this is a second of four parts book and needs to make the transition from beginning to developing the end of the arc, which it does well. I am hoping the next two parts have more action and a revealing plot.
Reasonable 7.5/10
House Of Flying Scalpels 