Avengers Academy #22 Review

It’s a Re-Shat-Gen-Hero epic guest-starring Magneto?!?

Avengers Academy #22

Hank Pym is working furiously to find out who “killed” Jocasta at the end of last issue.  Due to a unique electro-magnetic signature in the wound, he gets some help from the Master of Magnetism, Magneto.  Accompanied by Cyclops and Emma Frost, the trio seem to be all business until Quicksilver plays his daddy issues card.  Magneto and Quicksilver argue about sanity, whose side they are on and ultimately who was right to do which thing.  Believing Magneto is bullying Pietro, Reptil and Finesse crash the party and start an all out fight.  It’s brought to an end and Magneto continues his work.  In the end, Finesse tells Quicksilver that she no longer wants him to teach her how to be more like Magneto, but to be more like him instead while the two friends (if that can even be the word for them) play a game of tennis.

Let’s start with what I enjoyed about the issue.  I loved Hawkeye’s concern over mind control.  He refreshes everyone’s minds that Magneto once used a whammy to get people to do evil things and when Pym tries to put the kibosh on those concerns, Hawkeye decides to have an impromptu class on resisting mind control for “no particular reason”.  When all hell breaks loose, Hawkeye brings up the mind control issue again.  A funny and well played quirk in a character we’ve always known to be funny in a quirky way.  Hat’s off to Christos Gage for thinking to do this.  I also very much liked Finesse’s growing friendship with Pietro.  Yes, the poor guy had a rough childhood.  He was used by Magneto to be a villain when it really wasn’t what he was.  He’s been bullied by Mags, and can never really shake that stain of who his father is.  There seems to be a really nice rallying happening when anyone seems to mess with anyone else at the academy.  I also liked that Magneto played a card of his own by giving Finesse a secret that, while may not be true, at least showed that he’s not the man he once was and may really be trying to play it straight now.

Also, not being a huge fan of Cyclops, I loved that he was played as a total asshole.  He’s far more militant and jerky than I can ever remember him being (granted, I don’t have a great deal of history with the character), and when Hank tries to reach out to him with the idea of getting his kids and the X-kids under Cyke’s watchful eye together to play some baseball or something (freaking loved those old East Coast-West Coast baseball games in the Avengers and West Coast Avengers annuals of the 80s), Cyke treats Hank like a child.  Oooh, I dislike Cyclops for that!

My major problem with this book is that we don’t find out who killed Jocasta.  So many possibilities were thrown out on the table – Ultron, infiltrator, traitor among the students – but none of them panned out.  Yeah, the electromagnetic whatsamajigger left behind was revealed to be extra-dimensional, but we get no satisfaction as to even a hint of who it likely is.  While I’m betting on Ultron, the issue ends giving us no further information than before.  While it does serve as a nice sidebar type of story for Finesse and Quicksilver, the issue accomplishes very little and sputters a bit outside of a battle between Avengers and X-Men.  When issue #23 comes out in a few weeks, we’re going to be no further along in the mystery than we were on page 1 of this issue.  That’s a little frustrating.

As much as I try to not say this, this is a rare miss in my book for Christos Gage.  He still produces a lot for me to enjoy, and Sean Chen’s art is fun and even exciting at times, but the story ends up being more circular when it would have been nice to be more linear.

Tags: Avengers Academy Avengers Comics Books Avengers Reviews Christos Gage