Avengers Academy #31 Review
From the mouths of babes comes resolution to the imprisonment of Scott Summers’ X-kids. Check out our review of Avengers Academy #31!
Avengers Academy #31
Sebastian Shaw is free and he’s approached the collected group of the Avengers Academy students and the X-Men students brought here at the beginning of the Avengers Vs. X-Men war. Shaw tells the Avengers Academy kids that he has no issue with them as long as they stay out of his way. This has everyone believing he is targeting the X-students. This only intensifies when Dr. Rao contacts Hazmat to tell her she believes Shaw plans to murder them. A fight breaks out, but it is soon discovered that Shaw isn’t wanting to kill anyone (especially children), he only wishes to help the X-students to escape. Soon people start to come to their senses that holding them at the academy is probably not right. Tigra convinces everyone to get into a staged fight to allow the X-students to win and get their freedom. The kids have realized that while they are on opposite sides of the fence, they are not enemies and a future generation of Avengers and X-Men may have found a way through the struggles that the adults haven’t learned yet.
The entire Avengers Vs. X-Men story has been full of misguided beliefs of what the Phoenix Force’s true goal is, hurt feelings, angry words, and face punches, but Christos Gage has taken his first two issues of the unavoidable tie-in and decided to do something different. Yeah each of the things int he previous sentence’s things exist in these Avengers Academy books, but he uses his unique cast of characters in a way that shows they aren’t like their mentors. In fact, while some recognize themselves as Avengers or X-Men is fairly inconsequential even to the characters themselves. Instead, they are all kids who don’t see the emblem the other side is wearing but seeing them as something of equals to a certain extent.
The higher concept here is that war is an old man’s game. The younger kids play at it and tend to see things in a much more black and white way, but somewhere in between childhood and adulthood, teenagers tend to live in the gray areas of the world. That’s the time in which they are more open to different people and different ideals and ultimately decide for themselves how they may feel about issues of race, or sexuality, or of brutality (which naturally leads to war). In a couple issues, Avengers Academy flirts with that higher concept. One group of kids don’t look at the other in terms of what’s going on in the war. They look at the situations right in their faces. One group is told to keep the other on site. The other group doesn’t think that’s fair. It’s not like either side is chomping at the bit to get involved with the fighting. In the end, a couple students speak volumes about what is the “right thing” to do.
Peppered into the mix is an old villain who shows he really isn’t as bad as people are starting to think he is and a Greek Demigod who plays at being beaten up like a veteran soap opera star.
If you’re already a fan of this particularly interesting group of Avengers Academy players, then it’s no doubt you will enjoy these last two issues quite a bit. You have the kids continuing to learn about what’s right and mature. You have the overarching idea of giving people a second chance at doing some good. You even have a good deal of comedy from Hercules. All of it is nicely illustrated by Tom Grummett and is one of the few books on the shelves that entertains with each and every issue.
A COMIC BOOK BLOG RATING
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Well scripted and well drawn. Solid entry that entertains from start to finish and gives Sebastian Shaw a new persona that works. You even have a happy ending. | Very little to complain about. This book is just one of the most consistent mainstream series out there. |
| Rating |
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