Avengers Academy #39 Review
It’s time for a graduation at Avengers Academy!
Avengers Academy #39
It’s the end of a very tough year for the students of Avengers Academy. Finesse and X-23 still have some issues to work out with Finesse using X-23 to kill Jeremy Briggs. Even though X-23 forgives Finesse, she tells her that they can no longer be friends. Finesse, now alone, goes for a walk and finds others in happy embrace of others and finds unexpected support from Quicksilver who tells her that her life will only get better from this point forward. Even Striker has found a chance to spread his wings and find someone as he accompanies a fan as his date to the prom. As graduation day arrives, Hank Pym rewards the students with security clearance cards just like the ones Avengers carries and asks them to start giving back to the world and use their powers for the greater good as they continue their journey toward becoming full Avengers.
This was an issue I never wanted to see. I didn’t want this series to come to an end. It was series like Avengers Academy and Journey Into Mystery that make comics so much fun for me. Sure, I love my big time AvX and Captain America and Avengers comics, but sometimes these smaller stories about characters from writers like Christos Gage that are far more more relatable and, at times, personal. We will be seeing these characters down the line, but without Gage at the controls, I’m not sure it will be quite the same as it was.
As for this final issue, it most definitely was one of the more personal issues as we get to see how each character is spending their last hours as part of this institution. While those like Hazmat, Mettle, and Striker find some sense of happiness at the end of their rainbows, the two characters we focus on a bit more have always been the more interesting two people in this series – Finesse and Veil. For Finesse, we get a little bit of mystery after the commencement as she immediately uses her security clearance for a reason we don’t exactly get to see… For now. When it comes to Maddie’s story, she’s got a different road now. She’s getting the chance to live a normal life, but finally able to stand up for herself in a great little bookend to how we first see her all the way back in the very first issue.
A big part of why I liked this series goes beyond how much I positively loved Christos Gage’s work. It’s been the art of each issue. Tom Grummett is definitely one who really knew how to make this book what it needed to be visually. His characters in each of his issues, this one included, are perfectly portrayed. I didn’t just need to know these characters were young people. I could always see it. That seems like a weird pat on the back, but you have no idea how difficult that is to pull off without making these characters too sexy or too overly muscled. It’s not an easy thing to sell young characters in comics and Grummett (along with all the other contributing artists in this series) has always pulled it off.
So we say goodbye to another series. This one is going to be one of the most missed.
A COMIC BOOK BLOG RATING
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Personal while happy at the same time. Solid series from start to finish in both art and story with this issue certainly perfectly among the whole. | Not much negative to say outside the obvious – there are no more Avengers Academy comics for the foreseeable future. |
| Rating |
1 Comment
Loved it. Definately going to miss this series and the characters. And I fear for their future. I don’t want them pointlessly slaughtered in Arena, all of their development gone to waste. I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but I’m scared.