"Young Avengers: Dark Reign"

                The following is a review of the graphic novel “Young Avengers: Dark Reign” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

                The Young Avengers are a group of teenagers united by the Avengers Failsafe Program, a protocol designed to assemble the next wave of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. The team consists of Eli Bradley/Patriot, Billy Kaplan/Wiccan, Teddy Altman/Hulkling, Kate Bishop/Hawkeye, Cassie Lang/Stature, Tommy Shepherd/Speed, and Vision. After the destruction of Stamford, Connecticut in a televised superhuman battle, the Superhuman Registration Act was passed, that required anyone possessing paranormal abilities to register with the government, divulge their true identities to the authorities and submit to training and sanctioning in the manner of federal agents. Anyone with superpowers who refuses to register is now considered a criminal. Some heroes, led by Tony Stark/Iron Man, see this as a reasonable request. Steve Rogers/Captain America leads an underground movement in resistance to the Act. The Young Avengers were recruited to Cap’s team. In California, there was another team of superhuman teenagers, the Runaways, who had discovered their parents were a group of supervillains known as the Pride and had stolen weapons and resources from their parents, then ran away from home, and eventually went on to defeat their parents, who chose not to take a side in the superhero Civil War and instead tried to fly under the radar. Their team consists of Nico Minoru, Chase Stein, Molly Hayes, Victor Mancha, Karolina Dean, Xavin and Old Lace. While at a Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles, the Runaways witnessed a fight between the supervillain Flag Smasher and a group of government Cape Killers and stepped in to defeat Flag Smasher, but were then forced to flee from the Cape Killers, and during their escape, Victor was badly injured. The battle made the news all the way in New York on a station the Young Avengers were monitoring. Vision received a painful feedback watching Victor’s injury. The Young Avengers decided they wanted to help, and asked Captain America if they could go to L.A., but Cap told them no. The Young Avengers went behind Cap’s back and stole a Quinjet to fly to L.A. Molly, who had been upset by Chase and had gone outside the Runaways’ hideout, encountered the Young Avengers. Molly had a misunderstanding with the Young Avengers and attacked them, but Molly was defeated. The Young Avengers brought Molly back to the Runaways’ hideout, where Vision and Victor had an adverse reaction to being in proximity to each other. Meanwhile, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill visited the Supervillain prison the Cube, where she asked the Warden for an asset to find the Runaways. The Warden offered the Kree super-soldier Noh-Varr/Mavel Boy, who specialized in tracking, particularly since one of the members of the Runaways, Xavin, was a Skrull. The Young Avengers and the Runaways had a fight until Patriot and Nico were able to talk and the Runaways realized they were all on the same side. They discovered that because both Vision and Victor were built by the android Ultron, the two had a connection. Noh-Varr found the two teenage teams and attacked them. During the fight, Vision’s arm was detached in Noh-Varr’s chest, and Xavin, Karolina, Wiccan and Hulkling were captured during Noh-Varr’s extraction and brought to the Cube, where the Warden performed experiments on Hulkling, interested in his mixture of Kree/Skrull DNA. The two teenage superhero teams had to team up to infiltrate the Cube and rescue their abducted teammates.

Following the Civil War, which Iron Man’s team won, Captain America surrendered and was assassinated. Iron Man was promoted to Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Stature decided to register and join Iron Man’s Fifty-State Initiative and submitted to training at Camp Hammond, while the rest of the Young Avengers continued on fighting crime without Stature, despite their outlaw status. Patriot witnessed Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier leaving his grandparents’ home, and curious to find out what the conversation was about, enlisted Wiccan and Hawkeye to help track him down. Patriot, Hawkeye, and Winter Soldier had a team-up against Advanced Idea Mechanics, then Winter Soldier told Patriot about the legacy of the superhero name “Patriot.” Hulkling found out his father, Mar-Vell/Captain Marvel, had returned from the dead and decided to meet with him and tell Captain Marvel about their familial relationship. Wiccan and Speed went looking for the woman they believed to be their mother Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, who had disappeared following the House of M. In Cresskill, New Jersey, they encountered the villain Master Pandemonium, who gave them the answers they sought. Vision, who was still trying to sort out having the brainwave patterns of both the android Avenger Vision and the Young Avenger Nathaniel Richards/the future Kang the Conqueror, sought out Stature, whom Nathaniel had feelings for when he was a human. While Vision and Stature talked, they were attacked by A.I.M. and had to team up to defeat the villains, and the two were left to sort out their feelings. Cassie was in a battle against the supervillain the Growing Man. Though she defeated him, her stepfather Blake was injured and hospitalized, fighting for his life. Cassie felt horrible guilt, and the Young Avengers had to support her through it. Hawkeye and Patriot went on a non-date, which was interrupted by Clint Barton/Ronin, the former Hawkeye. He challenged her and won, taking back both his name and his bow. Kate and Speed decided to break into the Secret Avengers’ hideout so Kate could steal Clint’s bow back.

The Skrulls initiated a Secret Invasion of Earth, which a group of Skrull religious fanatics believed belonged to them due to a prophecy after the loss of the Skrull homeworld. Skrull Commander Chrell had been tasked with killing the Skrull Prince, Dorrek VIII, A.K.A. Theodore Altman/Hulkling. The Runaways were in New York with their new member Klara, whom they had rescued from the year 1907, when the Skrulls attacked Manhattan. Xavin turned against his/her team and knocked the Runaways out. Nico and Victor woke up and were able to escape with their unconscious teammates. The Young Avengers and the Fifty-State Initiative kids also fought the Skrulls. Xavin decided to try to help Hulkling escape from the Skrulls sent to kill Hulkling, despite having been trained to kill Hulkling. Wiccan and Speed joined up with Xavin and Hulkling. They were attacked by Skrull agent X’iv but managed to escape. The Runaways revived and saw the Young Avengers were in trouble. X’iv captured Speed and Wiccan, and Chrell captured the Runaways, but they were able to break free. The two teenage teams had to join forces again to protect Hulking and survive the Skrull Secret Invasion.

                Earth’s superhumans were able to defeat the Skrulls, and former supervillain Norman Osborn shot and killed the Skrull Queen, but Tony Stark was blamed for failing to stop the infiltration and Osborn was selected to replace Stark and S.H.I.E.L.D. became H.A.M.M.E.R. and Osborn became Iron Patriot and the leader of the “Dark Avengers.” A new team of young vigilantes, Enchantress, Executioner, Melter, Big Zero, Egghead and Coat of Arms were going around New York City, fighting crime and calling themselves the Young Avengers. Their methods of fighting crime were extreme. They had a base in the Invisible Manor in Central Park. The real Young Avengers, using Wiccan’s magic, found the imposters, and the two teams fought. Team leaders Patriot and Melter began to talk, and Enchantress ended the fight. Patriot told the imposters if they wanted to be Young Avengers, they had to earn the name and they would watch them and see if they deserved to be called “Young Avengers.” Executioner was getting advice from his mother, who, unbeknownst to him, was actually the supervillain Princess Python. Executioner also figured out Hawkeye’s secret identity of Kate Bishop and tried to use this information to force his way onto the team. The Young Avengers staged a fight and had Kate Bishop with Executioner in public and Vision impersonated Hawkeye so as to cast doubt on Kate’s secret identity. The Young Avengers decided to accept Coat of Arms and Enchantress onto their team on a provisional basis, while the rest of the other team had to take a new name. Melter did not take this well and contacted Norman Osborn. Osborn immediately planned to take advantage of the youths. Hawkeye informed Executioner his mother was a supervillain, and he put her out of his life permanently. Vision received a download from Egghead, revealing Enchantress’ connection with Norse Goddess/supervillain Loki, and Enchantress was thrown off the Young Avengers. In revenge, the youths teamed up with Osborn’s Dark Avengers and fought with the Young Avengers in a battle to decide just what makes one worthy of the name “Avenger.”

                Osborn, intent of invading the city of Asgard floating over Broxton, Oklahoma, fabricated a tragedy reminiscent of the explosion that ignited the superhero Civil War. Blaming the Asgardian, Osborn began a mad Siege of their city that resulted in its fall and destruction. Patriot and Hawkeye were buried under rubble, while Wiccan, Speed and Hulkling were left to battle the Wrecking Crew.

                Okay, so now that we have an overview of the plotlines handled, let’s get on to my personal part of this review. So, the first thing we’re going to discuss is my personal feelings about this book. What I’m going to start with is that I genuinely loved this book. I thought it was fantastic. I found the stories to be exciting, fun, well-written, engaging, and interesting. I enjoyed reading all of them. I will say going in I was a little skeptical. I was predicting this to be an editorial nightmare. What I mean by this is the content. At the times of the original publication, between 2006-2010, there were no ongoing Young Avengers series, so this volume is made up entirely of four limited series and a one-shot. This book also crosses through four events, Civil War, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, and Siege. I was expecting a total mess as Epic Collections focus on characters rather than events, so this only includes the Young Avengers issues of these four events. For the most part, the stories were self-contained. They generally fit into the events but were mostly their own separate stories that were self-explanatory and didn’t usually require mastery-level knowledge of the events to understand the stories contained in this book. The one exception is Siege, which continues from the starting point of Siege and leaves off with “Continued in Siege.” Having been out of touch with the comics during the times after Civil War, most of this was new content for me. I have read Secret Invasion, but I have not totally mastered the storyline. However, I found this book to be relatively navigable, despite jumping between events and not having a linear storyline. I just felt like not having read Siege was truly detrimental to my enjoyment of this book, but it wasn’t too much of a hurt. But I’m getting totally ahead of myself here. Let’s talk about what I liked. I thought their team-ups with the Runaways were great, the two teams were compatible and worked together well, their conflicts and dynamics and their resolution together were absolutely perfect. Both teams having Skrull team members made for an excellent pairing between the two teams, and Vision and Victor both being the “children” of Ultron made for a great connection. As some of you know, Civil War is one of my favorite comic storylines, so watching the teenage heroes trying to make it through the War was entertaining for me. I think my favorite series in this book was “Young Avengers Presents,” it was an opportunity to examine each character individually and I found it to be fascinating to read. Dark Reign was interesting as well, seeing a new team parallel to the Young Avengers was enjoyable, comparable to Dark Avengers, which I have previously read and enjoyed, so reading the “Young Masters” storyline was entertaining. Siege was the one part I had a slight problem with as I felt like it really didn’t do much in the way of a story. It essentially was a filler, and that’s what it felt like, and that was detrimental to my enjoyment of this book. It was just a way to put the Young Avengers into Siege, and it really didn’t feel necessary. It was mostly Patriot and Hawkeye trapped in rubble, which really isn’t entertaining, and even Wiccan, Speed and Hulkling battling the Wrecking Crew felt dull. It was my least favorite story in the book. But I guess that’s all you can expect out of a one-shot. I think the character I enjoyed reading the most in this book was Stature. She was very complex and conflicted. I liked watching her change from the Young Avengers to the Fifty-State Initiative back to the Young Avengers. I especially enjoyed her “Young Avengers Presents” issue where she was dealing with the guilt of almost killing her stepfather. I loved the depth of character development that she went through, and I felt she was the character to watch in this graphic novel. The romances also enhanced the storylines as well, particularly Patriot and Hawkeye’s will-they-won’t-they? Vision’s conflict and trying to identify as Jonas was also interesting to read, and his relationship with Stature made for an interesting issue. I also liked the theme of family, both biological and as a team, I found the emotional depth between the characters to be very moving. I feel like this book had great writers, and it sure had a lot of them, but I feel like all of them did an exceptional job working with the stories they got. What truly surprised me about this book was the art. This book has a plethora of artists, and I feel like every single one of them actually drew visually appealing artwork. As many of my previous readers know, sometimes books with one artist meet my dismay, but a book with nine different artists seems likely that there would be an artist I would take umbrage with. Alas, every artist in this book impressed me. I found all the art to be brilliant. I think the last thing I would like to talk about is the title. Modern Era Epic Collections have to use titles that will sell. Unfortunately for me, sometimes that feels like a misnomer, and I really do not like that. So, the editors of this book went with “Dark Reign.” This book was comprised of four limited series and one one-shot and carried through four events. The longest series in this book was “Young Avengers Presents” which was six issues, each one being standalone. The longest storyline in this book was “Dark Reign” which lasted for five issues. So, I am compelled to believe that “Dark Reign” is an appropriate title for this book. New Avengers has already taken “Civil War” and plans to take “Secret Invasion” anyway, so there really isn’t a better title that they can choose for this book without causing a redundancy, and I do not believe Marvel wishes to cause that, so this title works. Even Dark Avengers was given the title “Osborn’s Reign,” so the title wasn’t used before. All-in-all, I thought this book was superlative and an excellent effort by the writers and artists at Marvel from the time periods. Despite not having an ongoing series and no linearity and spanning over the course of five years, this book still worked and was extremely cohesive. It was entertaining and had it all: action, drama, humor, and romance, pretty much everything you could ask for in a comic book. Yes, there was the one flaw of Siege, but I feel like the rest of the book mostly made up for that, and I thought this book was great.

                Next up on our agenda, we’re going to talk about accessibility. Now, I know I’ve been over this over six dozen times at this point, but I know that I always have new readers every time I make a post, so I have to explain myself each and every time, so here we go. Some of my new readers may not get what I mean when I use the word “accessibility.” So, allow me to explain myself yet again. When I say “accessibility,” I mean is this a book that a person who has never heard of the Young Avengers before can pick up, read this book, and understand what they’ve read. I feel like this book borders on the line of being extremely inaccessible and having a slight sense of accessibility at the same time. I already explained the fact that this book crosses over into four events. Now, if you’ve never read a Marvel comic book before in your entire life, I will tell you not to read this book. Yes, it does feature blurbs that partially explain the story, but it’s just not enough for someone who has no experience with the Marvel Universe to understand. I don’t care if you’ve seen every Marvel movie, cartoon, and television series, and played every Marvel video game, it’s just not going to be enough to prepare you to read this book. However, the stories are all standalone from the event with the exception of Siege, so they touch on the event without actually following the main story of the event, rather just feeling like another Young Avengers story than part of an event, with the exception of Siege, so there is the possibility of being able to understand this book. That said, I feel like this book requires extensive background knowledge of Marvel to completely be understood, and even I didn’t fully understand Siege, especially since it ends with “Continued in Siege,” so you’re not even getting a complete story in this book. This book is definitely not for Marvel beginners, it should not be the first book you pick up if you’re trying to get into Marvel Comics.

                Okay, I’ve been blathering on for a very long time at this point, I feel like we’re at the junction of when I should move on with this review and just get to the moment we’ve all been waiting for when we started with this review, and that would be my numeric score of this graphic novel. My scoring system is extremely simple. I score on a scale of one through ten. One is the score I reserve for horrible pieces of trash books that should be removed from the shelves, and have every copy be destroyed, and then never have that book be reprinted again. Ten is a score that means this book is perfection and every copy should be bought off the shelves, read multiple times, and be reprinted every year because more people need to buy this book. Both one and ten are my rarest scores. Very rarely do I find a book to be so bad that it should be considered a one, I can usually find something in a book to boost the score to a two or a three. Likewise, ten is reserved for perfection, and a book very rarely meets my standards of perfection. Usually when I write a review, the best score a book can usually hope for is a nine, I’m usually going to automatically deduct one point for some reason. I essentially score on how good the narrations of the graphic novel are. I usually deduct points for factors such as disliking art, as this is a graphic novel after all, and that has to be taken into account when reviewing this book, as well as grievances with stories, and title misnomers. Now, this book had a relatively good selection of narratives, but there was one issue I did find a flaw with. As it was, I don’t feel that this book was perfection. But the art was astonishing, so I have no reason to deduct points for that, that even boosts the score. And I have no problem with the title. So, I’m taking everything about this book into consideration to do my score. I’m taking the entirety of this book, story, art, and title, throwing them all into my metaphorical blender that I save for mixing book review smoothies in. I’m going to turn it on now and blend it until the mixture is completely liquid. Then I’m going to grab a nice cup, empty my blender into the cup and I’m going to look at this score. And when I look at this score, it’s… an eight! That’s actually an exceptionally good score. I found very few problems with my enjoyment while reading this book. I generally found this to be a delightful read and visually stunning. The efforts of the writers and artists were excellent, and I feel like they did an extremely commendable job working with what they had to work with in the Marvel Universe at the time they were producing the issues contained in this graphic novel.

                Wow, I’ve been going on a long time, you’re probably getting really bored with me, so I think it’s time to move on to the final topic we have to discuss in one of my Tim Cubbin reviews, and that would be the recommendation. Now, when I do the recommendation segment of my review, I always answer two questions. The first question is, do I, Tim Cubbin, personally recommend this book to anyone who I tell about this book? The second question is, regardless of the answer of question number one, who would I recommend this book to, or who would I say is the target audience, or who should be reading this book? So, I think the answer to the first question is probably relatively obvious, but I have to officially answer it anyway. Yes, this book gets my personal recommendation. Now, moving on to question number two, I feel like the perfect audiences for this graphic novel would be youths or LGBTQIA+ individuals. This book has characters that represent these identities, and I feel like reading this book if you fall into one of both of those categories would be extremely empowering as you can easily find characters in this graphic novel that you can identify with. Of course this book also has characters from other Marvel media that’s out there, if you’re a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and know characters such as Kate Bishop/Hawkeye from “Hawkeye,” or Billy Kaplan/Wiccan from “Agatha All Along,” or Cassie Lang from “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” or Eli Bradley from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, ”or Vision from “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” or if you watched “Runaways” on Hulu, you’ll find characters in this book you’ll enjoy reading the exploits of. If you’ve ever read any comics of “Young Avengers” before and had any level of enjoyment in them, this book is definitely for you. If you’re a fan of any of the events in this book, Civil War, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, or Siege, I would absolutely recommend picking up this book and giving it a read as it expands those stories. And if you’re just a diehard Marvel fan like me, I’d tell you to add this book to your collection as well, I feel this book would be a welcome addition.

                Well, I’d say we’re up to the point where I’ll begin signing off. There’s still a few more things I have to say before I log off. First off, I’ve been doing this blog for almost five years now and have done over 160 posts. I’ve done over six dozen book reviews just like this one, so if you liked this one, feel free to check out more of timcubbin.blogspot.com for more, even look up “Young Avengers: Not What You Think” if you want more Young Avengers content. I’ve also written short stories, poetry, essays, articles, and editorials, so there’s plenty of other types of content for you to see here too. I post on a very frequent basis, I collect every Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection and Ultimate Epic Collection as soon as I can after their release and if possible, throw up a review on this blog just for all of you guys to check out. At the moment, I just got a new book about an hour ago, so you can expect to see a review of that within the next two weeks, this I actually a Vol. 3, so I have to reread Vols. 1 and 2 first, then read the new collection, then I need to find a day when I’m free to sit down and write a review for you guys, so that might not be for a little bit, but it should definitely be sometime during the following week from my posting of this review, so keep checking out timcubbin.blogspot.com until it’s ready. I’m going to keep posting on this blog for as long as I can, so that’s going to be until I go blind, lose control of my hands, or pass away, so expect this blog to keep going on for quite some time, as I’m still only thirty-seven and still have plenty of life left in me. If you think this looks extremely professional, it’s because I have a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in journalism but due to life circumstances have been unable to pursue it as an actual career, but I keep this blog going anyway just to honor my years of sacrifice in college. So, I guess that’s really all there is to be said at this point. I’ll be back soon, but until then, Tim Cubbin… out!