The List #49

Avengers The Childrens Crusade #4
Writer: Allan Heinburg
Artist: Jim Cheung
This issue we have Wiccan as a prisoner of Doom, who's also stolen his powers, and the Young Avengers trying to work out a plan to save him. On their way to invade Castle Doom they are stopped by the Avengers, so that's put on hold. Meanwhile, the Scarlet Witch comes to see Wiccan, curious about what he said, and he summarizes how he and Tommy came to be, then came to not be, how she reacted, and then how they came to be again. Which is going fine, and Wanda is at least listening to him...until they come upon the massive YA, Quicksilver, and Magneto vs. Avengers fight scene. Oh and Wolverine also appears and tries to kill both Wanda and Billy. Yeah, not only is he completely overexposed, now he's also the total bastard of this story. Until he is stopped by, in a fabulous ending twist, by none other than.....!!!

Iron Lad!!!!!

This had better not be an illusion, robot, or clone because I'm so excited for the followup to this twist, especially because I just reread my Young Avengers hardcover last week!! And yeah, that where the issue ends, let the 2 month wait begin.

Conclusion: Despite the bi-monthly release issue, this is probably one of the best out there right now, and honestly, if the creative team needs the two months to create such a high quality, exciting book then that's fine by me.

X-Factor #213
Writer: Peter David
Artist: Valentine De Landro, Pat Davison
As predicted, this issue is full of Darwin angst since now he's got death powers in him, and so he joins Hellion in the begging to be killed department. Unfortunately, the cruel fact is that this completely uninteresting character can't be killed. Anyway, so X-Factor leaves him in Las Vegas so he can sort his shit out, and unfortunately, we have to see exactly what he does during this time next issue.

In other news about unfortunate additions, Pip, the troll the team rescued, is now following X-Factor around even though the team feels uneasy about this. And surprise, by the end of the issue we learn that he's spying on them for somebody. Yet another predictable plot with few invested in this part. However, in good news, we have Monet to echo my thoughts on this mediocre Darwin story.

I'm thinking she's due for some spotlight time.

Moving on to stories I'm invested in: Baby mama drama! Despite my loathing of Rahne, the story itself has me hooked, and this time around we have Rictor, drunk out of his mind, having figured out the baby's not his. Meaning Ricstar can continue and give the fans what they want (Homo love!!).

Shatterstar explains the situation to Rictor, and Rictor makes a move to go find Rahne to confront her about this. Rahne explains that she knew about the deal the whole time, and she admits to trying use her baby to force Rictor to stop being gay so he won't go to hell. Rictor blows this off as a joke, which is understandable because I've always found Rahne to be exactly that, and then tells her to just come home with him. Which translates to: "Let's see how far we can jam pack this team until everyone besides Madrox becomes a cameo queen." Also, what is with the red head factor on this book?

Kinda strange.

Although it'd probably be stranger in a universe that depicted the frequency of red hair more realistically, but whatever, it's comic books, where it's not uncommon for characters to have purple or green hair.

Conclusion: This issue was half crap (Darwyn and Pip) and half great (Baby mama drama and everything else).