Dark Reign: Young Avengers!

There's a new YA title in the offing! I'm a big Young Avengers fan, as may be clear from one of my essays, so this news of a comic surrounding a new Dark Reign era 'Young Avengers' team sounds pretty cool to me. Apparently these newbies will act in antagonistic counterpoint to the Young Avengers, the same way the Dark Avengers do to the New Avengers. DA:YA is five issues at least, so I can't wait to see how it all plays out, plus, I wouldn't mind seeing more of the real Young Avengers through this comic book either.

Here's a very brief bio of these young maybe/maybe not heroes...

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The Melter: "A kid who can melt anything with a gesture, the leader of the team but is very unsure of himself and his powers."

The Enchantress: "His girlfriend, sort of, who claims she's from Asgard but who can't handle Asgardian speech patterns and is frighteningly offhand with her magic."

The Executioner: "An urban vigilante who kills the scum of the streets, exactly, exactly, exactly like the Punisher."

Big Zero: "A white power skinhead girl who can grow to giant size or shrink to microscopic and is raising an army in the Microverse to topple the federal government."

Coat of Arms: "A cutting edge artist with a surreal coat who put the team together to participate in 'scenes' like foiling a bank raid of battling another hero team."

Egghead: "Their cracked android, who wants to examine the human condition intimately, with livers in his hands, and shares Big Zero's mattress."

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Melter's powers are lame and Big Zero sounds like a real turn-off (there's more than enough racists in real life so hopefully Eli, as a young African-American, will challenge her views) but they'd make great antagonists to the actual Young Avengers.

As I said in my essay, I'm really attracted to these teen-draw kinds of Marvel comics. If there was one failing YA had in that respect though, it was that there wasn't enough dissension amongst the ranks. Aside from the slight Eli/Tommy/Kate love triangle (which is adorable at best, and nothing CLOSE to the tragic Josh/Rahne/Laurie/Kevin love quad in New X-Men/Mutants) there really isn't much tension on the Young Avengers team. They all like each other too much. Even when Cassie defected to the other side in the Civil War crossover, it hasn't visibly hurt their chemistry. I hope we see some discrepancies crop up between these new guys. While I'm not sure these 'Dark' Young Avengers have the standalone strength of the real Young Avengers, I'm convinced that they'll prove to be an interesting challenge.

On the combative side of things, I can kind of see where they'll clash;

Patriot vs. The Melter
Wiccan vs. The Enchantress
The Vision and/or Hulkling vs. Egghead
Stature vs. Big Zero
Hawkeye vs. Coat of Arms

Over all though, I think the real YAs (after having a similar kind of meaningless antagonism with the Runaways) will realize that they needn't be fighting these guys. From what I've heard, the question of "who has the right to wear the mantle of 'Avenger'?" is going to be a key plot thread in this, which does pose some interesting questions for the YAs. All in all I'm excited about this upcoming release. Let hope it rocks!