Avengers Academy Double Feature (#SFWApro)

AVENGERS ACADEMY: Fear Itself by Christos Gage and multiple artists works surprisingly well given it’s a tie-in to a big crossover (Fear Itself). Usually those wind up feeling both confusing and pointless (how many big events really matter a couple of years later?) but Gage keeps the series focused on one thread, a battle between the Academy students and the god-possessed supervillains Absorbing Man and Titania. This keeps focused on the characters and their horror at being pushed into the very violent big leagues, which helps too. Overall a good one.
AVENGERS ACADEMY: Second Semester by Gage and multiple artists (cover by Sean Chen, all rights to current holder) has teachers Tigra and Hank Pym relocate the kids in the aftermath of Fear Itself to the former West Coast Avengers’ base, where they have to deal with an influx of new recruits, sexuality (even in this day and age I’m surprised we would up with three non-straight characters in the cast), a crossover with the Runaways teen team and a plot by Reptil’s future self to travel back in time and make sure that everything that happened still happens the way it originally happened … Which is one of the problems with the book, that I never figured out why Reptil was worried things would turn out differently; another is that the villain Hybrid is a dull C-lister. A third is that this really struggles under the sheer size of the cast… but despite all that, the characters and their interactions were fun enough I really enjoyed this.