Marvel Comics
Avengers Academy #7
By Hervé St-Louis
December 21, 2010 - 23:12

Marvel Comics
Writer(s): Christos Gage
Penciller(s): Mike McKone
Inker(s): Dave Meikis, Scott Hanna
Colourist(s): Jeremy Cox, Andrew Crossley
Letterer(s): Joe Caramagna
Cover Artist(s): Ed McGuinness, Dexter Vines, Morry Hollowell, Brandon Peterson
$2.99 US



Henry Pym, the super hero formally known as Ant-man, Yellow Jacket, Dr. Pym, and the Wasp has a change of heart and returns to his Giant-man identity. But his stint as Giant-man may be short if he can’t stop the Absorbing Man from escaping from captivity. Will Giant-man save the day?

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Of course he saves the day and the other Avengers don’t help him very much. Gage is continuing several plot threads begun in Mighty Avengers and Avengers the Initiative making all the plots mesh perfectly. Here we see the Tigra pregnancy storyline continuing now that the baby is born. Then there’s the Dr. Pym’s issues with his dead wife that he sentenced to another dimension. Gage has a great handle on Pym’s character and it feels that all the development done on the character in Mighty Avengers is not wasted at all. It’s all used here. In a sense the fight against the Absorbing Man is a rematch of another fight earlier when Pym was almost beaten by the villain and that Harry Osborn was the one to effectively defeat the villain.  How Pym decides to take the mantle of Giant-man however, was less convincing. In the Kurk Busiek Avengers’ series, Pym used similar arguments than those he used here to justify becoming Yellow Jacket. Let’s just hope, this time it sticks. For one thing the Wasp identity was just wrong for Pym.

The art is a hit and miss. I don’t like how McKone draws some of the characters’ faces, but that’s not really his fault. It’s his inkers. McKone is a solid and competent artist with decades of work under his belt. I can’t ever complain about his work. What he’s done in Amazing Spider-man the last few years is inpecable. Anything he did in LEGION for DC Comics is to be marvelled at. So here, I can only blame his inkers for the weird faces he gives some of his characters. But rest assured, everything else is rock solid.
Rating: 8/10

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