Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Young Avengers (Vol. 2), Issue #1 – “Style > Substance”!

This series interested me after reading its preliminary story in the Marvel NOW! Point One one-shot. I’m a complete sucker for coming-of-age stories, and watching kids come to terms with their powers is one of the more interesting plot devices. See Ultimate Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, and Invincible.

I’m not sure how much real coming-to-age is going to happen here, but I’m here for it anyway. Kieron Gillen looks like he likes kids! Maybe a little too much!

Young Avengers (Vol. 2), Issue #1 [March, 2013]
Written by: Kieron Gillen
“Style > Substance”

“I’m in a bed. It’s not mine. This is new.”

“I can hear the shower. He’s in the shower. Him.”

A young raven-haired lass has slept over a boy’s house. Her parents are gonna be so pissed. She’s probably eight kinds of pregnant now, which is a shame because she’s probably supposed to be a superhero and you can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound with a fetus rattling around in there.

“Do I just get the hell out of here? Do we go for breakfast? Where does he keep the coffee? What did he say his name was?”

I suppose this woman is older than a teenager, since most teenagers don’t sleep with people they don’t know at all. Possibly. My friend Pete might’ve, but Pete was terminally horny.

She opens a curtain, expecting to see the sunrise over a city! Perhaps a cozy little town! Perhaps a dead animal rendering plant! It’s none of these things. She’s in outer space.

“Oh, wow,” she smiles. “The ride here did seem kinda long.”

A buff man with abs and pecs that have been lovingly penciled in by Jamie McKelvie and Mike Norton has left the shower. “Did I wake you up, Kate Bishop of Earth?” he asks, toweling off his delicious abs and pecs, etc.

This man is named Noh-Varr, and I don’t remember if I met him already in a past life. He’s Marvel Boy… well, he used to be Marvel Boy. I don’t think I know no Marvel Boy. “You kicked all our asses that one time!” Kate says with a glimmer of recognition. Noh-Varr puts on some music and starts dancing. Based on the music notes hovering in the air, it must certainly be Ringo Starr’s Stop and Smell the Roses album where he’s on the cover looking like the greatest sex offender who ever lived. He explains that his people didn’t want him near Earth anymore. The Avengers agreed with this. It was a whole thing.

Nah-Vorr comes from a world with transcendental peace and universal enlightenment, but the music there sucks. I would kill myself, personally, if I had to live in a world where music sucks. Music is all I’ve got.

Kate enjoys exactly four more seconds of this hot, almost-nude dancing alien, and then the ship gets attacked by Skrulls! “I have no powers and not nearly enough training, but I’m doing this anyway,” Kate thinks as she runs the helm of the ship and starts steering. Noh-Varr shoots some badass plasma guns. We have begun, ladies and gentlemen. “Being a superhero is amazing. Everyone should try it.”

CUE OPENING CREDITS. CATHERINE ZETA-JONES AS LORELAI. BILL MURRAY AS “FANCY PANTS” JOE. DAKOTA FANNING AS JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT. FEATURING VERMONT SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY AS HIMSELF WEARING A DIAPER.

In New York City, a woman is in the middle of getting hella mugged by two scoundrels. One guy has a knife, the other guy has a gun. She has a purse. Who’s gonna win? It’s Spider-Man. Spider-Man’s gonna win.

The guy with the gun shoots Spider-Man in the shoulder and he falls to ground flat on his face. “I’ve killed Spider-Man?” the guy asks his friend, completely dumbfounded.

…

“Nah,” Spider-Man says as he stretches his forearms out to four times their original lengths and punches these two right in their ugly kissers. This ain’t Spider-Man at all! Just some punk in Spider-Man clothes! The woman is kind of upset. She thought she was getting saved by Spider-Man, but it’s Stretchy-Arm-Man instead? What a fucking ripoff.

“Let’s just hope no one with a cameraphone was looking this way,” Not-Spider-Man says, alone on the roof, as he transforms back into some Hulk-looking young man with a fringy bowl cut. “That would be problematic.”

In Chelsea, UK, this Hulky Boy sneaks back into an apartment through the window. His boyfriend flicks on the lightswitch. “How could you?” he asks, obviously sitting on his bed waiting up. The walls are adorned with posters of Captain America, Earth’s Worst Superhero.

Hulk Boy’s buddy is mad. Mad as the dickens. Superheroing has NOT been sitting well with them, perhaps because they accidentally blew up the Hoover Dam or killed 17 kids at a middle school chess tournament. “How many people died since we decided we could be Avengers? How many, Teddy?” the one named Billy asks him. “How many friends have we buried?”

Teddy’s all “I ‘unno. A trillion”, but he instead grimaces and tells his friend to shut up. Billy’s lucky! His mom is the Scarlet Witch! Teddy’s dad is Powdered Toast Man! Billy has foster parents who love him! Teddy drew a face on a piece of driftwood and hugs it to sleep every night! Billy’s parents don’t mind that his boyfriend sleeps over every night! Teddy has to get permission from his piece of driftwood and it’s never a “yes”!

“Oh – and you’ve got awesome reality-warping magical powers. And you’re cute.”

Billy is taken aback. He’s taken aback cutely. Teddy is crying because he’s some alien shapeshifter kid who sucks and would do anything for Billy, and maybe Billy should lighten up and let him Avenge! Let him Avenge, Billy. Avenging is in his blood! Also platelets!

“The only mom I ever knew got burned alive in front of me,” Teddy says tearfully, throwing himself a surprise pity party. He says a bunch of other stuff that makes Billy go “fine, fine, fine, ok, you’re right, I’m sad now, thanks a lot”. He’s going to make it up to him by being a better boyfriend and make him eggs every morning and not get burned alive in front of him. It’s the least he can do. “It’s all I ask,” Teddy responds with a sultry grin.

They kiss. I’m gonna post it here.

Billy’s going to leave now before Teddy’s driftwood catches them fucking in Teddy’s bedroom. He heads home to his own bedroom where he opens the closet and finds his ratty costume hanging front and center. “I didn’t think of what he’s been going through. How little he has… But if I’ve got the power to help… I’ve got the responsibility to see if there’s anything I can do…”

Billy sits on the floor with lit candles and absolutely NO Satanic symbols, which is bullshit, and he uses his magic fingers to populate a handful of holographic viewscreens showing various memories of kissies and beat-em-ups. “Allpossibleworlds allpossibleworlds allpossibleworlds,” he chants, but I’m not sure was “allpos sib lew orlds” means, unfortunately. Sorry all.

At a nearby diner, Loki (who I have met before where he was also in a restaurant) is trying to charm his way out of paying for the thirteen pounds of food he had stuffed down his alien gullet. Loki insists that he’s the god of mischief whose brother is Thor and he shouldn’t pay one cent of American currency for this greasy meal. The owner calls him “cosplay boy”. All of Loki’s leftovers hover in the air. “The Wiccan child,” speaks a floating sausage. “The time cometh.”

Loki disappears in a haze of green static – kinda like when Scottie beams me up – and appears on top of Billy roof. “He’s doing it. Can’t have that.”

He’s about to do something magical with his own hand, but Miss America shows up to distract him. “Drop the magic hand gesture,” she says, striking an intimidating pose. Loki tells her, in the nice way he tells people things, to rise up off his nutz while he kills the Wiccan. Miss America’s not going to have that on her watch. Put up your dukes, Asgard Nerd.

“Big talk for a nearly indestructible superwoman who can throw tanks to the moon!” Loki cries petulantly. When Miss America advances, he poops a little bit in his tights and tells her to hold it. Then he disappears and reappears behind her, but this kind of dirty fighting isn’t going to fly. You ain’t slick, Loki. You’re a fucking clown. Miss America punches the roof and the shockwave lands Loki on his back. “I can explain,” he gibbers after she lifts him by his scarf. But then he smirks and speaks in some rune language and Miss America probably dies. We’ll check in later.

Billy appears to be finding a universe among the infinite universes where Teddy’s mom didn’t burn to death in front of him? Good luck, son, that will be like trying to find a universe in a haystack of, like, other universes. Something happens that makes Teddy perk up and run out of his bed like a gunshot. He makes his way to the roof of Billy’s building? Do they both live in the same building?

Teddy bursts through the door like Kramer. “Who are you? And why are you holding Loki by the throat?” This quick distraction allows Loki to disappear right out of Miss America’s iron grip! She’s all like “well, fuckshits”.

Teddy demands to know who she is. DEMANDS IT. “And don’t say ‘a friend’,” he warns her. “I wouldn’t say that,” she responds before flying away.

Well, fuckshits! Don’t worry, Teddy. Billy’s got a grand ol’ surprise for you. It’s gonna be super keen. Really nifty stuff. Billy nonchalantly shows him a slightly sad blonde woman. “I was browsing dimensions. By sheer chance, I found one a second before she was killed and… I pulled her out.”

Yay! They hug! Nothing could go wrong here, right?

Later, Teddy’s mom checks on his sleeping son, then returns to the kitchen where Teddy’s foster parents are enjoying their 3am cups of coffee.

“I’m sure we all agree they’re too young to be living together,” Mom says with a kind look in her eye, referring to the sin of homosexuality and whatnot. “In fact, I’m not happy he’s in a relationship at all. He’s far too young for romance when he should be thinking of his studies.

The foster parents are taken aback. They give Mom the ol’ side-eye. “We’re happy that Billy and Teddy are happy. What kind of parent are you?” shrieks Foster Daddy.

Here’s what kind of parent she is!

Final Thoughts

Stakes are high already! So many open storyline threads! I like what I’m seeing! I like it when you people are like “what the hell are you doing” and also “why are you doing what you’re doing”! I also really like it when foster parents get killed! Wait! No I don’t!

I’m pretty hopped up on caffeine right now.

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