Young Avengers

TOP TEN TUESDAY: Top Ten Books I Read In 2014

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature run by BrokeAndBookish each week – I’m thinking I might not take part every week but just see if a week takes my fancy. I read a lot more this year than I thought I would and a lot of what I read has been really good. So this weeks Top Ten Tuesday is the perfect time to look back at what I’ve read and pick out some highlights. I reviewed some of these books I’m going to mention, so if it you want to find out more about what I thought – just click the link and you’ll get to my review!

Young Avengers Vol 1: Style > Substance – Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelviephoto 1 (2)
Young Avengers really kicked off my comic book reading this year. I had read a few volumes towards the end of last year but this year I’ve read a lot. Young Avengers is a lot of fun and the story arc was very easy to get into even though I only knew one or two characters from the team before I started reading it. If you like teenage superheroes saving the world while having relationship dramas and having great banter – Young Avengers is for you.

Vicious – V.E. Schwab
I’m always intrigued about people with powers and I loved the take on that in Vicious. All the characters are interesting and no one is just a cardboard cut-out of a hero or villain. (more…)

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Book Characters That Would Be Sitting At My Lunch Table

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature run by BrokeAndBookish each week – I’m thinking I might not take part every week but just see if a week takes my fancy. This is an eclectic mix of characters of various ages so let’s say this school is more of a school/college/university hybrid where age doesn’t really matter. Also this is quite an eclectic mix of characters and personalities which I think is quite true to life as I tend to have eclectic groups of friends who are interested in different things.

Christina (Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth) Christina
Christina would definitely tell it like it is and help keep everyone level-headed and would be there for everyone.

Cal Leandros (Cal Leandros series by Rob Thurman)
Cal would be a bit moody and a bit of a loner but he’d soon become one of the gang and would be very loyal to the group and be up for being a sarcastic idiot now and then.

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REVIEW: Young Avengers, Five Ghosts, Hawkeye, Wolverine and the X-Men and The Losers

I’ve been reading a lot of comics this year so thought I’d do a five mini reviews of some of the series that I’ve read so far. Some of these reviews are for individual volumes and others are for a complete story arc.

Young Avengers – Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie photo 1 (2)
Like with most Marvel/DC comics there have been numerous incarnations of different characters and teams. This run of Young Avengers is the most recent and the team consists of Hawkeye (Kate Bishop), Wiccan (Billy Kaplan), Hulkling (Teddy Altman), Kid Loki, Marvel Boy (Noh-Varr) and Miss America (America Chavez). I love every member of this team and the writers do a great job of introducing each character to readers who may know nothing about them or their powers without too much needless exposition. I only knew Kate Bishop from Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye series so I was new to all the other characters but soon figured it out.

The main “big bad” is the Mother who can bring the Young Avengers dead parents back to life, though they are not how they remember. Besides all the action stuff, at the heart of Young Avengers is the relationships between the characters. Wiccan and Hulkling are in a relationship that has its rocky moments and then they are a group of teenagers that are often reluctant friends – especially with Loki as no one really knows how much they can trust him. Young Avengers is really funny and the art is gorgeous – the story goes across three volumes and it really is a lot of fun. 5/5

Five Ghosts Vol.1: The Haunting of Fabian Gray – Frank J. Barbiere and Chris Mooneyham
Five Ghosts is very Inidana Jones-like and it is awesome. Fabain Gray is a treasure hunter who after having an encounter with an artefact called “The Dreamstone” is possessed by five literary ghosts and granted access to their unique abilities. Those five ghosts unnamed but it can be guessed that the archer is Robin Hood, the wizard is Merlin, the detective is Sherlock Holmes, the samurai is Musashi, and the vampire is Dracula.

There’s a mystery surrounding the Dreamstone as Fabian tries to work out how to use these ghosts powers while continuing to be an infamous treasurer hunter and also trying to help his sister. The art is gorgeous and more realistic than some of the superhero stuff I’ve read, and it’s reads like an action-adventure film as Fabian travels to deserted temples and jungles. It’s a very cool book. 4/5.

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Getting into Comic Books

I have always loved comic book movies and TV shows – I adored X-Men: Evolution, Teen Titans and Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and I got my dad to take me to see Spider-Man when I was 10 years old and have since gone to see just about every Marvel and DC movie in the cinema. So I love these characters, I love the films but I had never gotten around to trying the source material – the comic books.

Now don’t give me that “fake geek girl” nonsense because I have nothing to prove. Everyone has to start somewhere, and if the start is from the TV shows or a movie then that’s fine, and it’s also perfectly fine if they never feel like picking up a comic book in their life. Wikipedia is perfect at filling in the blanks of a characters backstory anyway.

My comic collection (minus Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon 'cos that's at home)

My comic collection (minus Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon ‘cos that’s at home)

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