Tag Archives: Kieron Gillen

Oct 2 2013

Young Avengers 10

young avengers 10

Today, Ethan and Shelby are discussing Young Avengers 10, originally released September 25th , 2013. 

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Ethan: Who do you trust? What does it mean to trust someone? I trust the people close to me to listen to me when I speak, to take care of me when I’m hurting. I trust the people I work with to give me sound advice, and I trust them to be polite when we’re talking at the water cooler; on the other hand, I DON’T trust them to leave an unlabeled lunch in the communal fridge intact (seriously, two instances of lunch-jacking this week, who does that). Enemies are in some ways easier to trust than loved ones or colleagues, as long as you’re trusting them to do bad things and put you in harm’s way. In Young Avengers #10, writer Kieron Gillen examines why we count on other people to help or hurt us, and what happens when our trust is betrayed. Specifically, how these questions apply to A) gods/goddesses of mischief, B) reality-warping demiurges, and C) all-consuming pan-dimensional suburban parasites.
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Sep 3 2013

Young Avengers 9

young avengers 9

Today, Shelby and Spencer are discussing Young Avengers 9, originally released August 28th , 2013. 

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Shelby: There is nothing more fraught with drama, angst, and confusion than teen-aged relationships. The same goes for adult relationships, but when you’re a teen, pumped full of hormones and generally lacking life-experience, everything is amplified to outstanding proportions. It’s really no surprise, then, that if you’re a teen-aged all-powerful superhero, everything is amplified even further. Instead of focusing on the actual events surrounding the Young Avengers, Kieron Gillen hones in on the evolving relationships of these kids; for them, negotiating their feelings towards each other is proving to be more fraught with danger (and embarrassment) than any quest they could embark on.
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Jul 30 2013

Young Avengers 8

young avengers 8

Today, Ethan and Shelby are discussing Young Avengers 8, originally released July 24th, 2013. 

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Ethan: Comics love to play with the idea of the parallel universe. As we grow in our understanding of the world and our galactic context, human nature still seems to gravitate towards the mystical Unknown. At the end of the day, we don’t always like feeling like we understand everything. We like horizons, unexplored places, whether it’s the vast, unplumbed expanses of the ocean floor or the weird, extreme, unvisited zones where black holes gobble up entire stars. So it makes sense that when given half an excuse, author Kieron Gillen and artists Jamie McKelvie and Mike Norton take us on a whirlwind tour through alternate realities full of bird-people, dead gods, and flying taxis. Young Avengers #8 takes as its setting the ancient and eternal game of wondering “what if?” while serving up it’s signature fare of hilarious teenage dialogue and angst. Continue reading →

Jul 15 2013

Young Avengers 7

young avengers 7

Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing Young Avengers 7, originally released July 10th, 2013. 

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Spencer: Teenagers are a tricky bunch to write. They speak, think, and communicate in their own unique ways, and it’s glaringly obvious when adults try to imitate these patterns without knowing what they’re doing. Fortunately, Kieron Gillen isn’t a writer who falls into these traps. Gillen has a remarkable knack for writing teenagers, and this is more apparent than ever in Young Avengers 7, where he uses these kids’ relationships (and social networking accounts) to show us how the team has progressed since we last saw them.

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Jul 2 2013

Young Avengers 6

young avengers 6Today, Drew and guest writer Julien are discussing Young Avengers 6, originally released June 26th, 2013. 

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Drew: I used to think jobs were for grownups. Now I understand that jobs are for everybody — careers are for grownups. That may sound like a stupid distinction, but anyone who’s heard twenty-somethings ask each other about their jobs will understand that young people aren’t as ready to be defined by their jobs as teachers, mailmen, bakers, or any other characters from Richard Scarry books. This is just as true in the superhero world; Clark Kent might be happy to call himself a reporter, but his younger counterparts are still questioning their course in life — hell, many of them can’t even stick with a single name (I’m looking at you, former Robins). I’m used to seeing that uncertainty addressed in the overt angstiness we often associate with narratives featuring teens, but Kieron Gillen gets a great deal of mileage by toning it down to a more relatable level in Young Avengers 6. Continue reading →

Jun 10 2013

Iron Man 11

iron man 11

Today, Shelby and guest writer Pete Pfarr are discussing Iron Man 11, originally released June 5th, 2013.

Shelby: What makes us the people we are? Is it our environment, our peers, our experiences that shape us, or is our “personness” innate, something coded into our very genes? It’s pretty safe to say that who we are is influenced by both internal and external factors; we’re such complicated creatures that there’s no way to point to one factor, internally or externally, and claim that’s what made us. Unless you’re Tony Stark of course: unsurprisingly, he has a robot to thank/blame for everything that makes him the man he is.
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Jun 3 2013

Young Avengers 5

young avengers 5

Today, Shelby and Ethan are discussing Young Avengers 5, originally released May 29th, 2013. 

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Shelby: I’ve read a few team books, some which have worked and some which haven’t. Personally, I think a team book fails when the author focuses establishing the team as a character before establishing the individuals which make up that team. If the members of the team can’t stand alone as characters, how can they form a cohesive group? Kieron Gillen so effectively establishes the characters in Young Avengers, it didn’t even occur to me until five issues in that he’s been secretly building a team this whole time.

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May 20 2013

Iron Man 10

Alternating Currents: Iron Man 10, Drew and Patrick

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Iron Man 10, originally released May 15th, 2013.

Drew: Steven Soderberg’s Ocean’s 11 had a lot going for it: lavish, exciting locations, an all-star cast playing colorful characters, and a crackerjack heist story that kept the audience guessing until the end, just to name a few. Of course, none of those things were particularly original — the film was a remake, after all — but it was unlike anything that was being made at the time. Two sequels and countless copycats later, those ideas don’t feel nearly as fresh, which unfortunately leaves Iron Man 10 (or should I call it “Stark’s 7”?) dead on arrival. Continue reading →

May 7 2013

Iron Man 9

iron man 9

Today, Patrick and (guest writer) Pete Pfarr are discussing Iron Man 9, originally released May 1st, 2013.

Patrick: Expectations are a bitch. Sometimes we perceive quality based solely on the similarity a work of art has to what qualities we were expecting it to have. Expectations make us say things like “Fantastic Four is supposed to be fun!” or “Evil Dead is supposed to be campy!” Thanks to the cinematic juggernaut that is the Iron Man film series, there are an awful lot of “supposed to”s for Tony Stark. As Kieron Gillen starts a new story arc for Iron Man, he lays all our precious expectations out on the table and then shakes his finger sternly. Whatever we’re getting here, it ain’t what we expect. Continue reading →

May 1 2013

Young Avengers 4

young avengers 4

Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing Young Avengers 4, originally released April 24th, 2013. 

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Spencer: Tricksters are a common archetype in most works. They spread chaos, disregard authority, and cheat, con, and lie in whatever ways they can to get what they want. We all feel like we know better than to trust them, and so do our protagonists, but the best tricksters find a way to get past our defenses and bend us to their whims anyway. Kieron Gillen knows exactly how to write an effective trickster, and his Loki — one of the oldest and greatest — somehow manages to keep surprising both the Young Avengers and the readers; he might just be proving himself a greater threat than even that pesky interdimensional parasite.

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