Thanks, Kieron Gillen. Way to throw a wrench in one of the most stable couples in the Marvel Universe! After the last page of ‘Young Avengers’ #8, it looks like Wiccan and Hulkling’s relationship needs some reevaluating. And some of that starts to rear it’s ugly head in issue nine.

When we last saw our young heroes, they were traveling through various dimensions in search of Speed and the fake Patriot. Or, as I like to call him, Faketriot. Regardless of what you call him, he keeps eluding the team and eventually leads them to the home dimension of Mother, the inter-dimensional parasite that Billy inadvertently summoned when he tried to reunite his boyfriend Teddy with his mother. In their attempt to escape, Hulkling and Prodigy got left behind. But with the worst case scenarios floating in their heads as their friends realize what happened, David plants one on Teddy, easily becoming the biggest home wrecker in Marvel NOW history!

Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but that’s just because I like Wiccan and Hulkling as a couple. Anyway, in the most recent issue, the team makes their way back to the dimension where their comrades are stranded in and together they formulate a plan to deal with both Mother and Faketriot. Afterwards, it gets into some serious after-school prime time teen show stuff. Forget Jessie doing speed or Shawn joining a cult because this is far more heartbreaking!

First of all, while I do love Billy and Teddy as a couple, Gillen is showing us that the two of them are growing up. Also throw in the possibility of the unintentional reality altering by the son of the Scarlet Witch and things are super complicated. Without giving the end of the book away, I’ll say that the post-noodles conversation before the epilogue was vintage teen movie. Actually, it reminded me of ‘Chasing Amy’ because of the rain, but either way, it was a very emotional scene. Part of that is Gillen’s writing, but an even larger part of that is Jamie McKelvie’s artwork.

The art in this issue was all over the place in the best way. It took some of the best parts from this whole arc and assembled them in some sort of epic Young Avengers mixtape of art. (I suppose one would actually call that a collage, but I like my phrase better.) The creative team as a whole has been knocking it out of the park since the start of this book, but seeing McKelvie play around with these alternate versions of our heroes was fun.

Basically, this book left us with a lot of questions. Moving forward, there are some big changes coming for the Young Avengers and I’m enjoying following along every step of the way. There’s no chance that I’m missing the next chapter of this exciting, pop culture reference-filled story.

Final Score:

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YOUNG AVENGERS #9
Written by Kieron Gillen
Art by Jamie McKelvie, Mike Norton, & Matthew Wilson