Book of the week 1/23/08 Young Avengers Presents #1: Patriot

Written by Ed Brubaker
Pencils by Paco Medina
Inks by Juan Viasco
Colors by Nathan Fairbairn
Letters by Cory Petit

I've been pretty vocal about how much I loved Young Avengers and that it's something that Marvel really needs to address. Allan Heinberg came out with one of the best books in the past few years and in my opinion he took the Teen Titans formula and greatly expended on it.

But that was years ago and we still haven't seen a new Young Avengers book. We've been teased with appearances in The Initiative and Civil War tie-ins but we still haven't received an on-going title and hopefully this new mini series will lead into that.

This new take of Young Avengers is a six issue mini that focuses on the individual characters and we're first given a closer look at the team leader Patriot. Brubaker goes back through Patriot's origin story and gives us a little more depth of the character and if this is something that we'll see throughout this series then I have no doubt that it will be something special

Something that I really loved about this issue in particular is that it basically is the hero's quest tale. Eli is a young boy with so many conflicting emotions and he doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing, much less what he should be feeling. There are also a lot of racial undertones in this book and as an african-american male I can really relate to what the character was feeling and it brought me into the story in a very profound way.

I've always gushed on Paco Medina's art and this issue is now exception. I'm a huge fan of team books, especially younger teams and Medina's bright and vibrant art works well in that context.

I'm happy to have anything Young Avengers right now and I hope we get the series back soon, but until then I'm looking forward to getting to know these characters better on an individual basis.