A fellow F.O.O.M.er (Friend Of Old Marvel) and friend of this blog, Toby Hopper, found these delicious scans of Jim Cheung’s artwork from the current mini-series, Avengers The Children’s Crusade. One of the few modern Marvel Comics that I am very excited to buy! I love seeing these illustrations un-maligned by any text. The above image belonged to issue #2, featuring a dynamic shot of Wolverine getting ready to open up a can of kick-ass.
Writer Allan Heinberg has concocted a pretty good yarn so far, including all the Avengers, Magneto (Wanda’s father), Quicksilver (her brother), and Wanda’s sons, Speed (Thomas) and Wiccan (William), part of the Young Avengers. The above splash page was also featured in the second issue. It was nice to see Magneto acting like a bad-ass again, holding off the entire lineup of Avengers single-handedly, even though he was just trying to have a little talk with his grandsons. Wolverine never gets tired of taking on Magneto, even though his body is lined with adamantium!
The cover to issue #3 highlights all the reasons why I was looking forward to this series. The crusade by the Young Avengers is a quest to find the Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff), a former Avenger who had a nervous breakdown years ago (Avengers Disassembled and House of M) and wreaked havoc in the Marvel Universe. But even before that—Wanda was married to my favorite Avenger of all time, The Vision. While there has been a character around for the past few years called the Vision, that android really isn’t the same as the classic Silver Age character. I am crossing my fingers that Heinberg finally restores the one and true classic Vision, as well as the Scarlet Witch, to the Marvel Universe.
