Christos Gage's understanding of his characters is astonishing. He knows how to tell the right story with the right amount of mood and heart. When Hank tells Jan that he has to learn how to live without her, you can feel and believe it. What began with a smarter, more patient, more capable Hank Pym in The Mighty Avengers, has continued with just as much fire and intelligence in Avengers Academy. Read Full Review

CORRECTION: Apparently the art for this issue was actually provided by Tom Raney, not Mike McKone (which shows what I know about art) - there was an error in the credits. Sorry for the mistake! Read Full Review

This week's Avengers Academy made a strong run at the top spot this week through a great combination of exciting action, strong art, and brilliant character writing. This will be the defining Hank Pym story for years to come and with good reason, Gage does a great job of redefining the character in a way that opens up a lot of potential stories without fundamentally changing anything about the character that has come before. Oh yeah, and you think that Read Full Review

The art is a hit and miss. I dont like how McKone draws some of the characters faces, but thats not really his fault. Its his inkers. McKone is a solid and competent artist with decades of work under his belt. I cant ever complain about his work. What hes done in Amazing Spider-man the last few years is inpecable. Anything he did in LEGION for DC Comics is to be marvelled at. So here, I can only blame his inkers for the weird faces he gives some of his characters. But rest assured, everything else is rock solid. Read Full Review

I really am a fan of most of Marvels old-school characters, Hank Pym included, and I get irritated at how often creators and fans alike see fit to crap all over him. Im happy to see this title giving him a position with a little dignity and hope. Read Full Review

Tom Raney fills in for Mike McKone on pencils this month (despite what the credits page would have you believe). Raney's recent Marvel work has been pretty variable in quality. Luckily, Raney is in solid form here, and the inks of Dave Meikis and Scott Hanna help bring an echo of McKone's precise pencils into the mix. Their rendering of Giant-Man's new uniform is startlingly inconsistent, however. Details and trimmings appear and vanish at random. The coloring of Jeromy Cox and Andrew Crossley is also fairly inconsistent, with one panel of Iron Man even featuring reversed colors. Though generally attractive, the visuals in this issue suggest a rushed schedule. Luckily, McKone is back next month, and readers have every reason to be excited for the continued future of this series. Read Full Review

Tom Raney fills in for Mike McKone on pencils this month (despite what the credits page would have you believe). Raney's recent Marvel work has been pretty variable in quality. Luckily, Raney is in solid form here, and the inks of Dave Meikis and Scott Hanna help bring an echo of McKone's precise pencils into the mix. Their rendering of Giant-Man's new uniform is startlingly inconsistent, however. Details and trimmings appear and vanish at random. The coloring of Jeromy Cox and Andrew Crossley is also fairly inconsistent, with one panel of Iron Man even featuring reversed colors. Though generally attractive, the visuals in this issue suggest a rushed schedule. Luckily, McKone is back next month, and readers have every reason to be excited for the continued future of this series. Read Full Review

I really, really want to like this book, but it just isn't dazzling me. There's a threat of the month, the kids are presented with the opportunity to learn an after-school special-like lesson, and then we move on. The underlying current of the kids knowing that the adults have them marked as potential bad seeds needs to evolve a bit, before it becomes more of a crutch and less of a subplot. Nothing in this book has hooked me. This is an average issue of "Avengers Academy." It's quaint, and enjoyable, but not very memorable. I can appreciate where others might disagree with this assessment, but this is the one "Avengers" book I just can't get into. Read Full Review

I wish the story was as enjoyable as the artwork, though. The convoluted fate of the Wasp is difficult to follow and swallow, as is the seemingly impossible nature of the solution that Hank Pym proposes. In fact, Gage portrays Pym as far too powerful throughout the issue. By the end of the issue, he's elevated to a divine status, and it's just too much. The awkward nature of the character's conversation with Tigra is too strained to believe, and the villain's appearance in the story is forced and the threat he poses is predictable. He escapes from his prison just because the plot requires it of him; no plausible explanation is given. I realize that Gage is trying to explore Pym's character, but far too much history and oddball, incredible super-hero elements get in the way. Furthermore, it felt odd for the focus to shift away from the young, new characters to one that's been around for 50 years. Furthermore, Pym is the co-star of his own limited series right now - Ant-Man and the Wasp Read Full Review