Saturday...I Think (Also, a Review)

Friday morning kind of bled into Friday night, and then all of a sudden it was Saturday morning. While I may still have been at work in the wee hours of today--and it's also possible that I forgot to eat both lunch and dinner during my epic Friday--I somehow feel pretty good today.

Maybe it's because the weather is turning warmer here at Exfanding HQ, or maybe it's because I'm a little delirious, or perhaps it's because Andy Pettitte is back with the New York Yankees and all is once again right with the world.

It could be any of those things, really.

And, while the Andy Thing is pretty great, I'm leaning towards delirium.

So hang on tight, Exfanders, because this post is likely to get bumpy. That is, if I can remember what I wanted to--oh, right!

Last night--uh I mean Thursday night, I read Avengers: Children's Crusade, a book I talked about really wanting to buy earlier in the week.

Well, turns out I didn't love the story as much as I had hoped and as I read along, it became more and more obvious that the shipping delay in the single issues took its toll on the mini-series as a whole.

Every issue started with a very anachronistic style of recap, because, I'm sure, there was such a long waiting period between issues.

I'm a new-school comics reader, and frankly I find things like that tiresome.

But what really irked me about the book was the way in which the ending was handled. Again, I'm going to blame this on the fractured shipping schedule because writer Allan Heinberg knows his craft, and he knows it well.

But he rushed the heck out of this ending.

So much so, in fact, that the major event of the book was glossed over and literally covered up with smiles and hugs.

Now, I won't spoil what went down, but I will say that I really didn't like the way it went down. And that pretty much ruined my overall enjoyment of the book. Which is a real shame since this story--and the fallout from it--plays a big part in Marvel's upcoming events.

Don't get me wrong, there were things that I loved about the book--Heinberg's snappy dialogue makes for quick, fun reading and his characterization of Captain America as being both funny and understanding towards the Young Avengers endears Cap to readers.

There's certainly a sense of fun early on in the series--and even though the characters literally face a world-destroying threat, there's that feeling of high adventure that's so sorely lacking from so many of the current comics.

But when the Big Moment happens at the story's end, and actually, in the buildup to that moment, all fun goes out the window. There's really no victory for the characters, and many of them come off very much like, well, frankly, insensitive, unfeeling shells of people.

Which is in stark contrast to the bursting-with-life portrayals of these characters earlier on. Throughout the book, they wear their emotions on their sleeves, but when the Big Emotional Thing happens?

A hug here, a grimace there.

And that's kind of how I felt about the book once I put it down--a shrug and a grimace.