Young Avengers - Kang is ineffective as a villain

Once in a while, I'll pick up some trades from the library that I had no interest in reading for a couple of reasons. The first being that, albeit a sideline story, it may come up in reference during future story arcs. The second reason is that it's free to read library books, so if its crap, I won't hate myself for spending money on it.

Young Avengers seemed to fulfill the latter.

I have nothing against new teams of teenage superheroes, but I think it's kind of lame when each member is just a copy of the adult members. Granted, I bitched about the Young X-Men being a handful of powers and personalities being tossed into a basket and pulled out at random, this bores the hell out of me as well.

Seriously, it's just kids playing Avengers Assemble.

That being said, the premise may have annoyed me, but the plot points and characterizations became slightly intriguing when we find out that Iron Lad turns out to be Kang the Conquerer. He is a younger version of the time-traveling villain who is reluctant to fulfill his evil destiny. I need to point out how frustrating it is to read stories that involve time-traveling villains. Don't these guys have access to information regarding events that have already happened? How is it that a villain that seems to have unlimited ability to travel through time hasn't won yet? A hero defeats you and sends you packing, go back and off that hero's great-grandparents. It's that simple. The biggest paradox of time-travel is this; If it were possible to go back in time, and someone succeeded in doing so with a specific idea about what they wanted to change, upon changing this specific thing, it eliminates the need to be changed and, therefore, would eliminate the desire to change said event because said event never would have happened. Comics ignore this, so why the hell hasn't it worked? It's because Kang is incompetent. That's why.

Anyway, Young Captain America is the drugged-up grandson of Black Captain America. Iron Lad is Kang. Giant Girl is the daughter of the Stephen Lang incarnation of Ant-Man. The Asgardian is really one of the non-existent, yet existent sons of The Scarlet Witch and not really Asgardian. Hulkling is the absurdly named and appropriately hulky green guy who is the spawn of a Skrull Princess and the Kree Captain Marvel. The Hawkeye chick is some ho that I've never heard of before that inexplicably has the same skills as the real Haweye. Speed is the other fake son of The Scarlet Witch that has the power to run really, really fast, make things explode, and be a punk-asshole, because that's what you do when you run real fast. Oh, and Kid Vision is The Vision. Not sure what's up with him.

So all these juvenile delinquents hang out and fight crime and sometimes get yelled at by Captain America. The End.

It isn't terribly written, and the art fades in and out of being good, since there are, like, twenty artists that worked on these books. I don't know. I hate 'new and exciting' teams. I think when a writer is told to come up with a team that analogues a current team, the characters end up being really contrived. I think it's much better when you take existing characters and put them on a team, like, you know, THE AVENGERS.

I give this series one serving of teen angst down and two botched time-travel missions to the side.