Avengers Arena 15, Infinity the Hunt 1

Avengers Arena 15
Hopeless (w) and K. Walker and Gorder (a) and Beaulieu (c)

Cullen's monster, released when Cullen took off his Bloodstone ring to protect Aiden, is putting up a solid fight against the thought-unkillable X-23. She seems to snap out of her bloodlust and admits she doesn't know how to stop the monster. She's saved as Reptil, Darkhawk, and Nico come out of the woods to protect her and to engage the new and unknown monster. Cammi, Nara, and Aiden start looking desperately around for the Bloodstone ring, which is eventually found by Cammi but inevitably knocked away and into the ocean by a flung Reptil. Nara dives after it while Cammi and Aiden talk about whether or not Aiden will have to kill Cullen to stop the monster. Both are morally against it but Cullen had told Aiden how to do it if he needed to and had made him promise to do it if he lost himself. As Aiden is about to strike, Nara bursts out of the water with the ring, managing to get the monsters attention and eventually touching the ring to its skin, pulling Cullen out and making the monster disappear, but not before the struggle with the monster kills Nara.

There's a ton happening in this issue and even more on the horizon because of this issue. It's easy to forget, given how many contenders are still alive and the depth of personality each of these characters has demonstrated, that issue 18 is the final issue, putting us officially at three remaining issues following this one. There's so much to resolve and so much fear that it won't be resolved. That's been the best thing about this book, in truth. I'm not following it to see who survives or who "wins," though I'm certainly interested in that. There's so much more here and it's more that I want to know about. Where does/do the survivor/s go after this? What of the relationships formed here or that were brought in from various other books here? What of the mental scarring? I think every character in this book has been, at one point or another, a risk for turning evil. Avengers Academy was built so that kids Norman Osborn "created" didn't follow in his footsteps. Apex kind of is evil, very conniving and mastermind-y. Kid Briton was an arrogant bully. Anachronism has rage issues. Cullen was left in a horrible monster dimension for years and years. X-23 was created to be an assassin. The Runaways are the children of supervillains. Death Locket is a female Deathlok. Cammi was abandoned by the her favorite person and father figure, the assassin Drax the Destroyer. In this issue (narrated by Nara), we learn that Nara was the daughter of two Atlantean traitors, who followed Attuma and rebelled against Namor, leading to their death at his hands. Red Raven believed Namor killed her father. Darkhawk was the son of a dirty cop. Juston's only friend was a mutant-hating Sentinel (reprogrammed somewhat successfully). Have I made a point? Plenty of superheroes have these tragic backstories but these ones are all young enough to still potentially be turned with the right scarring. In fact, I'd even hazard that the least damaged ones, the ones most likely to err on the hero's side, are the ones who died first (Mettle, Red Raven, Darkhawk, Juston), just as Arcade predicted in issue one (telling them that, in essence, being the villain would be the only thing to save them here). It's all really fascinating, and all of that doesn't even get into Nara's complex emotions and backstory or the change we'll see in Aiden with his new girlfriend dead saving him and his best friend. Really stellar book, as ever.

Infinity the Hunt 1
Kindt (w) and Sanders (a) and Campbell (c)

A new mini-series spawned out of Infinity and also a multitude of other books. This book focuses on the heads of various superhero schools across the globe deciding to band together to create an intramural competition between all of their students. The games themselves, called the Contest of Champions, haven't been established yet as this issue chooses instead to focus more on introducing the schools and the key students we'll likely see. The schools represent places all over Marvel, with the Jean Grey School, Avengers Academy (where this takes place), the Future Foundation, the Braddock Academy, a Pan-Asian school, a Wakandan school, a Latverian school, and an Atlantean school (not participating, given the tensions between Wakanda and Atlantis right now). We get a brief overview of each school and an introduction to a couple characters from each as well as a thought bubble from each character giving a small window into their personalities and motivations. It's perhaps a bit heavy-handed but it gets the point across. The opening ceremonies are interrupted, though, when an emergency broadcast from the Atlantean school shows the destruction in Atlantis and an attack starts on LA from Thanos' army.

As I said, the introductions are a little ham-fisted as they prefer text over subtext ("you know how I'm your brother?") but it gets the job done. The real story here, presumably, will be the way these adults running the school and these kid heroes band together to push back Thanos. It's all hands on deck right now on Earth as the Avengers are off-planet so it makes sense that we'd see the young heroes and their guardians getting in on the fight, I guess I just didn't expect them to all be banded together while they do it. There are an impressive amount of new heroes introduced with new powers pretty laid out for us though, again, I think it's a little heavy-handed. Not to keep coming back to Avengers Arena, but Avengers Arena created all-new characters without me even realizing they were all-new. The first few issues, I just nodded and assumed they were already established and that the Braddock Academy was already a thing, not all stuff that Hopeless created for the series. Granted, Kindt has far less time here to establish the sort of things Hopeless (who just won a Harvey Award, I believe) has been able to do over in Arena. Fairly ambitious book, we'll see if it leads to anything.