1650 ( )

DeConnick continues to write everything I want to read in a superhero comic. There is bleakness here, and hard decisions, but on the whole, these adventures are fun. Witty, smartass banter that feels like it owes a bit of a debt to Whedon, a good mix of familiar characters and fresh (to me, at least) characters. And girls. Girls for days. Female superheroes, female super-villains, female henchmen, female team-leaders, female up-and-coming newbies. And still far from an all-girls club, we still have Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, and Hawkeye all doing their things.

This collection is a "coming into her own" arc for Spider Girl, who becomes one of the Avengers. There is also plenty of Spider Woman in this, which makes me happy. Does she have her own comic? She needs her own comic right now.

I could go on and on. I'll just say I love this team. ( )

I want all of my comics to be like this run. Alas. ( )

I want all of my comics to be like this run. Alas. ( )

I love the DeConnick's writing, but parts of this volume felt...fan fic-ish. The plot was nice and tight, but I hated the inclusion of spider-girl. We don't need another spider based member inserted into this line up. I get annoyed enough when Spider-woman and Spider-man share too much page time. Having too many characters with the same or extremely similar powers running around gets boring.

The plot of this volume focuses on Spider-Girl coming to the Avengers for help finding her social studies teacher. (Which made me groan and hope that this would be a short story thread in the volume but unfortunately it wasn't.) Since the Avengers are all busy, most of them take turns helping Spider-girl out. This is what made it sometimes feel like a self-insertion fan fiction story. Was this meant to be catered to teenage girls? Because if it was, then I would assume it's fairly successful at it. I think if I had picked this up as a First Year in high school I would've enjoyed it a bit more. I also think it did a good job of not completely alienating it's already present fan-base by pandering too much to one audience. However, compared to the previous volume of Avenger's Assemble that DeConnick wrote this was extremely lack luster. Dynamic characters and interesting plots were pushed aside to drag Spider-girl into the mix and have her getting advice from and gallivanting around with Black Widow, Spider-Woman, Wolverine, Iron Man, etc. Also, I really hated the ending with Captain America texting Spider-Girl a download of the Avenger's theme song so she could make it her ringtone.

All in all, this volume was extremely fluffy. It's not bad, but it won't be something I'll look forward to re-reading anytime soon. ( )