It's really boring.
It's not that the stories aren't fun or that there isn't interesting stuff happening, it's just feeling a bit formulaic when I type "Carmen steals someone, gets foiled at the last minute" again and again. I'm looking at trying to punch it up, but for now it's on a temporary hiatus while I put some polish back on it.
So instead let's talk teen superheroes. I've touched on this a little before, but I think it's worth going into further.
Unless you strike gold with a character (see: Shadowcat, Tim Drake, Squirrel Girl), you can't count on being able to bring anything new to the comics industry. For something that keeps trying to tell new and exciting stories, the industry is amazing resilient to anything being different in the long term. Characters who get replaced come back and take their place again (often making the other character superfluous). New characters get tossed on the sideline once their big story ends or a new writer comes in. Or worse, you spend a lot of time fleshing out stories with characters just to have someone come along, put them all on a bus, and then blow up the bus (see what happened to a lot of the younger X-characters).
Plus, if you do introduce the next big thing, there's no guarantee the next writer will treat the character with any respect. Maybe you wanted your new sidekick to an established hero to go through some real drama and growth, but the next person to come along ruins it by having them become kidnap-bait for every super villain come down the line, or they just get written out so they can bring in their own character.
It's why I had serious doubts when the Young Avengers line was first announced. Younger versions of established heroes? It never feels really fresh and never seems to go very far. I was right for some of it, it did feel a bit forced when the series came out.
Featuring Wiccan (one of the Scarlet Witch's sons, long story), Hulkling (actually a Skrull), Patriot (the grandson of the black Captain America), a new Hawkeye (rich girl with a rape backstory), Speed (another Scarlet Witch offspring, long story), the Vision (kinda), Iron Lad (a younger Kang), and Stature (daughter of Ant-Man). The stories told were okay, but seemed more focused on the characters constantly worrying about being caught by the older heroes and each one having doubts as to whether they should be a hero.
But that's in the past. The latest rendition of the Young Avengers is, by far, one of the most imaginative and enjoyable comics I've read in a long time.
Trading out a few characters for some new ones, the book manages to seamlessly combine a coming of age story with a fantastic science fiction saga. You have them facing a villainous threat on an interdimensional scale (literally called "Mother") while exploring their own relationships and motivations. For instance, if your boyfriend can literally rewrite reality, can you trust your relationship is real, or is it just something he subconsciously wished into being? Can you escape your own past when everybody knows your very nature is to lie? If you had powers and lost them suddenly, could you find motivation to keep going as someone normal?
The art is mind-blowingly good. It's so good, you almost don't want to turn the page, because you're afraid the next page won't be as brilliant. The dialogue is extremely well crafted and shaped to fit the characters, and there's amazing depth given to people that keeps them unique. Nothing feels forced, nothing feels out of place, and each of these characters, to me, feels like a lot of care is being given to them and that the writer has a lot of respect for what came before and what could come after.
For the record, that page above might be one of my favorite two-page spreads I've ever seen.
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