Rant Reviews--Young Avengers, Venom, Irredeemable AKA One Decent and Two Fun

This round of reviews we have Avengers: The Children's Crusade #5, Venom #2, and Irredeemable #25. It starts out okay and goes to genuinely good.


Avengers: The Children's Crusade #5
In this issue a bunch of the Avengers fight, Iron Lad shows up, Doom and Magneto punch each other, and the kids go back in time to where the whole, "Scarlet Witch goes crazy" time began AKA Avengers Disassembled. As with the other issues we have a cliffhanger we'll have to put up with for another 2 months because this series comes out slowly. Nothing here really grabbed me and I guess I'm just really reading this because I've enjoyed the Scarlet Witch storylines over the years and am curious about the impact this storyline will have. Plus, the Young Avengers comics have been fun at times in the past. This issue though? Decent enough to crawl above average thanks to the pretty art.
3 out of 5 stars.

Venom #2
Rick Remender doesn't mess around, just throwing us "media-res" into Venom's next mission with Kraven the Hunter (whom I thought died in the 1980s, go figure) chasing after him. What ensues is a lot of well-drawn fighting by Tony Moore and some character development between Flash Thompson and the Venom symbiote that is both sweet in a way and pretty creepy. The mysterious weapons-dealer from the last issue also puts in an appearance with the new Jack O' Lantern looking quite worse for the wear since his last encounter with Venom, showing there are some subplots simmering in this book. Oh, and Flash's girlfriend whines to Peter Parker about how Flash is never around, which I didn't really care about because I liked the zany fighting and jungle-adventure stuff. It was a pretty good time if somewhat decompressed in the sense of mostly just being one long fight scene throughout the whole issue.
3.5 out of 5 stars.

Irredeemable #25
This series has been going for 25 issues, really? Huh, I guess time flies when you're having a ton of fun. The plot has gotten progressively stranger over the series, going from a simple tale of a Superman-analogue-gone-bad to something much more complex and interesting in sort of being a meditation on just what it means to be super-heroic and keep the world safe (and the costs entailed). Anyway, this issue actually explains just how the Plutonian's powers work, which is indeed very interesting, and furthers some mysterious plots about just what certain characters are planning. This continues to be a strong comic with some issues amazing me and others always at least proving entertaining. Plus, you never know just where writer Mark Waid could be going because as a title set in its own little universe with a somewhat independent publisher anything goes with these characters--that makes reading this all the more exciting.
3.5 out of 5 stars.