Young Avengers #13

By Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie.

The final battle with Mother rages on in Central Park and it’s up to the Young Avengers to defeat their evil exes and take down the inter-dimensional parasite once and for all. And love will save the day!

Gillen does a good job of tying up a majority of the story lines in this final issue. There are definitely still holes left, like what actually happened to Tommy and what is the Patriot clone. Once again Gillen writes really wonderful interactions between the characters, particularly between Kate and Noh-Varr in this issue. In the middle of the fight the two have it out. Kate especially sees some great character moments at the hands of Gillen. The past few issues Gillen has been doing some really nice work in building tension between the characters through very short interactions. The climax to their story line is handled very well and Gillen once again shows that he can write these characters with very humanizing interactions and relationships.

Gillen also does some great work with Prodigy. As a character we haven’t seen David step to the front of the story since the kiss between him and Teddy a few issues back. But David finally steps out from the shadow of the rest of the group and, indirectly, saves the day. The interaction between Teddy and David is perfectly written and Gillen really shone in this moment of the book.

This book definitely featured some of the strongest art throughout the entire season. McKelvie has consistently been providing great work with this book, but he really stepped up in this latest book. The designs and spreads were what made this book. McKelvie has a knack with crafting very creative, attractive page designs that compliment his artist styling very well. Page design played such a large role in bringing forward the tone of the book and McKelvie mastered that early on this run.

This has been a truly great run of Young Avengers and I have few qualms with the story. I am looking for closure on Tommy and Patriot, however, so hopefully we’ll see that in the next issue.