Avengers: Children’s Crusade 8-9

Avengers: Children’s Crusade #8 (2012)
by Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung

Let’s finish the miniseries. Will it stick to landing?

Last time Doctor Doom gained full access to the Scarlet Witch’s reality-warping powers, and the first thing he does is heal his face.

Even with his powers, he’s going on with his usual goals.

I’ve had nothing but high praise for the artwork in this series, but come on, this is NOT an acceptable shortcut!

I find the idea that Doom can’t undo Wanda’s spell and give powers back to the mutants… weird.
I guess there’s nothing that directly contradict it, since we don’t exactly know how these powers work, but it doesn’t really fit the narrative.

Wanda tries to convince Doom to surrender his powers, since they made her go insane.
Interesting to see Doom using the argument that he’s less susceptible because he doesn’t have a “gentle soul”.

Last issue left things vague about whether Doom really cared for Wanda or if he was only after stealing her powers.
The fact that he’s still asking her to marry him either means that he actually DID fall in love with her, or it’s the effects of taking her powers.

Even more surprisingly, SHE seems to have some genuine feelings for him.
Of course it could be that she’s SO fixated on getting rid of those powers that she can marry him anyway, but she did seem to care for him last issue.

She should have known better than to tell DOCTOR DOOM that he can’t control ultimate power.
Even if, by my count, he’s already lost ultimate power eleven times.

But this time ultimate power has mellowed him a little, since he just teleports Wanda and the Young Avengers away.

I mentioned last time that the time travel shenanigans brought Ant-Man (Scott Lang) back to the present, skipping his death. It’s going to be VERY important later, because the Young Avengers decide NOT to bring him back to the past to die.

Then the X-Men show up to mess up everything, knocking out Scarlet Witch because they still blame her for House of M.

So let me get this straight.

Even after the X-Men learn that Doctor Doom was the one responsible for the disappearance of most mutants, NOT Scarlet Witch…

…THEY STILL BLAME HER???

You can tell Allan Heinberg is really fed up with the X-Men literal Scarlet Witch Hunt…

…especially when he drops THIS BOMB.

I think I literally CHEERED when I read someone FINALLY making this argument!!!

Then Doom decides to come back to fix everything. I guess he wouldn’t be satisfied without an audience.

He even offers to resurrect the dead, including several heroes that were dead at the time.
A bit hilarious considering we later learn that Wasp wasn’t dead, just stuck in the Microverse.
I’m pretty sure Nightcrawler was also stuck in another dimension.
And of course Jean Grey came back to life as well, that’s her thing now.

That’s all well and good, but this being Doctor Doom you already know the catch.

Which leads to, of course, a big dumb fight with several superhero teams going up an omnipotent giant-size Doctor Doom with an unscarred face.

I think we’ve been here before.

The Young Avengers are understandably overwhelmed.

The solution is pretty obvious: Scarlet Witch and Wiccan will drain Doom’s powers, sending them back to the source.
But Ant-Man takes the baffling decision to be the one to distract Doom.

Why would he think this would work???

This makes his daughter Stature so mad that she grows giant-size to tackle Doom on her own.

It works just about as well.

Opening the portal to the source seems to make Doom even more high…

…but it’s just temporary: once the spell is over, his powers are drained and he’s back to normal.
Well, he’s back to Doom anyway.

This was quite rough on Doom; his pride took more of a hit than you’d expect.

Last time I analyzed how, if taken at face value, this series says that Scarlet Witch wasn’t responsible for House of M but that she DID cause Avengers: Disassembled.
So I believe this is Doom taking the blame for Disassembled because he’s trying to redeem Wanda, who doesn’t seem to believe him.

And so Doom leaves the miniseries, rejecting Wanda so harshly that you KNOW he was emotionally hurt by all this.

Now, if this was the end of the series, it would get nearly perfect scores.

But the last page of issue 8 reveals that Stature is dead.

I didn’t skip a panel or anything: THIS was the moment Doom killed her.

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Avengers: Children’s Crusade #9 (2012)
by Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung

Even if it’s on the cover AND if this is arguably the issue with the most impact on future Doom stories, Doctor Doom himself doesn’t show up.

That’s actually a good question, Ant-Man… HOW did Doom kill her???
There was NOTHING in the panels they fought that indicated he was using lethal force!

Also Ant-Man didn’t even die, because he want microscopic when Doom hit him.

We’re not even done messing up the Young Avengers, because Iron Lad throws a temper tantrum and destroys the latest version of Vision.
He’ll get better.

And apparently this might be when he turns evil?

And even after all this THEY’RE STILL ARGUING IF WANDA IS TO BLAME!!!

Oh for crying… WE JUST WENT OVER THIS!!!

DO I HAVE TO SHOW THE PANEL AGAIN???

Captain America of course offers Scarlet Witch a chance to come back, BECAUSE HE’S NOT A JACKASS LIKE CYCLOPS, but she refuses.

I’m pretty sure Scarlet Witch has yet to lead the Avengers after this, but other than that Madrox is right.

Oh yeah, almost forgot that this entire discussion has been going on WHILE STANDING IN FRONT OF TWO CORPSES.
One of which IS ON FIRE.

It’s a very depressing last issue, with the dissolution of the original incarnation of the Young Avengers.

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Doom significance: 6/10
The fact that Doom killed Stature will be the focus of TWO of his storyline, a truly horrible one and a decent one. She’ll eventually return in one of those.

Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Definitely not.

Does it stand the test of time?
There’s a VAST difference here!!!
Issue 8: 9/10
If it wasn’t for the last page revelation it would have the same high standard of the rest of the series. And you have no idea how glad I was that someone FINALLY showed the X-Men (and to a lesser extent the Avengers) just how MASSIVELY hypocritical they are.
Issue 9: 2/10
Okay WTF was up with that last issue??? Its mood is COMPLETELY different from the others and the heroes unlearn lessons they already learned IN THIS SERIES.
Stature’s death really feels like it was an editorial mandate for how little it connects to anything else: she wasn’t even a main character in the previous 7 issues.
Plus her death doesn’t make a whole lot of sense: we know Doom CAN use lethal force in a battle, especially if he’s beind disrespected, but… in that scene it’s pretty obviously supposed to be a warning shot before he gets serious, and you mean to tell me THAT killed her???

It was a Doombot all along
You’re kidding, right?

Take over the world: 28
It’s been quite a while since the last time this was Doom’s priority, but it’s the second thing he wants to do with his powers (after healing his face).

Number of superheroes who have fought Dr. Doom: 115
X-Factor is among the heroes; some from the team haven’t fought Doom before so I’m adding Madrox, Strong Guy and Rictor. Jessica Jones is with the Avengers now, but I don’t see her in the fight scence so she’s not in the count.

Crazy tech
Nothing this time, it’s all magic.