Issue #1: Giant-Sized Little Marvels: AvX (2015)

Listening To Random Musketeers (2002) Musketeer Space Part 59: The House of...

Issue #1: Giant-Sized Little Marvels: AvX (2015)

Title: Giant-Sized Little Marvels: AvX #1 (2015)

Writer: Skottie Young

Artist: Skottie Young

The Buzz: the buzz for this has been three years in the making – for ages now, the wonderfully quirky kids comic artist Skottie Young has been providing baby-faced ‘Little Marvels’ variant covers for many of the publisher’s most popular books – more than 100 in all. There was a great one-shot last year, A-Babies vs X-Babies which was crazy adorable, and now thanks to the excuse of Secret Wars (not sure why they needed this excuse honestly) it’s a real series!

All You Need To Know: The X-Men and Avengers are basically reimagined as pre-schoolers: they all live on the same street, and they fight each other a LOT. The cute… it… kind of hurts… awwwwwww.

Story: The A-babies and X-babies compete over who can set up the best street food, and just about everything else. Spider-Gwen is new in town, just in time to point out the thing no one else ever has about Tony’s goatee (why does he have a goatee???). Magik is cranky, Steve means well, Cable and Bishop are from the future but those totally aren’t real guns, Hulk is hungry and ooooh new neighbours. There’s no story here, just cuteness and toddler wars. Little Marvel Hawkeye and Little Marvel Black Widow are my favourite and my best.

Art: It’s Skottie Young! The work in this issue doesn’t quite rise to the same glories as A-Babies vs X-Babies as far as clever visual jokes etc., but it’s gorgeous stuff on every page, and so much fun to watch his inimitable baby versions of classic characters. Finally, Marvel is providing some serious competition to Tiny Titans.

But What Did I Miss?: If you haven’t read A-Babies vs X-Babies (found in the trade: Little X-Men, Big Trouble) get on that, seriously, it’s marvellous, you will never look at Captain America or Wolverine quite the same again. But you definitely don’t need to have read anything to come to this one as a new series. Like the Peanuts comics, no explanation necessary.

Would Read Issue 2?: oh yes

Read it if you Like: adorableness, Muppet Babies, Tiny Titans, joy and pre-schoolers.