Marvel Voices: Pride #1 : “All My Exes in the Nexus”: A YA Nostalgia Trip (In the Best Way Possible)

Opening this year’s Marvel’s Voices: Pride anthology, “All My Exes in the Nexus” reunites four queer Young Avengers (Wiccan, Hulkling, America Chavez, and Loki) with humor and style. While this story doesn’t have a lot of depth, it’s a nostalgia trip for fans of Kieron Gillen and Jaime McKelvie’s Young Avengers run. For some readers, Stephen Byrne drawing America having breakfast in the diner where Young Avengers (2013) began is sure to be reason to smile. However, Byrne’s comparably realistic and rendered color choices (in comparison with Matt Wilson’s work on YA) serves as a subtle reminder that they’ve all grown older — and hopefully wiser. Writer Alyssa Wong does a delightful job of capturing the voices of these characters and it would be lovely to see Wong write them again.

“All My Exes in the Nexus” is both polished and ambitious. One such moment is at the story’s start: as the story begins with Loki taken hostage by a Scott Pilgrim-eque “League of Evil Exes,” Byrne depicts Loki hanging upside down in the position of the Hanged Man tarot card, symbolic of new perspectives, wisdom, and waiting for the right time. That said, the moments when Wong’s and Byrne’s ambitions fall short can make “All My Exes in the Nexus” a challenging read. For example, when the exes talk about Loki off page, their speech bubbles cleverly prod at his face, but this visual wit is slightly undermined by the fact that most of them aren’t shown speaking later, leaving it unclear who talked. Similarly, the issue’s one-page fight scene is ambitiously panelled, but not altogether successful. The layout, which places Wiccan, Hulkling, and America in the center of a ring of panels, is very nice to look at until it comes time to read it. The circle layout doesn’t have a definitive beginning or end panel, and seems to suggest that the page can be read in any order. However, in the process of reading, one finds certain panels do come after others. Another page (in the diner) is plagued with continuity errors (i.e. one minute America’s pancakes are full of china and in the next panel she’s eating them; her coffee cup disappears between panels, etc.). For all of its flaws, however, it’s still a charming and playful romp and an excuse to reunite one of Marvel’s only gay friend groups/superhero teams. It’s nice to have them back together, even if only briefly.