Teen Avengers are all the rage these days

Marvel Universe, how we long for thee. How we pine at our windowsills, baying at the moon like lovesick hounds, tears of anticipation caressing our cheeks as we long - we long - for June 10th and your release. But just what will end up in our hands? What cardboard adventurers do you bring forth? In other words, who the smeg is on the Avengers roster?

• Avengers week showed us Captain America and Vision.
• SHIELD week showed us Iron Man

It’s been hinted that we’ll be seeing a bunch of new Avenger goodness; what sort of deckbuilding viability will we have for times when Captain America and Iron Man weren’t on the roster at all? What about the time when the active team consisted of Sub Mariner, Wasp, Black Knight, Captain Marvel, Dr. Druid, and She Hulk?

Now, I know, I know - we’ve seen these characters before, all bearing the Avengers affiliation… heck, we’ve even seen a dual-affiliated Quasar, who’ll no doubt reappear with the United Front in MUN (Yay!)… but will we see the boundless fury of prepubescence trapped in the body of a steroid-overloaded luchador?

Will we see Elvin Haliday? Will we see…

Okay, so let’s talk about Elvin for a bit. The poster child for the angry black youth of Brooklyn, Elvin berated his way into the Avengers by playing, you guessed it, the race card. Don’t blame me, this is just the start of the bad writing that has plagued his comic existence.

Inducted as a reservist along with the Sandman, Elvin served with the team for several missions, including taking on Dr Doom, before  the Avengers found out that he was only freakin’ 14 years old. Are you seriously trying to tell me the Avengers don’t even bother doing a background check? I mean, sure, Sandman had reformed, but at least he’s old enough to be legally accountable for his own actions.

If you ask me, the Avengers should have some serious child endangerment questions to answer. It’s not even like Elvin was brought onto the team as a plucky sidekick - he was tossed into the front lines! 

Now, once this came out Elvin was demoted to Trainee status, and eventually split with the Avengers to hook up with Night Thrasher and the New Warriors after furthering the stereotype by boosting a Quinjet. Sure, his intentions were noble, but I can’t say I’m terribly surprised that the writers added Grand Theft Auto to his resume.

Rage eventually went back to school, putting his adventuring days behind him to further his studies - such that he turned down Speedball’s invitation to the newly reformed New Warriors. He did help out the Avengers now and then, including during the Disassembled fracas.

During the Civil War he sided with Cap and those who didn’t agree with the SHRA, though was publicly visible with his old teammate Justice when She-Hulk helped them track down Hindsight Lad, who was publicly outing the secret identities of his former teammates in a misguided attempt to do the same thing Deathtroke was trying to pull off in the early issues of the current Teen Titans series (ooh, DC reference) - stop kids putting on costumes by getting them killed. You’d think a guy named Hindsight Lad would be smarter than that… in hindsight at least.

Finally, Rage shows up in the Initiative, turning up at Camp Hammond for training in the SHRA’s teams. I guess being an angry young man just doesn’t get you as far as it used to.

So all of this brings us back around to the question. Will we see Rage in MUN?

We’ve had a splash of New Warriors in MTU; The designers obviously had a chance to include him, they opted not to.

MUN has a Civil War focus. Rage played no real part in the main Civil War shenanigans, though admittedly he is part of the Initiative that happened in its aftermath.

We’ve heard that there’ll be a teen team in MEV (that’s Evolution, for all of you unwashed who haven’t started guessing what its three-letter code will be yet). It could be the New Mutants, it could be the Runaways, it could be the New Warriors. My money’s on the Runaways, but hey, you never know.

Chances of seeing Rage in MUN? I’m a’thinkin’ not so good. Hey, I could be wrong, but I’m just not feeling it.