Trivia / Young Avengers

• Banned in China: Attempted in Brazil. In 2019, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro ordered The Children's Crusade to be banned from the Riocentro Bienal do Livro, Brazil’s most important literary event, because of the gay romance between Billy and Teddy. However, this massively backfired and caused the comic to sell out before any of the authorities could take it.
• Executive Meddling: Eli didn't show up in the 2013 run as he was under editorial embargo at the time, as a different writer had plans for him. Alas for poor Eli, however, Young Avengers came and went, and most of its members have gone on to other on-goings while Eli disappeared into Comic-Book Limbo. Eli didn’t return to the team until 2019 with Marvel Comics #1000.
• One-Hit Wonder: While Allan Heinberg is a very successful writer in the field of television and movies, Young Avengers remains his only big impact in the field of comics.
• Schedule Slip: To allow Jim Cheung to draw all of Children's Crusade, the limited series was released over a period of 18 months.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Hulkling was originally going to be a girl who posed as a man to fight crime and Wiccan would only be in love with the male alter ego, but Marvel was already doing something similar with Xavin from The Runaways, albeit with switched genders.
  • Avengers: The Children's Crusade was originally going to pick up right where the first volume left off in 2006, with the Young Avengers on the search for Scarlet Witch. However, Heinberg's busy TV schedule caused the storyline to be postponed all the way until 2010 when he could finally work on it. Given how much Marvel had changed during this time with all the events and status quo shifts, it's anyone's guess as to how different it would've been had it been made when intended.
  • From interviews you might get the impression Kieron Gillen wanted to create a much larger cast, but decided he wouldn't be able to tell a good story with it and cut it to bare minimum. He plans on slowly expanding it as the series goes on. He also wanted to use Eli, but was told another writer already called dibs on him.
  • The first attempt at a Young Avengers series dates back to the 90's, when Rob Liefeld and Jim Valentino pitched one. The series would have starred Namorita, Speedball, the teen Vance Astro (the character that ended up becoming Marvel Boy and then Justice), Firestar, and Torpedo (Richard Rider in a new identity after having lost his Nova abilities), as well as new characters Combat, Cougar, Brahma, Lynx, Rebound, Gridlock, Spectra, and Photon. The book was rejected in favor of the New Warriors, and many of the proposed new characters would later be recycled in various Image Comics books like Youngblood (Image Comics) and Shadowhawk.
• Word of Dante: It isn't quite clear if Wiccan and Speed are actually mutants. Just about every fan assumes so, which probably led to a few times that they've been referred to as mutants in the series. Wiccan's powers did activate when he was a young teen, and in the X-Men Bat Family Crossover Battle of the Atom, Wiccan is a part of the X-Men, so there's that.

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