Joe Quinones

America Chavez is an amazing character. It's quite unfortunate that she is treated as little more than a ball caroming all over the place in this pinball machine of a story. I think the author wanted to give us high energy but crossed the line into frenetic. To randomly and awkwardly switch metaphors, in this book we are given a drop of Hogwarts, a splash of lucha libre wrestling, a bucketful of time travel, a drenching of hackneyed motivational speech pep talks, and a flood of nonsense. show more While disappointed, I'm willing to try a second volume simple because America is so likeable. show less

Okay. I sorta went into this thinking that it was somehow related to the New 52 reboot of DC Comics, and so I was a little confused when the old style Ollie showed up, and the storylines for Dinah especially didn’t seem to totally sync with the New 52 timeline. Of course, when I realized that this was an Original Graphic Novel that people had been planning to make for years and years, everything made much more sense. So, to others in the same boat, this TPB takes place before the New 52 show more semi-reboot of the DC Universe.

And it’s awesome!

A female team up book. There just aren’t enough of them out there unfortunately. And, I really liked the fact that this was a female team up without Wonder Woman in it. I get that Wonder Woman is popular, but, it always annoys me that people treat her like she’s the only, only female in the entirety of the DC Universe.

The two characters in this TPB, Black Canary aka Dinah Lance and Zatanna are a couple of my favorite (non-Wonder Woman) female characters in the DC Universe, and, as an added bonus it even has just the right amount of Ollie in there too. The scene where he and Dinah are bantering about whether he’s her sidekick or ‘backup’ cracked me up.

I also thought that the Zatanna/Dinah banter and their friendship was really well done in this TPB also. The flashbacks were cool, especially the one that was on Mt. Everest. And though they weren’t directly connected to the main story (of Dinah trying to uncurse herself as well as those of some other people she worked undercover with) they didn’t seem totally out of place either.

And then there was the end, and the fight between Zatanna and Black Canary (not all is as it seems in this book, ever). I’m not sure that I’ve seen a fight scene quite like that, ever, in a comic book. And I really liked it. It could have gotten very confusing, but, somehow the writer and artist managed to keep us looking where we were supposed to, and understand what was going on. As I said. It was awesome!

I got this advanced galley through Netgalley on behalf of DC Entertainment. show less

This felt disjointed and the artistic change mid-volume threw me. I think if I had been more familiar with the character I would have liked this better. But the level of weirdness was fairly high so that it was sink or swim for much of this. Still, I liked it enough to continue with Volume 2.

America Chavez, formerly of the Young Avengers, currently leader of the Ultimates, is about to go to college. Of course, this isn’t without its difficulties and drama. Her girlfriend breaks up with her, robots try to steal research from the school, and old flame resurfaces, and a mysterious old woman appears. This volume includes the first six issues of the series and gives a good introduction to America, if you haven’t encountered her before. (You should totally read Young Avengers show more though.) America Chavez is one of my favorite Marvel characters. She takes no crap from anyone and has the ability to punch portals to other dimensions into existence. Seriously. No one is cooler than America Chavez.
I love this character, so I was already sold on the book before it even released. I especially appreciate the fact that Marvel actually hired a queer Latina woman to write a book starring a queer Latina character. That’s not often how things work out in world of comics. Also, Joe Quinones’ art is beautiful. The story here isn’t terribly deep, but elements of it are definitely satisfying. I particularly enjoyed the parts with Kate Bishop (AKA the best Hawkeye) as Kate and America’s friendship is so much fun to watch play out. Volume 2 came out recently, so I’m definitely going to dive into that shortly. show less