Young Avengers #14 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

"You're Billy &%&$%&%%^$^&$&$ Kaplan.  Own it."

I could probably just end this review there, but I'll continue.  This issue does what it promises, as the Young Avengers and their friends take stock of the events of this series so far and try to figure out how the pieces of their lives all fit together now.

The Billy/David/Teddy triangle (not surprisingly) has the happiest resolution:  Billy and David make a certain amount of peace and Billy tells Teddy that he couldn't have invented him because he couldn't have dreamed that he could love anyone as much as he does Teddy.  (Awww.)

Unfortunately, the Kate and Noh-Varr story doesn't have anywhere near as happy of a resolution.  In fact, it might actually become its own triangle, given the surprise appearance of Tommy, who interrupts a quiet moment between Kate and Noh-Varr and delivers Kate her New Year's kiss.  Tommy's presence goes unexplained, but I'm sure that we'll learn more next issue.

My favorite moment, though, is the one that involves the above quote.  Billy contemplates Teddy (looking pretty studily handsome) from a distance and wonders if David wouldn't be better for him and if he's being selfish keeping him.  At that moment, America tells him that he'll never be Captain America or Thor or Iron Man or his mom.  He has to be Billy Kaplan.  It's a great exhortation, to just be the best version of who you are, particularly since you happen to be pretty awesome in the first place.  Captain America might be more studily handsome than Billy, but he's not the Demiurge.  In other words, he's not Billy &%&$%&%%^$^&$&$ Kaplan.  Although it helps Billy, it doesn't America.  We learn that Billy not only created her, but her whole universe, the Utopian Parallel, the "purest incarnation of the Demiurge's breath, a land born of his final unwinding of magic."  But, she left this paradise after her moms died defending it.  Why'd she leave?  Because you can't make Utopia a better place.  She's on Earth to be like the people who inspired her, like her moms and Billy.  It's remarkably powerful, even though (or maybe because) America realizes that Billy, her maker, is an idiot, "like the rest of us."  As I said last issue, America is the character that I most hope shows up somewhere else so that we can learn more about her.

Overall, this issue feels valedictory, as, no doubt, will the next one.  In fact, I'm starting to feel like Gillen has done something really remarkable with this series, namely, make you realize that we might not need the Young Avengers anymore.  Maybe they're just Avengers now.  I'm not saying that they're adults, but this 15-issue season, as Gillen calls it, has left them different.  They can't go back to who they were, so it raises all sorts of questions about where they're going.  I can't wait to see.

**** (four of five stars)

Also, for posterity's sake, here's a copy of the playlist that Kieron Gillen recommends for this issue:

http://kierongillen.tumblr.com/post/70378127796/the-young-avengers-afterparty-playlist