Arcade's Arena

I've yet to bring up Marvel's Avengers Arena during these posts and that's mostly because the series ended several months ago.  In AA a long-time X-Men foe, Arcade, has grown weary of his multitude of losses against the active super-hero community of the Marvel Universe. So on one of his many "29th" birthdays (which also happens to end with Arcade's hospitalization) The villain reads some books. The books are never actually named but I'm 100% positive that the books were Hunger Games and a Japanese manga series titled: Battle Royal.

I'm sure everyone knows what the Hunger Games is by this point, but Battle Royal is a manga series featuring a world where classes of students are randomly selected to fight each other to the death. Highlander rules apply: There can be only one.

Back to AA. Arcade finds inspiration in the pages of his books. After his hospitalization Arcade spends countless hours and money to convert his private island into what is essentially a teenage death-trap.

The fruit of Arcade's labor is an all or nothing  fight to the death between a number of Marvel's famous teen heroes as well as  a few new-comers, and let me tell you, this thing gets brutal. That isn't to say this series was just mindless violence. While reading the series you begin to see that there is a reason for each death. That the deaths serve a purpose to the greater story. (Well maybe except for Red Raven, but who needs her anyway?)

Personally, i grabbed the series because of the appearance of Mettle, Hazmat, Reptil, and X-23  from the Avengers Academy series as well as Niko and Chase from The Runaways. (Sorry, they don't have super-hero names to identify them.) Cammie the teenage space-girl and Dark Hawk are also featured in the series for older fans.

So why even bring up Avengers Arena if the series is over? Aside from the title being a great read for any Marvel fan or even Hunger Games or Battle Royal fans, a sequel title has been released titled: Avengers Undercover. The series takes place three months after AA and the survivors are doing their bests to deal with life after AA. The events of which Arcade has posted to the internet. The series teases that these kids will be going undercover in the Masters of Evil for some reason or another. Who knows how the series will pan out, but i can say AU had a stellar first issue.