Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog! We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week – beginning with twoAward postings, followed closely by the past week’s Best.

Quiet down, little ones. I’ve come to take all of your things.

All of your things.

There are very few happy moments that occur in the pages of teen superhero comics. More so than their “grown up” counterparts, a young character or team is usually treated with far less care. The reasoning is simple: you can take something from Spider-Man, but you know that in a few months, things will be as they have always been. Peter Parker endures. A teen superhero in the modern comic landscape should be so lucky to grow up and become Spider-Man. Instead, they are often treated as fodder or things to be broken, their effects on those around them much more potent than their existence.

It’s understandable. When you’re young, everything is heightened. Joy, loss, love, etc, it’s all the most important thing that’s happened to you. Connections formed are so important to the young that it causes a larger scar when they are ripped apart. This comic, this group, these creators and these characters, they aren’t that. They’re something new, something different. Something better.

This party, you guys. This amazing, wonderful party. A chance to unwind, a chance to dance, a chance to say good-bye and greet the future. As Noh-Var looks fondly towards the past, through the lens of Kate and close harmony girl groups, he makes a decision. He lives with his mistakes, having been previously made, and looks forward. A hopeful smile pokes through the dark of the past as the sounds of Daft Punk bump and sway through the crowd.

More than anything else in the issue, Marvel Boy at the DJ stand really accentuates what this series was. It wasn’t regressive, it was progressive. The past was prologue and nothing more, everything moving forward, always forward. The remainder of the issue also hits upon some key ideas as well. As the party ends and the gang begin to make their way home, sexual preference is mentioned with an eye roll. With a coy smile, Gillen and McKelvie and the characters shrug at compartmentalizing such a complex idea and let its nature ebb and flow around everything and everyone.

The series ends with breakfast, and the start of a new year. Whatever is next, I hope it’s as wonderful and vibrant and new as all of this - and I hope that, once more, nobody needs to die. Dying is so 2012.

This issue was written by the incomparable Kieron Gillen, and rendered lovingly by the equally talented Becky Cloonan, Jordie Bellaire, Ming Doyle, Joe Quinones, Maris Wicks, Jamie McKelvie and Matthew Wilson. Lettering by VC’s Clayton Cowles.

A special C!TB shout-out goes to Lauren Sankovitch, who is sadly leaving Marvel. You helped fascilitate some of our favourite comics, and for that, we are forever grateful.