Enter The Heroic Age #1

Glimpses of various titles - - Avengers Academy, Atlas, Black Widow, Hawkeye & Mockingbird and Thunderbolts - - as they roll out for Heroic Age.
 

The Good

I give credit to Gage and McKone for making Reptil interesting in the Avengers Academy preview, as he's a really lame character. His dinosaur limb powers sound silly, but actually come off pretty well in execution. Believe it or not, you'll think Reptil's cool even when his head turns into a triceratops'. 
 
The Thunderbolts preview is another stand-out, mainly because of Kevin Walker's art. He's got a stylized, but sharp quality to his lines that reminds me of Steve McNiven in a good way. Also, even though it's really basic idea, this short caught the harder-edge superhero vibe I've always enjoyed about Thunderbolts.  
 
The Black Widow short focuses more on the spy side of the character and it's a fun compliment to what's going on her own title. The Hawkeye/Mockingbird short was an action movie on paper, with a real emphasis on daring, circus-style acrobatics and snappy one-liners. And the Atlas short was fun in revealing a new connection the Kree  have to these hidden characters' history.
 

The Bad

This is basically a collection of previews, so a lot of these glimpses are too short to be entirely satisfying. 
 

The Verdict - - 4/5

The aim is, of course, to entice you into trying five new books, rather than enjoying this on its own, so understand that going in. You do get a fun grab bag, offering different sub-genres under the superhero umbrella - - crime, action, espionage, and so on. I'd recommend this to anybody who's considering any of these five new books and needs some samples to decide which ones to pick up.