West Coast Avengers #2
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeWest Coast Avengers Vol. 4 #2 is the issue in which Firestar formally joins the fourth incarnation of the team, making it her first full-issue debut as a West Coast Avenger and cementing her as a central figure in a series built around the novel premise of heroes mentoring redeemed villains. The issue is structurally significant because it immediately complicates that premise: the character recruited as a mentor is herself in psychological freefall, her ORCHIS undercover assignment having left lasting trauma that the series spends its entire opening arc unpacking — a story thread that functions as a direct, in-continuity sequel to Gerry Duggan's preceding X-Men run. At a franchise level, the issue arrives as the West Coast Avengers brand marks its 40th anniversary, and it represents Marvel's fourth attempt to sustain an ongoing series under that name, this time anchored by an explicitly post-Krakoa thematic framework of rehabilitation and moral ambiguity that distinguishes it from all three prior volumes.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The fourth volume of West Coast Avengers was conceived by writer Gerry Duggan as an extension of storytelling threads he had woven across his Iron Man and X-Men runs at Marvel — notably, the idea of a villain-rehabilitation team was first floated in Jim Rhodes's final scenes in Duggan's Iron Man series before being fully launched here. Artist Danny Kim, whose manga-inflected linework was a deliberate aesthetic choice distinguishing this volume from earlier iterations of the book, co-anchored the series from its November 2024 debut. The series was edited by Alanna Smith under editor-in-chief C. B. Cebulski, and issue #2 received a second printing, with a 1:25 Danny Kim virgin variant added to the second-print run alongside the regular and Annie Wu 'Window Shades' covers.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Story title: 'The Gospel of Ultron, Part Two' — part of the four-volume opening arc that runs through issue #5.
- Firestar (Angelica Jones) officially joins the West Coast Avengers roster in this issue, transitioning from guest appearance in #1 to confirmed team member.
- The issue establishes Firestar's post-ORCHIS PTSD and alcohol dependency as the primary character driver, directly carrying over unresolved trauma from Duggan's X-Men 'Fall of X' storyline.
- Blue Bolt (Tommy Watt, operating under the alias Chad Braxton) — an all-new character created by Gerry Duggan and Danny Kim and first introduced in WCA Vol. 4 #1 — continues as a core cast member; his name is a nod to the 1940 Joe Simon public-domain character Blue Bolt.
- Written by Gerry Duggan, art by Danny Kim, main cover by Ben Harvey; variant covers by Federico Vicentini (Stormbreakers variant), Annie Wu (Window Shades variant), and Ron Lim (1:25 retailer incentive).
- Released in shops December 25, 2024, with a February 2025 cover date; the issue received a second printing in March 2025.
- The issue is collected in the trade paperback West Coast Avengers Vol. 1: The Gospel of Ultron (ISBN 978-1-302-96033-9), which gathers Vol. 4 #1–5.
- The series launched timed to the West Coast Avengers franchise's 40th anniversary, with Vol. 4 #1 debuting November 27, 2024 — the fourth ongoing series under the West Coast Avengers banner, following volumes from 1984–1994, 2018–2019, and 2025.
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Reprints
Reprinted in West Coast Avengers #1 (2025)
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