The 75-issue run of the first volume of New Warriors can be split into 3 creative chunks: Nicieza/Bagley, Nicieza/Darick Robertson, and Evan Skolnick/Patrick Zircher, each between 20-30 issues (give or take a few issues with guest artists.) I only have 14 of the last 50 issues, evenly split between the latter two teams, so we're handling them all in one go.
The overarching theme of those 50 issues could be, "growing up is hard." It seemed like the Warriors had things pretty well under control after they stopped Tai's plans and Night Thrasher got to avenge his parents' deaths with the help of his friends. But things start going south soon after. The Warriors return to the States to learn Marvel Boy was found guilty and is getting sent to the Vault. Chord's still got brain damage from his attempted suicide, which is difficult for Silhouette, since he's her dad. Rage gets kicked out of the Avengers for swiping a Quinjet to help the Warriors (and then the Quinjet gets stolen from them.)
Namorita takes over a team leader while Thrasher gets her head straight, and it doesn't go well. They get involved in a civil war in Trans-Sabal (the nation I think Peter David created in his Incredible Hulk run, where Rick Jones assassinated the tyrannical god-king), and makes some not-great decisions in a situation more complicated than they were ready for. She's one of the Warriors that gets controlled by a guy with a deep connection to the Darkforce Dimension, and then her body starts mutating, setting off a long-series of writers and artists shifting her between white-skinned and blue-skinned looks. She also trusts the wrong guy, the team's identities get leaked, and Rage's grandmother is killed, while Firestar's ends up in the hospital.
Garthan Saal shows up looking for Nova's bit of the Nova Force, and ready to destroy the Earth to get it, which sets off a theme of Rider losing his powers, then getting them back (he goes through that cycle at least twice in the last 3 years of the book.) Vance gets paroled, now calling himself "Justice", then joins into whatever that thing was where the "Gamesmaster" had people targeting New Mutants and Hellions. The team gets caught in a war across time between two Sphinxes, Original Sphinx, and the lady Sphinx that did the time-warping in the Nicieza/Bagley run.
The team gets involved in a conflict in a different country during Skolnick's run, and she's presumed dead, but the mastermind of the thing (who Zircher draws like the Timmverse Batman's Clayface, but with big sharp team and goes by "Protocol") actually sticks something in her neck that makes her his puppet. That takes about 20 issues to resolve. Something's up with Speedball's powers, and a girl shows up with dire visions of his future.
The roster swells to the point they had a cover (issue 51) with all the characters straining to fit. Dagger's on there, Darkhawk, too. During Skolnick's run, Alex Power swipes his siblings' abilities and joins as "Powerpax" (groan.) The Scarlet Spider joins, which seems to have been the book getting lumped into the "Spider-Man" family of books at the time. Skolnick tries setting up a love triangle between Scarlet, Firestar, and Justice, but I can't tell it ever got anywhere. Eventually he brings the Dire Wraiths into play, which I guess sort of makes sense, given two characters were sharing the Torpedo armor (calling themselves Turbo) since early in the Nicieza/Robertson run.
In a bit of a surprise, Skolnick brings back the Mad Thinker, referencing his appearance in the 3rd issue of the series, when he was hired by Gentech to investigate the Warriors, but clearly had his own motives for doing so. What Skolnick reveals is the Thinker has a nephew with powers dangerous to himself that he gained because he got too close to one of the Thinker's experiments. The Thinker can't cure him, and the kid already killed his mom with these powers, so he'd hoped the Warriors could help him learn control. But, as he puts it, they became hardened faster than anticipated, 'youthful exuberance' eclipsed by 'grim ferocity.'
Well, yeah, it's rough out there for the young hero teams. The old guard never go away, due to marketing and sales demands.
No comments:
Post a Comment