In 2005, the New Warriors returned. As a 6-issue mini-series. Where the team star in a reality show about traveling the country in an RV, fighting crime where they find it. Except they're maybe not very good at it, and the show might not even get picked up by the network?
It's hard for me to divorce the mini-series itself from how, a year later, Mark Millar would use this as pretext to make the Warriors sacrificial lambs for the monument to dumbassery disguised as topical commentary known as Civil War. Maybe Millar would have used the New Warriors anyway, but the fact their most recent comics appearance was them fighting crime for ratings, and generally not looking competent in the process, certainly didn't help.
Now, in Wells and Young's defense, the Warriors - Night Thrasher (now rocking a trenchcoat and jet boots), Nova (sleeveless for some reason), Namorita (blue again, but with white hair and Atlantean tattoos), Speedball (now with bubble lenses instead of goggles), and new characters Microbe and Debrii - actually want to help people. The pretext of the first issue is Tiger Shark and Armadillo escaped the Vault while shackled together and have taken up residence in a house in a small town. The cops are outclassed, and their call to the FF two months ago has gone unanswered. So here are the New Warriors, putting their necks on the line to catch the bad guys and protect this town.
In general, the team veterans are often annoyed by the TV people asking them not to fly so high, or for Speedball to bounce slower because the camera guy can't keep up. But, because this is making fun of "reality TV", and Young's art runs to exaggeration for comedic effect, the Warriors don't manage any clean wins. A zoo in Kansas is taken over by the Super-Apes (emancipated from the Red Ghost), who are raising the intelligence of all the other animals. The Warriors don't win so much as the parody of a person concerned with animal rights barges in and claims these poor apes don't understand what they're doing. The Super-Apes are so offended by this they don't want to fight any longer.
(I almost used a splash page from that issue of Nova and Thrasher fighting zoo animals while Nova demands to know who threw a banana.)
Issues 4 and 5 are the Warriors being invited to a town in Minnesota where pets are being abducted by Terrax. Turns out the whole thing is a scheme by androids based on historical figures - Freud, Virginia Woolf, Einstein, da Vinci - built and abandoned by the Mad Thinker, who want to take over the world, and figure the Warriors are so weak, they'll be a good test run for more challenging super-teams. Like the Great Lakes Avengers. The Warriors are bailed out by Debrii, put on the team by the producer to introduce more conflict in the "cast." Unknown to them, the entire town is androids, so the Warriors didn't really accomplish anything.
Nova's still apparently worried about trying to make it to the "big leagues" which, given what he'll be mixed up in within a year or so (Annihilation), is a prime example of being careful what you wish for Namorita joins because being part of the Atlantean royal family is boring, and at least she can do something useful this way. Night Thrasher agreed to this in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy for the Taylor Foundation, though he doesn't tell anyone that (the whole arrangement, and Dwayne's unwillingness to talk about why causes friction between he and Nova again, which is probably good for ratings.) Speedball's just bored.
Microbe gets a sad backstory and a couple of opportunities to be useful in his own way. Debrii gets introduced in the back half of the mini-series, so there's no time to progress much past "angry young black woman with some telekinesis." She refers to herself in the 3rd-person, but there's no chance for backstory or her motivation. She mentions being from New York at one point, so how'd the producer find her for this? Is she after fame, did she just want out of the city to see new places? No idea. Aren't reality shows supposed to do backstories that make you love or hate the people involved?
2 comments:
Yeah, I remember quite liking this series -- Skottie Young's art helps -- but my gosh you're right, what comes after really does sour it.
I feel like, if I'd read this when it came out, I'd probably have liked it, and then just been annoyed at Millar. Picking it up years after Civil War - and years after tons more stuff making fun of reality TV had come out - did not do it any favors.
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