By Zeb Wells, Skottie Young & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9361-6
After a TV reality show starring superheroes went hideously wrong and resulted in the deaths of hundreds in Stamford, Connecticut, popular opinion turned massively against masked crusaders. The Federal government quickly instituted and mandated a scheme to licence, train and regulate all metahumans but the plan split the superhero community.
A terrified and indignant merely mortal populace quivered as a significant faction of their former defenders, led by the ultimate icon of Liberty, Captain America, refused to surrender their autonomy and, in many cases, anonymity to the bureaucratic vicissitudes of the Superhuman Registration Act.
The Avengers and Fantastic Four, bedrock teams of the Marvel Universe, fragmented in scenes reminiscent of America’s War Between the States, with “brother pitted against brotherâ€. As the conflict escalated it became clear to all involved that the increasingly bitter fighting was for souls as much as lives.
Both sides battled for love of Country and Constitution and both sides knew they were right…
So just how did that all come to pass?
A few years earlier – at least in comicbook time – a team of super-powered teenagers had got together to do good their way. Created by Tom DeFalco & Ron Frenz (before being assigned to Fabian Nicieza & Mark Bagley to spectacularly develop), the New Warriors consisted of a bunch of failed young super-doers led by Dwayne Taylor; a grim ‘n’ gritty kid millionaire with a grudge, a battle suit and tricked-out skateboard who called himself Night Thrasher (I still wince at the name…).
At inception, his select squad consisted of hyper-kinetic Speedball, mutant Firestar, telekinetic Vance Astrovic/Marvel Boy/Justice, a re-invigorated Nova, the Human Rocket, and Sub-Mariner’s niece Namorita: a line-up seemingly designed to flop, but one which swiftly proved the old adage about there being no bad characters, only bad handling…
They made their first appearance in Thor #411-412 before storming straight into their own title, and took the world by storm. However, over the following years their popularity waxed and waned as the membership roster changed. Eventually they broke up and went their separate ways.
In the summer of 2005 writer Zeb Wells and cartooning wunderkind Skottie Young (with some colouring assistance from Jean-Francois Beaulieu and letterer Randy Gentile) took the quirkily unconventional kid cadre in a whole new direction…
Collecting New Warriors volume 3 #1-6 (from August 2006 to February 2006) this wild and witty romp opens with ‘Pilot’ and sees the heroes on the road, bringing metahuman justice to the American hinterland.
It’s not their idea. As part of a Taylor Foundation refinancing deal, Night Thrasher has licensed his team to a Reality-TV company who are with them every moment as they voyage through the nation.
Although certain they’re sitting on Ratings-Gold, the producers have still insisted on a few changes to shore up the shaky demographics. So joining Thrasher, Nova, Namorita and Speedball is hulking, sweaty, pitiable nerd Microbe – a germ empath who has the strange ability to communicate with infinitesimal and single-celled life forms…
He also won’t shower in case he harms his little friends…
The show’s premise is simple. Lots of small towns have metahuman problems but no superheroes to tackle them. The Warriors will come to you and viewers get a fabulous intimate peek inside the glamorous world of costumed crusading…
Their first stop is Fairbury, Illinois where ferocious villains Tiger Shark and Armadillo have been quietly hiding since breaking out of super penitentiary the Vault. Opening the door to the strange new spandex-clad pizza delivery guy was their big mistake, but the camera crew’s constant demand for retakes is almost as fraught with peril…
In Salinas, Kansa everything seemed pretty hunky-dory until eccentric millionaire John Burrow decided to free the entire contents of his private zoo. By the time the Warriors roll up, the city is under siege by beasts acting far smarter than they should…
Plan A for dealing with the problem is then summarily scuppered by officious TV censor Erika Hopson whose strident efforts on behalf of S.P.O.T.A. (Society for the Protection of Television Animals) ensures the hairy escapists are treated with dignity and respect…
Vetoing Thrasher and Nova entirely, Erika ensures only the gentler-seeming members tackle the liberated critters in Burrow’s ‘Animal House’, but nobody told her the real cause of all the problems was the Red Ghost‘s cosmically empowered Super-Apes…
Driving their outside broadcast van through Kansas in ‘How Many Superheroes Does It Take…?’ the screen stars are fifty miles from Wichita when the next crisis erupts. With the bus broken the team are just chilling in the middle of nowhere and relating how they got sucked into this latest embarrassing idiocy, blithely unaware that elsewhere corporate Movers-&-Shakers are sharing secrets about Microbe and planning their next move to make the New Warriors the perfect team for their purposes…
That step materialises when demographically-ideal but appallingly obnoxious addition Debrii is foisted on the Warriors as they reach Nüponder, Minnesota in search of a strange creature stealing pets. The little paradise is a company town servicing a German-based automobile manufacturer but from the start the kids realise something isn’t right in ‘Nütown, Nücar, Nümember…’
Then, after the team barely survive an attack by their oldest enemy Terrax, Microbe’s little friends expose the true secret of the adoring, so-very-normal citizens, leading to a cataclysmic clash with the Machiavellian mechanoids of the Mad Thinker in ‘The New Warriors’ Excellent Adventure Episode 105: Nüponder, Michigan’…
The TV Show went on indefinite hiatus with a blockbusting finale in ‘The Valley of the Jerks: Episode 106: Smyrna, Delaware’ as the sadder, disgruntled but no wiser Warriors reached the East Coast in the middle of a snow storm, just in time to free a rustic rural hamlet from their own amplified bad attitudes and the malign shenanigans of the Corruptor as he schemes to extend his power-range by weaponising, exporting and disseminating his own mind-bending bodily fluids…
Fast, furious and outrageously funny, this book has precious little to do with the ponderous, po-faced and decidedly apocalyptic mega event Civil War, other than that their revived TV show trigged the Stamford massacre. It is, however, a hilariously clever and splendidly light-hearted peek at the sillier side of the Marvel experience and one both tried-&-true fans and fresh faced neophytes can enjoy equally… so go do that.
© 2005, 2006, 2015 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.