New Warriors #10 Review
Okay, things are hurrying along in both my life and the story, so let’s hop right into my review of New Warriors #10.
The comic begins with the High Evolutionary and the other guy extracting DNA from a deviant they captured inside of the Arctic Circle, before they get into a bitching match when the New Warriors track them down with their own tech and begin their final battle with the two who tried to kill them to end all off-shoots of humanity. High Evolutionary takes Sun Girl because she did screw him over while the rest clean up the mooks, but Haechi backs her up. The fight actually goes well until Hummingbird peeks into his brain to see exactly he’s afraid of.
His fears are that the Celestials will kill the human race, seeing them as a failed experiment, which they’ve already tried and failed to do in Uncanny Avengers before. I’m not seeing the problem here, but either way the vision basically gives High Evolutionary a second wind and he downs half the team before throwing Scarlet Spider into a device to lock him out of the fight, proclaiming he wants to save the human race and he’s going to use their team to power his gene bomb. Justice decides it’s time to call in back-up and brings the Cat and Dog duo armed with guns.
But not just any guns, these were made by High Evolutionary to de-evolve things, made to fight the Evolutionaries. Combined with Hummingbird’s emotion manipulation, it basically turns the two on one another while they mop up the rest and it seems like the New Warriors are going to win. Then the cat takes a blow for the dog that turns him into ashes, thus pissing everyone off or leaving them in shock. The lead evolutionary wisely decides to try and kill Hummingbird while her back is turned and she’s grieving, but Scarlet Spider shoots him and puts an end to that.
So it appears the day is saved, right up until the children of the Celestials who popped up in the cliffhanger of a previous chapter, the Eternal Children, show up and tell them they’ve come to save humanity from them. Round 2 next issue.
Okay, review time.
This issue basically picks up where it should have after that fiasco with the Avengers. From what I know the series has like two issues left, so they have to wrap things up, meaning that they’re going to skip over all that crap with Namora from the look of it. Still, it was a solid issue and they didn’t drag it out.
4 out of 5.
New Warriors #5 Review
Late and last but still here, it’s my review of New Warriors #5.
The comic opens up in the aftermath of the battle, with two figures musing on it from the shadows while playing chess and stating that the when the Celestials come everyone will die, but this mysterious figure can stop them as it is older than the space gods once freed from its prison and the New Warriors will be the instruments to do so..
The New Warriors, in the mean time, are cleaning up the mountain they were brought to when they faced off against the Lord High Evolutionary while trying to get home. At least half the team are anyway, Justice, Namora, and Scarlet Spider. Justice presses both Scarlet Spider and Namoria’s buttons by comparing them to their counterpart (Kaine) and insisting that Namora is their ally Namorita, Him being bossy isn’t doing wonders for team unity, especially not when Namora is hallucinating some horror movie stuff involving hanging corpses of the team.
Sungirl, Speedball, and Hummingbird go down into the village to check on the people there, and Hummingbird uses her powers to pick up a new language and that these mountains are apparently haunted. So much weird stuff happens that they don’t even bother getting freaked out anymore. Speedball decides that it’s time for a lunch break then.
We then switch back and forth between Justice and Speedball’s recruiting attempts. Justice is having a harder time because not only are they dealing with an anthropomorphic cat person trying to claw them to death, but Scarlet Spider and Namora just aren’t interested. Speedball pretty much acts hyped up in getting the lowdown on his three, right up until Hummingbird starts asking improper questions like does Speedball still cuts himself from his time as Penitence. It turns out from her point of view he looks like he does back then, because of his self-loathing and her powers, making it awkward as hell.
Eventually the fighting ends when they corner the cat person and, before Scarlet Spider can get to stabbing it, a dog person begs them to spare them. Turns out they were New Men, created by Lord High Evolutionary until he decided to kill them all and the two of them escaped. The cat, Felinatus, is kind of a dick, but Cannus manages to convince Scarlet Spider not to kill him by the time the rest of the team arrives.
They’re all ready to leave and the dog person knows how to work the teleporter, but they end up transporting the entire mountain to New York as the comic ends, so you can guess the Avengers might have some questions about that next time.
Okay, review time.
Just dealing with the fallout of last issue, we get some tidbits about what the future holds and the secrets of the other characters. Speedball is still broody and dark despite his act, something Aracely finds attractive. Namora has some kind of dark magic related past involving sacrifice, and Kaine is…well, Kaine.
An okay issue at 3 out of 5, would have been 4 if the art didn’t suck.
New Warriors #2 Review
The second entry into the newest incarnation of the New Warriors series is out and I’m here with my review of the comic issue. So let’s start shall we?
The issue picks up with an Inhuman riding a train in New York that comes to a crashing halt. Naturally he had nothing to do with it, but this is the Marvel Universe so he’s automatically to blame. He flees before they can gather a lynch mob to get him, only to run across Sungirl facing off against the evolutionaries to defend the mutants that were under attack last issue.
At the same time in New Salem, Vertigo and Justice are under attack by the same force. They explain that they once defended mutants but were betrayed by them, just as Speedball and Brutacus show up. Brutacus gets taken down fairly easily and they get ready to take him in for gene-sampling when Justice takes off the kid gloves and levels the mouthy evolutionary, asking for answers to what was going on as they retreat.
In Mexico, Scarlet Spider starts a fight with Faira on the assumption that she was responsible for the slaughter. She kicks his ass quickly and is about to drown him when Humming Bird does her fear thing and calms the situation down long enough for her to explain the situation. Atlantis was in the middle of a fight with Deviant forces when the evolutionaries showed up and started slaughtering them all, so she came to the surface for heroes and he started attacking her. Scarlet Spider wants nothing to do with things, but naturally the bad guys show up at that moment deciding to get the Clone (Kaine), Demigod (Aracely), and Atlantian (Faira).
Going back to Speedball and Justice, they arrive at the Avengers Tower in New York to search their database to learn about the enemy. A general overview of the past encounter with the X-Men is given and Cyclops warns that they should be considered an extinction-level threat. An alert then goes out requesting help due to an incident in the subway and they decide to jump in.
In the subway, the evolutionaries stop their slaughter for a moment to try and reason with Sungirl by stating they only want to protect her kind (humanity) by eliminating….well, everything else. She’s a hero so she can’t let that happen, so they are left with no choice but to attack her when the Inhuman from before, Mark, shows up and eats their energy blast. Then Justice and Speedball show up, so the evolutionaries decide to retreat.
As the comic ends, we find Nova in a containment field with the High Evolutionary, who states he intends to have him help cleanse the earth of all impure beings before the Celestials return.
Okay, review time.
No complaints overall, it’s a solid issue that picks off where the previous one left off. The art is nice and crisp, while the plot is progressing nicely with no wasted panels. We have a general idea of what’s going on and we can see the future team coming together nicely, with more of their personalities fleshed out.
You can see how Sungirl is still new at the hero thing, while Justice is clearly the most experienced. Mark was basically just thrown into things, but he didn’t hesitate to help stop a kid from falling when the train stopped or helping Sungirl. Kaine is still a hot-head with a potty mouth while Faira makes it clear she’s a rather skilled combatant and Aracely is playing peace-keeper.
It gets a solid 5 out of 5 and I recommend it for purchase.
New Warriors #1 Review
I came for the Scarlet Spider and I stayed for what seemed to be the great beginnings of a new series to read. So, armed with some rudimentary knowledge of all but Kaine and his side-kick, join me as I review the first issue of the New Warriors.
The opening panel reveals a bloody trail, being left behind as a clearly sentient half-bull humanoid creature is trying to crawl its way to safety and past the fallen corpses of its brethren, all while asking why this happened. A voice tells it to try not to speak, but it asks why their kind were being killed and what was it that they did that was so wrong it warranted their deaths. The figure that was responsible for the slaughter states they did nothing wrong, but they were never meant to exist and judgment befalls even the innocent. And then it kills the innocent being while claiming for the sake of humanity’s survival…
So basically it’s following the creed of virtually every Purifier in existence.
The scene then skips to New Salem, where Speedball and Justice are continuing their road trip from leaving Avengers Academy and are engaging in combat with a group called the Salem Seven. It turns out, much like most brawls between heroes, that it all began with a misunderstanding when Speedball attacked one of their more frightening members because of how he looked. That’s profiling, something that you would think a hero would know better than to do.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, Kaine and Aracely continue their vaunt through the land south of the border after the events of the Scarlet Spider series when they come across a couple of tourist being mugged. Kaine, after being coerced into it by Aracely, dawns his outfit and doles out brutal justice by stabbing his stinger through one of the muggers’ wrist, giving the other the Mark of Kaine (use sticky power with hand on face and then pull away for maximum pain and scar), and Aracely finishes it up by inducing the other into running with her powers over emotions by giving him a fear of spiders. He then yells at the tourists he saved, telling them to get out of Mexico, keeping with his nature during his time in Houston.
Back in New York, aka Hero Central, Sun Girl takes down some punk robbing an armored truck. She then goes in search for more crime, although when she hears the name Spider-Man she feels disgusted because she was there in the Team-Up series when his mind-control over the Sinister Six failed and…well, Otto left a bad impression. She then heads over to Grand Central station when an explosion goes off since she was close by.
Back in New Salem, Speedball somehow managed to dig himself out of trouble and ends up playing games with the guy trying to kill him while Vertigo gives Justice a tour of New Salem. It turns out it’s a town of magicians and a safe haven for people born of magic. The Salem Seven were known as the Children of the Devil and have changed in an attempt to make it safe, which for some reason makes me think of Nico Minoru and the Runaways.
Justice, on the other hand, as part of the New Warriors has to deal with the stigma associated with their group being the cause of the Civil War Crossover Event and the Hero Registration that made Iron Man and Mister Fantastic Fans afraid to admit it when they kept kicking the dog. Speedball pushed a guy with explosive powers into a bus full of school children and, since the guy was juiced up on some super MGH, he killed everything nearby including elementary kids. That royal fuck-up has not been forgotten, but before either one can talk any further some flaming guys come in and say to burn them all for having tainted blood with one being a half-breed (Vertigo), and the other being a Mutant (Justice).
Back in Mexico Kaine and Aracely are catching some rays on a beach with money he stole from drug traffickers before he left Houston. Aracely wants to be doing something heroic with their powers, saying it’s their responsibility, but Kaine states he tried that in Houston and it nearly got all the people he cared for killed in what was the result of sleeping with a girl whose father he put into a coma, Kraven gutting a doctor and pissing off his cop husband, and turning into a big-ass spider monster to settle things with the climatic villain that came out of nowhere. Unfortunately his vacation comes to an end when a bunch of dead Atlantians dye the water red with their blood as one survivor, Faira Sar Namora, pops out and says she is seeking heroes…he can’t win.
Sungirl goes to check out the situation and sees that the flaming guys from New Salem are also in the subway, killing what appears to be either mutants, aliens, or inhumans. Not too clear on which one. They also appear to kill an Alien who was harassing Nova, only for the guy from the beginning who killed the bull people to shoot him in the back and claim they have plans for the Alien-Hybrid (Nova), ending the issue on a cliff-hanger.
Okay, review time.
Now my knowledge is limited to what I can gleam off wikia on the villains of the piece, but the Evolutionaries were the species that came before humans until an advance race took pity on them and gave them upgrades before assigning them to protect the species furthest along the evolutionary chain, which were mutants before. That included a plan to wipe out humanity, something that would make them the Anti-Bastions, but Cyclops killed all but one of them supposedly. I’m thinking they got reprogrammed in the wake of the Inhumanity event, but I can’t be certain until the plot unfolds.
Like I said before I came for the Scarlet Spider, but the majority of the cast seems interesting, the art is lovely, and I liked the interaction between Vertigo and Justice. The plot is akin to virtually every anti-mutant one I’ve read, but it’s too early to label it as such and the destination isn’t as important as the journey when it comes to plots. So I’m willing to give it a chance and an 5 out of 5 rating for an opening issue.
Twilit Dreams Circle 