New Warriors #12 (Final Issue) Review
New Warriors final issue! How will the team come back from the jaws of defeat! Read on and find out!
Okay, so the issue starts with the device going off and Justice rushing towards where they were, thinking how his team were the only ones ready but they weren’t enough to handle the threat. He’s talking to someone else, by the way.
Anyway, the teams seemed screwed until Justice mans the hell up and gives us the best line in the series with “It’s time for you to face Justice”. Round two goes off much better with Justice revealing the Celestials were not coming to the planet and he went ahead and confirmed it, meaning they’ve been trying to commit genocide for nothing. This puts Zuras’ lying ass in a tight spot, to which he promptly blames the High Evolutionary and escapes judgement with a stern warning.
So the day is saved and as the comic ends we see Justice was talking to Old Steve with plans to expand.
Okay, review time.
To cover the issue, I have to say that I was disappointed with how it ended. I understand the good guys had no chance in hell against the Eternals in a fair fight, but I at least expected Zuras to get what was coming to him. Instead he used the High Evolutionary as a patsy and only stopped because he couldn’t take both the New Warriors and the rest of his team, who have morals apparently.
It’s bittersweet as hell. 3 out of 5.
As for the series, you can tell it got cut short because we never explored Water Snake’s history or development besides some evil thing haunting her. Or that deal Waffles made. It feels cut short, not even rushed, and that they dragged the Inhuman thing out for as long as possible didn’t help. I’m forced to give the series, which I liked, a 3 out of 5.
It was a fun ride and the art was good, but it could have been better.
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 #3 Review
The third issue of New Warriors is out now, and my review comes with it as a packaged deal, so read on.
It opens with the High Evolutionary spouting out the history of the Celestials and how their meddling led to the birth of just about every single super-powered being on the planet Earth to Nova, the young and inexperienced newcomer, when his men arrive with Scarlet Spider, Water Snake, and Hummingbird. He has samples collected from them and then orders them imprisoned. Why he didn’t have them killed instead is unknown to me, but it will bite him in the ass.
Back in New York City, our new inhuman gets the same treatment as mutants have for the last few decades. The cops blame him for the train incident and shoot at his ass. Luckily they have Justice to get them out of their and he, being a mutant, understands what he’s going through while Sun Girl says he should embrace what he’s become. Justice tells her politely that she has no idea what he’s going through because she can take off her gear and be human while they can’t. Her counter point is to shoot at Mark.
Scarlet Spider wakes to find himself imprisoned and being called Spider-Man by Nova, which is sort of a berserk button to him. Hummingbird presses Nova’s button by calling his name over and over in the same way that she annoyed the X-Men when Scarlet Spider teamed up with Wolverine. And here’s the thing, while the Scarlet Spider doesn’t have his Spider-Sense anymore, he’s stronger than his original, has spikes, organic webs, a monster form, and he can talk to spiders, which is exactly how he gets out of his prison like a badass.
We cut back to Justice, Speedball, Mark, and Sun Girl, who is inside a telekinetic bubble. I want to agree that Speedball is right that she’s unhinged for shooting at Mark to demonstrate his powers. There were a dozen ways that could have gone wrong, but she’s so bent on being a hero that she thinks it’s a sign they need to handle this threat. She goads Justice into trying, but instead he insists they find Nova.
Speaking of Nova, he and the other three are now freed and armored up, but they run across a bunch of evolutionaries and they get zerg-rushed. They put up a good fight so that Nova can get away, but he goes back to help them and the issue ends with him being mobbed too.
Okay, Review Time!
This issue fleshed out our characters further as the plot moves on.
Mark didn’t ask to be an Inhuman. Like the new Ms. Marvel, he got hit with the Terrigen Mist and changed, but he can’t hide what he is. In a mutant sense, he’s like a Morlock and she’s an X-Men.
Speaking of Mutant, Justice can understand how he’s feeling and tries to relate so he can cope, while Sun Girl feels he should embrace it. We can see he’s worldly and more calculated in his actions while Sun Girl is still new at the hero thing and optimistic. That’ll change if she sticks around, but in the meantime Speedball is playing peace-keeper.
As for the other three, Scarlet Spider repeatedly states he’s not Spider-Man, but it’s obvious he still has an inferiority complex about it. Aracely maintains her chatty nature, but contrasts Nova by being supportive of her guardian, while the other kid wants Spider-Man. Water Snake makes it clear that she’s a warrior and was intent on going down fighting. Nova, being an amateur, does have a good heart but he did make a mistake in staying since the high evolutionary needs his helmet and him sticking around to try and save three people doomed so many other.
Overall, the issue gets a 5 out of 5.
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 