Why I Left Comics

Despite the bold and emotional proclamations we may make when our favorite character is killed or a book we loves get cancelled, I don’t believe comic fans on the whole tend to leave their passion for the medium behind in one grand sweeping gesture. Rather, I think multiple factors tend to contribute to gradual erosion in enthusiasm that dulls the flame to the point where it’s not worth nurturing for the time being rather than stomping it out entirely.

For me, it’s tempting to simply say high school was the cut off point for my first life as a comic book fan and college brought about my second chapter (well, not that tempting, I do want this blog post to be more than two paragraphs), but certainly there was more to it.

Make no mistake though, high school played a role. For one thing, I suddenly had a lot of other interests to occupy my time, be it sports (I played soccer my freshman year and wrestled all four), the school newspaper, plays, and so on; my time to sit around reading about super heroes became more and more limited as I had other things to do. There was also the transference of funds and energy to parties and other distractions that weren’t on my radar in prior years. I saw my social outcast status fade a bit once I turned 14 or so; I don’t think I ever quite reached big man on campus level, but people seemed to generally like me enough to let me know what was going on over the weekend.

More than anything though, the friends I bonded with over comics drifted from the hobby, and certainly if there was any high school stereotype that proved true for me it was the follow the pack mentality, at least in some cases like this. With my buddies no longer making the pilgrimage to New England Comics or wanting to talk X-Men at lunch, those things held less interest for me as well (although in a story I can now chuckle at, I did continue “covertly” trekking to the comics shop every couple weeks for awhile, acting like I had stopped reading comics when I was still buying a few, and ran into a friend of mine who was doing the same; we both were mortified and didn’t acknowledge the encounter for some time, actually until I ran into him at New York Comic Con last year and said “Remember when…”).

It wasn’t just social contributors though. Comics lost me in the mid to late 90’s because a lot of the stuff that had fueled my fandom seemed to coincidentally wind down around the same time. There was good stuff like Grant Morrison’s JLA, Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s Avengers and more I wouldn’t experience for a bit after they came out because a lot of the stuff I was reading conspired to provide me with a convenient jumping off point. Here’s where I abandoned ship on the books that had been my childhood/young adolescent favorites…

What would be roughly a year-long process of me slowly going from a healthy number of monthly comic book purchases to none began in July of 1995 with the conclusion of the Age of Apocalypse. Whereas today I’m able to appreciate that event as the fun alternate reality epic it was, at the time, it was one of the first proclamations to a naïve 13-year old that comics changed. To that point, while I had been aware on some level of creators coming and going, directions changing and so forth, for the most part I still saw my most cherished books and characters as remaining in a state I could recognize them, typified by the 90’s X-Men titles, driven by a never-ending soap opera about people in colorful costumes drawn by guys with a splashy style that matched at least in part the Saturday morning cartoon show.

I remember reading in Wizard how the plug was going to be pulled on the X-Men books with no real explanation beyond that and not learning about the concept behind Age of Apocalypse until a couple weeks later via the Marvel Hotline (as a former Wizard employee now, I have to wonder to myself how much of the story they knew at the time and held back to help Marvel build an air of history; need to ask Brian Cunningham or Pat McCallum next time I see them). Comics were still vitally important to me at the time and in a childlike way that the idea I would “lose” so many of my favorites really shook me up (if 13-year-old me had been around for the New 52, he may have had a stroke).

When the X-Men books resumed their normal runs post-AoA (and without the Internet we did not know at the time when that would be if ever at the time), I regarded them with caution, feeling they had burned me once and I didn’t want to experience it again (I’m aware of how melodramatic that sounds, but I was 13 and hadn’t had a girlfriend yet, so work with me). In particular, I was unwilling to give the new incarnation of X-Force, once among my top titles, a chance. Fabian Nicieza, my favorite writer at the time, jumped off and was replaced by Jeph Loeb, whom I knew nothing about at the time. Tony Daniel, whose art I was really getting into, was replaced by Adam Pollina, whose style was not just radically different than the “X-Men house style” of the time, but just about anything I’d ever seen beyond those Vertigo books I never bought; he also almost immediately ditched the varied costumes for a uniform purple and yellow look.

But more than anything, the mission statement of the book was changing entirely, with the team going from a group of teenagers living on their own (with their gruff cyborg mentor) to moving back into the X-Mansion. As I have come to know Jeph to be a talented writer and a swell dude to boot, I apologize for not giving his run more of a chance, but there are few things less cool to a 13-year old than his heroes essentially moving back in with their parents. As the capper, Cannonball, my favorite character in the book, was “graduating” to the X-Men, so it felt like it was time for me to do the same.

I started picking up Justice League America around the time Superman died to get a better sense of the DC Universe. Truth be told, I was never that into it and didn’t feel like it was fulfilling that goal by letting me know what The Ray, Fire and Bloodwynd were up to on a monthly basis. It became more of a reflex buy for me the same way Silver Surfer or Iron Man was; a book I didn’t love, but I did like having a lot of new comics to read every month. After Zero Hour, when Gerard Jones took over as writer and centered the book a lot around the weird love square between Nuklon, Fire, Obsidian and Icemaiden with The Flash maybe getting something to do every three issues, I lost interest quickly. I stuck around because they dangled the carrot of Guy Gardner coming back to the team, but once it became evident he wasn’t sticking around, I dumped the book in August of 1995.

I began reading Captain America in 1993 or so admittedly because of the stunt “Fighting Chance” storyline where Cap’s Super Soldier Serum was going bad and he only had a year to live. Yes, it was goofy with the pouch-filled vest, the armor and Jack Flag, but I ate up every chapter of Mark Gruenwald and Dave Hoover’s year-long story. When they jumped off the book (and Cap disappeared mysteriously) in September of 1995, I did the same, figuring I’d come in for this story only and didn’t have any interest in a long term commitment (I did the same thing more or less with the Death and Return of Superman). Ironically, the next run was the to-this-day highly regarded Mark Waid/Ron Garney collaboration cut short but Heroes Reborn and I would not get to read it until years later.

I had tried to give the main X-Men books a chance even after I dropped X-Force, but that didn’t last long. I was kind of intrigued by the Onslaught mystery and loved Joe Madureira’s art, but weirdly Age of Apocalypse really botched it for me as I just couldn’t get into the characters as I had before. Having gone back and caught up on what I missed during the years I was gone since, I kind of wish I had stuck with it, because stuff like Operation: Zero Tolerance and the later Joe Kelly/Stephen Seagle run was right in my wheelhouse, but I said goodbye to the comics that had really been my childhood lynchpin during the fall of 1995, though I would continue following their animated adventures for another two years.

I bounced in and out of the Spider-Man books for a lot of the Clone Saga, Amazing Spider-Man and Web of Spider-Man being my primary titles of choice. Because that era was my entry point, I knew no other Spider-Man, and just assumed it had always been full of mysterious strangers, shocking reveals and omnipotent villains just like X-Men. As I began to cotton to the fact that this was not really the case and the creative teams waxed and waned between restoring the status quo to “the good old days” but then lurched back into another clone showing up to keep that thing running, I strained a bit from feeling like I was caught in the middle of a tug of war. When Ben Reilly took over as Spider-Man would have seemed the ideal jumping off point, but I was still somewhat under the impression the saga was finally winding to a close; around the time Spider-Carnage debuted in April of 1996, I gave up.

I’m sure it won’t surprise any regular readers of this blog to learn that New Warriors was the toughest comic for me to give up—in fact, I never did. I stuck with the book all the way to its cancellation with issue #75 in September of 1996, the same month I started high school interestingly and poetically enough (childhood’s end and all that). The stuff that had driven me off other books didn’t faze me when it came to the Warriors. Fabian Nicieza left with issue #50, but I found Evan Skolnick to be a very capable successor. Nova, Namorita and Night Thrasher were written out, but I stuck around for Justice, Firestar, Speedball and the new recruits. Even the altering of the seminal logo wasn’t enough to get rid of me (and that was a big deal, I assure you). I may have missed an issue here and there, but that was only because I was going to the shop less and less, so sometimes I’d forget the shipping schedule and they’d sell out, as New Warriors was not a book my retailer was getting in bulk.

As I’ve said before, I felt New Warriors ended on an appropriate note, with Skolnick bringing the full team back together and I do feel like those 75 issues constitute a complete story for me that subsequent revamps have left untouched. Still, it was a seismic shift for me as a fan, with my favorite comic being cancelled (despite my letter writing campaign of one letter to Marvel Vision) and me re-evaluating how into all this I still was.

Superboy was my favorite DC character as a kid (I liked the concept of The Flash, but didn’t know the person behind the mask that well yet). It was oddly serendipitous that at almost the exact same time New Warriors was coming to an end, Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett, the creative team that introduced Superboy and crafted the first two-plus years of his book, were moving on. If I had still been buying a lot of comics, I likely would have kept up with Superboy, but as I was pretty much done by the fall of 1996, their exit seemed an appropriate sign. In fairness, I did give the new creative team a few issues and really wanted to like it given how much I enjoyed Ron Marz on both Silver Surfer and Green Lantern, but even though they kept the same supporting cast and setting, the book felt different enough that it wasn’t too hard to move on (little did I know that 15 years later Superboy would be completely unrecognizable to a kid who grew up reading about him).

Strangely, as best I can tell, the final comic I was reading on a reading on a regular basis was Legion of Super-Heroes. This was odd because I’d come into the book late (I didn’t start until after Zero Hour in 1994), the characters had no recognition outside of comics (I never watched a cartoon with them or anything) and…well, Legion was just an odd book for me to end on. Don’t get me wrong, I thought that era was great, but it’s wild to me that I hung on with Legion of Super-Heroes longer than I did X-Men, Superboy and New Warriors. The split of the team and marooning half of them in the past where they suddenly weren’t as unique likely contributed to my severing ties.

(I should note the fact that I dropped my final two DC titles during Final Night speaks not to a disdain for that story, which I like, it was just coincidental timing)

And so as 1996 drew to a close, I was out of comics. I would check in now and again if I happened to spy a rack in a CVS or something over the next couple years and always checked what they had when I went to a bookstore, but for the most part, I was comics-free from 1997 to nearly 2001.

That, of course, is another story…

Underrated/Overlooked: Psionex

In most iconic super hero-super villain archenemy pairings, the two individuals or teams involved are bound by their stark differences, cracked mirror similarities, or in some cases a little bit of both.

Superman is the alien who is an everyman while Lex Luthor is the human who sees himself as above his fellow man. Spider-Man is the hopeful optimism of youth in the face of adversity battling old men like Doctor Octopus or The Green Goblin who have given up on altruism and are driven by greed. Batman is the imposition of order while The Joker is the embodiment of chaos. Doctor Doom is the intelligence of Mr. Fantastic without morality and civic unselfishness keeping him in check.

The New Warriors never really had an archenemy. Some might say it was The Sphinx, and in that case you could argue the dynamic was the young agents of change versus the timeless champion of inevitability, but he was really Nova’s bad guy first and foremost. If you look at the bad guys in other big Warriors storylines like Tai, the Poison Memories or the Dire Wraiths, they were all basically one and done adversaries.

Breaking it down to numbers, the villains who plagued the New Warriors the most frequently and were their opposite number at least in the sense of being a team of young people were Psionex, introduced in issue #4 of the original series and recurring for the remainder of the volume as foes to our heroes, reluctant allies against a larger threat like Terrax, and even Night Thrasher’s attempt at a rehabilitation project.

If there was a weakness to Psionex in their core concept, it was that they didn’t really stand for much of anything, whereas the Warriors had a very strong sense of identity. Certain buzz phrases would recur through all of that classic first Warriors series—“making hard choices,” “searching for the truth,” “the power of love over the love of power”—creating not only a clear mission statement for the good guys, but the potential for an antithesis that was never really filled outside of in part with stuff I mentioned like The Sphinx and other little cases.

The initial hook to Psionex was a simple one: They were unbalanced young people given super powers by Genetech, the faceless corporation who would bug the New Warriors because why not. As it said on the blurb of their introductory issue, “They were bred for one purpose: To destroy the New Warriors!” but aside from having powers that gave various members of the team trouble, you never got the whole “bred for one purpose” thing. This wasn’t like the Injustice League or Dark Avengers or some incarnations of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants where each member of the villain team was picked specifically to target an opposing player on the good guys; it was just a bunch of randoms with cool powers.

However, it’s in those powers and their relative inventiveness that Psionex raises a notch or two up in my mind. Fabian Nicieza clearly put some time into coming up with these guys’ abilities, and in an era where “generic energy blast” was the flavor of every month—I’m looking at you Acolytes—it was refreshing and appreciated.

Asylum was a mental patient who never spoke but had a body composed entirely of Darkforce matter that induced hallucinations in anybody she came into contact with; similar to Cloak but with a twist of mental imbalance. Coronary at first glance seemed like the team powerhouse, but who was actually a “bio-telepath,” capable of messing with people’s internal functions so as to make them vomit, give them a heart attack or do other nastiness. Impulse had an enhanced metabolism which gave him fairly generic heightened speed, reflexes and healing, but his crazy thrill seeker personality coupled with his gang background made him interesting and led to classic moments like him trying to take on Terrax singlehanded and getting his back snapped (he got better). Mathemanic not only had a great name, but the most bizarre and intriguing abilities, as he practiced “mathematical telepathy,” messing with statistical regularities so he could do things like forcing his foes to perceive interstellar measures of distance and thus not see what’s in front of them or slowing the passage of time by altering perceptions. Last but not least you had Pretty Persuasions, an exotic dancer with an energy whip who could increase and then draw power from the “erotic urges” of others, making her one of the most straightforwardly sexual characters in comics at the time, but in an odd “what you see is what you get” refreshing kind of way.

Psionex had their initial clash with the Warriors, then a rematch that ended with Terrax’s rebirth and a temporary truce/half the villains fleeing. Later, after Asylum dissipated during a fight with Nova, Firestar and Speedball, another New Warriors villain, Darkling, found her mask and took up her mantel, getting Psionex back together and attempting to make them into heroes who would use the excessive force the Warriors were unwilling to; this period showed some potential for the group to really forge their own place in the Marvel Universe—or at least in the New Warriors mythos—but while it made for a few good stories, they were heavily focused on Asylum, with the rest becoming more or less window dressing. After Asylum accidentally killed a child by inducing an unknown heart condition while trying to scare him straight, we got a pretty emotionally hard hitting story—Nicieza’s final issue—where Mathemanic tries to turn back time by affecting perceptions across New York City, but ultimately is convinced that he can’t undo what is already done.

From there Psionex joined up briefly with Night Thrasher and Rage before gradually receding into a background role in the Marvel Universe for the past couple decades, generally only showing up for cameos when Nicieza is writing a book like New Thunderbolts or part of huge villain armies in titles being penned by New Warriors fans like when Christos Gage had the reins of Avengers: The Initiative.

In addition to their powers, the other thing Psionex really had going for it was that Mark Bagley did a bang-up job on their designs. They really were a motley crew of misfits, as befit their status as nut jobs, with the nerdy Mathemanic looking like he belonged nowhere near a group that also included S&M bombshell Pretty Persuasions. Asylum’s lack of physical form anchored by that golden mask was cool, as was Coronary’s evolving crystalline shape—although the weird skirt he rocked at first was bizarre—and even Impulse’s fairly traditional super villain get-up had neat touches like the evil Spider-Man bug eyes or weird wrist gauntlet blades. Richard Pace would ramp up the exaggerated elements of Psionex during his all-too-brief run on New Warriors and breathe even more life into Bagley’s work.

But again, while Psionex had plenty of potential in the abilities and visual departments, their lack of personalities, individually or as a group, and no real direction hurt their lasting legacy. It wasn’t enough just to be crazy, particularly in the 90’s, and after that initial Genetech-sponsored fracas, it wasn’t even quite clear why they were always tangling with the New Warriors.

Still, there’s something there in Psionex, even if it’s just that they bring something different to the table in terms of abilities that go beyond the tired cocktail of super strength, mind powers and, yes, energy blasts. I’m not saying they’re ever going to anchor a line-wide crossover or anything, but maybe next time an Avengers writer needs to kill half a standalone issue that’s really about the heroes’ relationships anyways, rather than use the Wrecking Crew yet again, they give Psionex a shot.

My first comic book crush

I can already sense this is going to be an embarrassing entry I will probably regret; I do this for you.

When boys begin to come of age and feel that rumbling in their loins—I swear you have not clicked on the wrong in all sense of the world blog, bear with me—as girls stop being gross and start being terrifying, they often become timid around the young ladies their own age who spurn their advances—seriously, you guys were the worst—and find comfort by crushing on figures of womanhood out of their league for whatever reason. Perhaps they’re older, perhaps they’re famous or perhaps they’re even fictional; that’s totally normal, right?

Right?

Well, I guess we’re going down this road now, might as well continue, for better or for worse (I originally wrote “far worse” in a revealing Freudian slip).

I thought real girls were cute, but as a comic book fan around the tender age of nine or so, of course no woman could compare to the flawless four color beauties whose adventures I followed (or more accurately they could but wouldn’t talk to me). Since New Warriors was my favorite comic, ergo the lovely aquatic princess Namorita was my first comic book crush.

If you’re looking to shrink my childhood head at all as far as what I was looking for in a woman—or at least an unrealistic and implausible crush—I liked that Nita was bold, outspoken and aggressive with a sharp wit and cutting sense of humor. If she had an opinion, she expressed it with words or fists where Firestar might have held her tongue. Her physical power carried over into an emotional strength that manifested in a deep bond with her cousin, Namor, passionate defense for the environment, and a willingness to stand up and by her friends and teammates without question.

Perhaps it also says something about me that I preferred the girl who wasn’t shy about pursuing what she wanted romantically, but also demanded to be pursued herself in return. Yeah, the love of Namorita’s comic book life happens to be Nova, a character of whom I am somewhat fond, but I swear that’s kinda a coincidence (sorta). When I started reading the book, they would flirt now and again, but it never seemed like it was going anywhere serious. Marvel Boy and Firestar were the alpha couple of the book, the “too cute” made for each other fairytale love story; Night Thrasher and Silhouette were number two because they had an intense history and thus deep bond. Nova and Namorita were just the attractive singles who were never going to settle down with anybody, let alone one another.

But as ever, Fabian Nicieza wrote a great story when it came to Nova and Nita’s romance. They were both too strong to admit they needed each other and both suffered before they could get to a place where that admission came; and then once they did express their true feelings circumstances conspired to keep them apart.

Oh, and speaking of those circumstances, certainly it was mildly—MILDLY—traumatic for me when they decided to transform Namorita into the blue-skinned, web-footed Kymaera, seemingly in an effort to impart on young Ben the lesson that beauty is skin deep, yada yada yada. Hey, the bulk of my childhood crush came from the fact that Namorita was saucy, smart and a bit sarcastic, but I’d be lying if I said the fact that Mark Bagley and Darick Robertson knew how to draw a sexy blond in a green bikini didn’t help.

I’m making it worse; time to bring this home.

As I grew and my interest in comics waxed, waned, and returned stronger than ever, I of course discovered an ability to connect with real girls along the way, and it was eventually time to leave childhood crushes on made-up mermaids behind. Did that young infatuation inform my future relationships? Maybe? I’ve definitely always been drawn to women who speak their mind and generally have a wicked sense of humor. By the same token, I’ve never been seriously involved with a blond or anybody who counts swimming among their most frequent hobbies.

Of course the girl I married had dyed blond hair when I met her and was on her junior high swim team but is now a brunette who rarely goes in the water, perhaps a commentary on my childhood fantasy blossoming into the woman I would fall in love with.

Or maybe my wife is just awesome. Besides, she has her own comic book character.

Hopefully this blog post made you as uncomfortable as it made me.

Celebrating Martin Luther King Day with comics

I’ve never been shy about saying I grew up in a primarily white, primarily Jewish suburb where, despite what the posters at our high school may have said, there wasn’t a terrible degree of racial diversity. I barely had any Christian friends, let alone friends of color. My buddy and X-Men sketchbook collaborator Husani was an African-American kid who lived closer to Boston and came to our school via a program, but we unfortunately did not stay close long. It wouldn’t be until I attended summer camp both as a camper and particularly as a counselor that I became close with a wider range of people from different ethnic, social and religious backgrounds. Into college and on through today, I’ve certainly come to appreciate richness of relationships with those different than you, perhaps in particular because it was not something I enjoyed when I was younger.

Even when I was young though, Martin Luther King Day always seemed important to me. Part of that was—to be fair to the community I just kinda bashed—because my elementary school in particular always went out of its way to impart upon us its importance. Another part though honestly wasn’t that I was some great advocate for equality as much as inequality didn’t make any sense to me. Maybe that was a side effect of not having any real difference around me and thus not having really been exposed to bigotry, so when I read about it, it seemed as fictitious and nonsensical as anything I’d see in a comic book. I mean, The Hulk had green skin and Superman was an alien but they were good guys—why would I have a problem with a brown-skinned person or somebody from another country as long as they were nice?

And that, as always, brings us to comics (and thankfully the end of me trying to do some sort of socially aware PSA or whatever that was—thanks as ever for indulging me).

The comics industry has a history filled with many flaws and there are still plenty today. I love this business and this medium, but even its most ardent supporter will admit to you things can and have often been dark behind the scenes. However, more often than not, I’m proud of what comics can do, and one area where I feel like we’ve got a lot of other genres of entertainment beat is racial diversity.

I wish I could say comics has always been ahead of the curve when it came to the promotion and appreciation of minority creators, but unfortunately, that’s a far larger issue than our little corner of the world. Though some of the true legends of the game have been and continue to be today especially folks of all colors, creeds and so forth, the bigger flaws of society held back those who were different in comics just as they did pretty much anywhere else. Thankfully, as in most places, this is no longer the case and talent rises to the top regardless of superficial factors.

But we can say as an industry that at the very least when it came to the fiction we created over the years (and yeah, I’m probably unfairly saying “we” here, but it’s a pride thing), we made strides to be more inclusive than the world around us. Whether it was The Black Panther on the Avengers, blacks being as accepted as anybody in the Legion of Super-Heroes, comics both mainstream and underground tackling the issue of racial inequality head on all the way to Milestone Media or The Truth, comics has always attempted to create worlds where not only could men fly, but they truly were all created equal. Smarter folks than me could probably poke the preceding paragraph full of more holes than Swiss cheese, but I like to let my optimism fly in this case.

To celebrate Doctor King’s dream, I thought I’d take the opportunity real quick to examine my own personal history with a couple of black comic book characters who I really liked. However, it’s important to note I never liked these characters simply because of the color of their skin, but because they were great characters whose skin happened to be that color. Because in the end I think celebrating races that were held down for way too long is crucial to this day, but the dream is for a world where none of that matters and we judge people not by how they look or where they’re from, but to put it in CKT terms, how rad they are.

NIGHT THRASHER
As has been documented many times on this blog, my first true favorite comic book was the first volume of New Warriors, and it just so happened that the titular team that starred in that title was led and founded by a black man: Dwayne Taylor, aka Night Thrasher. Being a young Nova fan at the time, it was somewhat natural that I didn’t love Thrash at first, given that was kind of the Cyclops to Rich’s wannabe Wolverine, but the difference there was that Dwayne was pretty much always more of a badass than even my favorite, a fact I respectfully accepted. I was used to dull, boy scout team leaders in the vein of Scott Summers or Leonardo on the Ninja Turtles—did not like him—so I took some pride in the fact that the dude in charge of my team could actually back up his bluster; Night Thrasher was that older brother who was always in your face, except for when somebody else was, and then he had your back and you were really proud.

In many ways, Dwayne Taylor was a pretty blatant Batman/Bruce Wayne rip-off: a wealthy young man whose parents were killed, leading him to dedicate his time and resources to doing good and fighting crime. What set Night Thrasher apart was that he still had a major chip on his shoulder—youth will do that—he learned to fight by taking down street gangs rather than traveling the world and, yes, that he was black. But a lot of what made Batman cool made Night Thrasher cool, and then the stuff that made him different—he actually wanted a team of friends for one—made him cool in his own way.

CYBORG
I think it’s understated what an important character Victor Stone is in terms of his historical significant to and impact on the DC Universe. A lot of things made Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s New Teen Titans one of the best and most successful works of the 1980’s and perhaps of all time, but Cyborg was among the most vital. He gave the Titans an edge they had lacked in previous incarnations and opened up new worlds for them to explore. Where they had once been a team of sidekicks nobody took entirely seriously, they now counted among their ranks power players like Raven and Starfire, but especially Cyborg. Beyond his raw strength and cybernetic abilities, Vic also brought to the table a level of experience in dealing with hard times that exceeded his age—he was the first Titan to turn 20—and brought other characters like Robin and Changeling into their own then helped them deal with their maturation processes.

I like Cyborg in that golden age of the Titans because he’s so multi-layered. If you barely scratch the surface, you only see the kid pissed off at his father and the world for losing a life he loved and being forced to survive as a freak, however if you go deeper you see he’s not only somebody who wants to be loved, but a guy capable of impressive empathy given his own trials. He was the hardened heart of the Titans who not only made them a force to be reckoned with in the DC Universe, but who you knew would get in the face of anybody who said otherwise. There was a reason he got the call up to be part of the Super Friends on TV; great character.

Who Digs Teen Super Heroes?

The short answer to that question is me—it’s the more in-depth version I’m interested in trying to figure out, and will attempt to do so with a little impromptu history lesson wherein the facts will hopefully be at least close to accurate given the minimal research I plan on doing.

As we all know—right?—the first major young character in comics was the original Robin, Dick Grayson, introduced in 1940 to be the boy/teen sidekick to Batman. Bucky, Speedy, Toro, etc. and a horde of other pre-pubescent tagalongs were created throughout the 40’s to accompany the hordes of hit or miss super heroes the industry was churning out at a feverish pace. The idea was that since a lot of kids and teenagers read comics, they’d like to have a character they could imagine themselves as; they could hero worship Batman and Captain America, but they could actually be Robin or Bucky.

Robin and other young boys hanging out with strapping men in spandex of course became a major target of Fredric Wertham in the mid-1950’s, so a lot of them went away over the course of that decade, as did super heroes comics as a genre in large part. This was likely just as well, since the kids who grew up in the 40’s were now hitting the cusp of adulthood and didn’t feel like identifying with a cheeky circus performer in pixie boots or precocious army mascot in a domino mask, preferring the edgier EC Comics-type fare you’d expect twentysomethings to cotton to. The only teen heroes who really thrived to any degree in the 50’s were Superboy because he was just Superman as a kid and Robin because he was mostly an accessory to Batman. The exception to the rule would be the Legion of Super-Heroes, introduced in 1958, but I attribute the fact that they had a unique gimmick—that whole being from the future thing—as offsetting a malaise in young protagonists at the time.

The game changed again in 1962 with Spider-Man, not just another teen character but a full-on leading (young) man with angst and depth his predecessors of 20 years earlier never came close to demonstrating. With Spidey, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko invented not just a hero their younger readers could fantasize about being, but in Peter Parker an alter ego who wasn’t all that far off from how they actually were real life, mixing the tried concept of a wish fulfillment character with an identifiable protagonist. It no doubt helped that the Wertham storm had been weathered and there were actual young readers to appreciate the effort again.

Whether because of Spider-Man, the return of teen fans, just because or a combination of them all, DC brought back their younger heroes in full force, grouping Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Aqualad and Speedy together as the Teen Titans while also giving the Legion their own ongoing series in Adventure Comics. At Marvel, the X-Men were created perhaps in least in part with the idea that if one awkward kid did well, five would do even better, while Rick Jones became a fixture in Incredible Hulk, Avengers and later Captain America and other titles.

While the late 60’s did not bring the return of Frederic Wertham, there was the inevitable aging of another audience and ensuing lack of interest in teen heroes that killed off both Teen Titans and X-Men for a good bit. However, rather than go gently into that good night, the folks responsible for Spider-Man and the Legion came up with the novel solution to simply age their charges ever so slightly, meaning as their fans were going off to college, so was Peter Parker; as the readers were discovering romance, the Legionnaires were hooking up. Rather than lose that young audience who found Iron Man too old but were over the youthful adventures of Supergirl, a middle ground of hip characters in their early-mid 20’s were established, with many tenured leads being subtly slid back towards that demographic as well.

Once you buzz past the early 70’s and get toward the end of that decade on into the 80’s, things get interesting as far as teen and just-past-teen super heroes. The three most commercially successful ongoing series of the period for quite some time were Uncanny X-Men, New Teen Titans and Legion of Super-Heroes.

In the case of the X-Men, a cast certainly not fit to be attending high school shot the book to popularity in the middle of the 70’s—Wolverine has never been a teen hero—but the ultimate entry level character for kids in Kitty Pryde cemented it’s spot as in many ways it became about the one kid being your access point to hanging out with the coolest group of older friends you could imagine.

New Teen Titans showcased a mix of high school and college age characters that all happened to be extremely physically attractive—but in distinct and thus more believable ways thanks to the talent of George Perez—having incredible adventures and also exploring their friendship and sexuality. Legion of Super-Heroes was a similar set-up but in the far-flung and awesome 30th century. Whereas Robin and Bucky had been endearing but fairly goofy wish fulfillment fantasies to kids in the 40’s, the Titans, Legion and X-Men were far sexier versions who were able to hold the attention of their audience regardless of age—young readers wanted to spend time with them, slightly older fans wanted to be them, and those who had been following along since the 60’s saw their glory days. As a result, these books stayed on top for most of the 80’s.

As the 90’s dawned, for whatever reason, the 70’s backlash of disinterest in teen heroes seemed to resurface and the answer of the comics community was to take the previous solution of aging their young characters even further. The X-Men—the presence of Jubilee aside—became comprised more or less entirely of adults, and ones with a hard edge at that. The Teen Titans became the New Titans, ditching the optimism of youth for a seemingly endless wave of tragedy (see Donna Troy’s life). The Legion jumped ahead five years and became grown-ups in a now dystopian future. Even the New Mutants, who remained among Marvel’s younger characters, transitioned into the paramilitary X-Force, with gray-haired Cable at the helm and as the focal point.

In spite of this, there were a lot of great teen books and characters in the 90’s—I should know since it’s when I started reading comics. You had my beloved New Warriors, Tim Drake as Robin and the new Superboy, not to mention a wave of would-be Spider-Man surrogates who went on to various levels of success like Darkhawk and Sleepwalker. Even A-listers like Green Lantern and Flash became part of the youth movement, with Kyle Rayner and Wally West taking the mantles, plus good stuff outside of Marvel like Harbinger at Valiant or Prime at Malibu.

Of course there were also simply so many comics in the early 90’s that the “throw everything at the wall” approach to publishing was guaranteed to yield at least a bit of quality in every category across the board including with teen heroes.

Give or take 10-15 years or so that brings us to today. We’ll leave out the bit where the market collapses and nothing is doing well because it’s not really relevant to any points I’m trying to make or explore.

The comic industry has rebounded from the abyss with vigor over the last decade, experiencing rebirth in publishing as well expansion into other mediums like film and television. There’s a whole component about the indys and how coming of age graphic novels and standalone stuff about growing up has surged of late, but again, not really what I’m talking about here, so we’ll stick to super heroes.

If there’s been any knock on mainstream super hero comics in the 00’s—and there has been more than one, but this is a biggie—it’s that kids don’t read them anymore. If that is the case—and for the sake of the argument we’ll assume it is—then the original reasons why we had Robin in the 40’s, Spider-Man in the 60’s and Kitty Pryde and the Titans in the 80’s has evaporated somewhat in that the median age older reader probably doesn’t want to self-project as a younger character, particularly when the big guns are perpetually situated around the late-20’s/early-30’s age range most fans find themselves at or wish to get back to already.

Indeed, these days the rules that apply to an “adult” book like Avengers or Green Lantern carry over to “teen” books—or to put it more simply: It doesn’t matter how old the hero is, if it’s a good comic, it will succeed. Thus even with a dearth of younger readers, quality stuff like Ultimate Spider-Man or Young Avengers continues to experience success. Geoff Johns’ Teen Titans or Brian K. Vaughan’s didn’t so much do well because they spoke to a younger generation; they did well because they were kid. On the flipside, I don’t think Blue Beetle or Young Allies had trouble because they starred teenagers; they had trouble because it’s a tough market to launch new books in period (which sucks because those were some quality comics).

So coming full circle, what is I like about teen super heroes? It may have started out as an “Ooh, I could be Superboy!” or “Ooh, I want to hang out with the New Warriors!” thing back in the 90’s, but at this point I’m 28 and comics starring the younger set like Avengers Academy or the latest iteration of Teen Titans still tend to grab my interest.

For me, I think it’s that I’m an unabashed fan of the soap opera element of comic books just like I am of television or movies, so I’ll naturally gravitate to stuff starring teens or young adults where that is dialed up to 11 (I love Gossip Girl, but my parents have been on me for months and I still haven’t given The Good Wife a shot). If I’m going to get lost in a world of pathos, angst, romance and heroics, I want my escapism writ large and to the extreme, the way teenagers tend to view life (and the way me and most of my friends do too, since we’re largely in a collective state of arrested development). There’s something about every new crush being the love of your life, every test you face (written or super villainous) being the most devastating ever, and this group of friends being the one you’ll keep forever that appeals greatly to me.

Do I love teen super heroes because I’m a romantic? Because I’m a drama queen? Both? Does it matter? I don’t think it does.

I do hope more kids read comics again someday for lots of reasons—health of the industry, good way to learn to read, etc.—but for sure one is so that teen super heroes get another shot and another generation gets to see how cool they are.

And I’ll still be reading too.

Obscure New Warriors!

To know Dan Slott is to love him.

Seriously, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of chatting with Dan even for a minute or seen him on a panel at a convention, you know what I mean. His enthusiasm and flat out glee for what he does is undeniable and infectious. Dan can’t help but get worked up about what he’s writing or what he’s reading or just being two seats down from Stan Lee, and not in a “look what I’ve accomplished” sort of way, but in a “holy crap, I’m living my dream and loving it!” kind of way.

He’s one of my wife’s favorite creators and she’s never even read anything he’s done, she’s just met him a bunch of times.

When we were doing Marvel.com Live at New York Comic Con, we had a family of cosplayers with a little Wolverine up during Dan’s interview time, and I swear getting to talk with that little boy about why he loved Spider-Man was better for Dan than winning an Eisner. He’s just a joy.

So it’s with great regret that I pick a nit with Mr. Slott, however, as Antonio Banderas would say…but I must.

See, yet another thing I love about Dan is he digs the New Warriors perhaps as much as I do, and as a successful comic book writer, he has the power to ensure they continue to appear throughout the Marvel Universe (whereas I was unable to get Sprocket into any of my War of Kings: Warriors one-shots or Werewolf By Night short story), an ability he has wielded with awesome results from She-Hulk to Avengers: The Initiative.

But y’see, while Dan has been good enough to keep the likes of Justice, Rage and even Hindsight Lad in circulation, I must take exception on behalf of several lesser-known (yes, lesser-known than Hindsight Lad) Warriors who continue to languish in limbo while The Slottster continues to insist that Slapstick joined off panel (to be fair, he eventually showed the flashback in an Initiative issue and it was pretty cool).

So Dan and any other creators possibly named Christos Gage or Sean McKeever or Jay Faerber who may be reading (but not you, Todd Nauck…ok, you too), I beg of you to find a home for these forgotten Heroes of the 90’s…


HELIX
A bastard child of the Spider-Man Clone Saga, this dude I mostly remember because he had the Daken long hair Mohawk a decade earlier and because his costume consisted primarily of the pads/pouches everybody had in the 90’s but as part of his skin. His powers were similar to Darwin from X-Factor, where he basically just adapted to whatever was thrown at him (so the Scarlet Spider figured out how to beat him when he was initially introduced and on a rampage by telling everybody to just stop attacking the poor guy). Also, Turbo was teaching him to speak English (he was Hispanic). He never actually joined the Warriors proper, just hung out on some missions, but I mostly want him back to see how an artist of today would depict that look.


POWERHOUSE
For a minute I thought we hadn’t seen Power Pack outside of their excellent all-ages book and Julie showing up in Loners, but then I remembered that Jonathan Hickman is using Alex over in Fantastic Four, so this is a moot point. Still, I loved Alex Power as part of the New Warriors, from his siblings being pissed at him for constantly stealing their powers to him apologizing to Nova for taking the names of one of his old bad guys (he was originally Powerpax, which 13-year-old Ben thought was the greatest codename ever).


TIMESLIP
Mr. Slott actually did use Timeslip during Civil War in She-Hulk and apparently either Jim McCann or Todd Nauck snuck her into an X-Men story in the same Holiday Special as my aforementioned Werewolf By Night epic, but we need some more Rina Patel in the Marvel Universe. I thought it was cool and unique the way she had a potentially bad ass power like being able to jump through time, but also a slow learning curve in first figuring out how to control and then use it offensively; she was also a pretty decent and not over-the-top Indian character, so that’s not a bad thing. She’d be cool doing a guest spot in New Mutants, or maybe in Avengers Academy since her and Speedball had a thing for a whole second.


THE OTHER TURBO
Mike Jeffries was a whole bundle of untapped potential. He was a comics fanboy who found a super hero suit and then had to deal with being awful at using it and his super-hot but completely platonic female being awesome at it—talk about your empathetic character for readers! His death was actually really gut-busting and well-written by Evan Skolnick (who deserves a hat tip on this list as the co-creator of Timeslip, primary shepherd of Helix and the guy who carried the baton passed by Fabian Nicieza for a solid 20-plus issues), but I’d love to see a flashback or two.


SILHOUETTE
Y’know, I actually never really got behind Silhouette despite her having like 50 issues to grow on me, plus she had a way more significant role in Civil War than half the Marvel Universe, so let’s move on to…


THE OTHER SPEEDBALL
…the time-travelling second Speedball who wasn’t Speedball! Darrion Grobe cloned Speedball’s body and then used future technology to friggin’ live inside it so he could pose as him and stop his own crazy time-travelling dad Advent from destroying the world by dying in Robbie Baldwin’s place and saving Ben Reilly’s life in the process. I have no idea what I just wrote, but Darrion (another Skolnick creation) was pretty dope in an insane way and ended up being alive in an idyllic future with his reformed old man, so I’d love to see him return to the present and yell at Speedball for being emo. Yours for free, Gage!

Essentials Extra: New Warriors Must Reads Pt. 2

Last time, I covered some of the most essential reading from Fabian Nicieza’s first 25 issues on New Warriors. This go-around, let’s take a look at the latter half of that run, the bulk of which was illustrated by Darick Robertson, who remembers those days so fondly that he did not think me a psycho fan when I was working at Wizard and practically assaulted him at a bar in L.A. expressing my fandom and later did a very nice Nova sketch for me.

(Again, in a perfect world I really do recommend reading all of New Warriors from start to finish, but these are just a few of the stories that stand out for me)

“The Next Step” (New Warriors #26)
In Robertson’s very first issue, he’s clearly still in his growing stages as an artist, but Nicieza gives him a doozy to start with, as it’s the epilogue to “Nothing But the Truth” as well as a bon voyage for Marvel Boy, who has been convicted of manslaughter and is headed to prison. It’s a real tug at the heartstrings, as Firestar, Namorita and Nova attempt to spring their teammate en route to The Vault, and he ends up surprising them with his response. My favorite part of the issue is the emotional farewell between Marvel Boy and Firestar, as well as his incredibly mature and beautifully-expressed reassurance of her in regards to taking a major step in their relationship for the wrong reasons. While I was more of a Nova-Namorita fanboy when it came to Warriors couples (for obvious reasons if you know me), I always have and still and a soft spot for the “aw shucks” feel good nature of the Vance-Angel romance, and this issue reminds me why.

“Forces of Darkness, Forces of Light” (New Warriors #32-34, New Warriors Annual #3)
There’s definitely a different feel to this arc than most of the others on this list as it’s probably the only time Nicieza really deviated from putting the Warriors and their personal conflicts front and center, instead placing them at the center of a big ol’ action epic guest-starring half the Marvel Universe. Because of that feeling of separation for the overarching New Warriors saga, I’d never place “Forces of Darkness, Forces of Light” at the very top of my must-reads, but at the same time it certainly warrants some place as it’s cool to see Spider-Man, the Avengers, etc. taking their cue from the Warriors, because the idea of a villain who can turn the heroes into bad guys by flooding them with darkness with the visual expression being that they turn charcoal is one of those great high concepts that appeals to your inner kid ala evil twins, and because Robertson starts to come into his own on this one.

“Poison Memories” (New Warriors #37-38, Night Thrasher #1)
Despite having an interesting twist on the Shazam concept being an inner city kid in an adult hero’s body, Rage was mostly a blank slate during his tenures with the Avengers as well as the New Warriors, but in this story, Nicieza really cracked him open and found the unique character within the shell. It was a different kind of conflict for the Warriors from the start and yet very fitting with the world they existed in, as they’re targeted not by a true super villain, but by a street gang whose leader actually did his homework, seducing Namorita—the only Warrior with a publicly known identity—in a nightclub and then stealing her address book to learn her teammates’ IDs and target their loved ones. While most of the team surrenders to Kimeiko Ashu and his Poison Memories lest Nova’s brother or Speedball’s father be harmed, Rage lashes out following the murder of his grandmother, living up to his name. Night Thrasher’s return to the team to save them from Ashu, who began as his enemy, is dramatic, but nowhere near as tense as when Rage has the villain in a chokehold and callously snaps his neck over his allies’ pleas not to. Also, once again, Robertson takes his work to the next level, aided by a seemingly renewed energy as well from Larry Mahlstedt on inks and Joe Rosas on colors.

“Family Viewing” (New Warriors #39)
The epilogue to the Poison Memories saga deserves its own entry as it’s a “downtime” issue where Nicieza really opens things up and gives readers their money’s worth. You’ve got Nova’s brother, who just lost his pinky finger two issues back, giving an awesome pep talk to his moping super hero sibling about how he’ll lose all four limbs if it means his bro saves the planet again. You’ve got a nice moment where Firestar refuses to leave the bedside of her comatose father and leaves Marvel Boy dangling on the other line of the payphone when he wakes up. You’ve got Rage trying to take responsibility for his actions by turning himself in to the authorities and Night Thrasher making it clear he answers to a harsher jury: him. And of course, you have the Nova-Namorita hook-up that took 39 issues, but was well worth it.

“Time and Time Again” (New Warriors #47-50, Night Thrasher #11-12, Nova #6-7)
The first (and last) real crossover between the suddenly burgeoning New Warriors family of titles that emerged at the height of 90’s excess was somewhat hit or miss by its very nature. The Sphinx scattered the team throughout time, meaning you got eight different stories by eight different artists (all written by Nicieza) as well as a ninth set in the present where Warriors mascot Hindsight Lad, the former female Sphinx and Night Thrasher’s half-brother Bandit attempt to organize a new team to rescue the originals; some of the stories were good, some not so much, some totally forgettable (I don’t even remember what happened with Rage and know that Namorita was in ancient Atlantis while Firestar was in the Salem Witch Trials, but couldn’t tell you much more than that). Personally, I liked Nova’s trip to a parallel world where his brother got his powers, Justice traveling to his abusive father’s childhood and learning that he was a repressed homosexual, and Silhouette being put in the “would you kill baby Hitler?” position with her evil grandmother, Tai. Regardless, it’s Robertson’s final issue as well as Nicieza’s last sweeping epic, and both go all out in the landmark, over-sized fiftieth issue which features some of the most vibrant art I’ve seen to this day, incredible wall-to-wall Warriors vs Sphinx action, and appropriately touching resolution to the whole thing.

“Another Think Coming” (New Warriors #51)
Though he’d hand on a couple issues longer, to me the coda to “Time and Time Again” was really Fabian Nicieza’s well-earned farewell to New Warriors, and a perfect note to end on. He brings back one of the Warriors’ very first villains, The Mad Thinker, not to battle our heroes, but to remind them of the purpose they seemed to have misplaced and galvanize them to remain as a team. For Nicieza, it’s a chance to sum up for us what those first 50 issues were all about as well as demonstrate how much these characters have grown since they got together. It’s got some neat art by Richard Pace (who only stuck around about four issues and I have not really seen since, which is a shame) and puts a nice cherry on top of Fabian Nicieza’s New Warriors sundae.

Essentials Extra: New Warriors Must Reads Pt. 1

Very heartened to see and hear similarly positive thoughts across the Internet and even around the Marvel offices about Fabian Nicieza’s New Warriors following my post the other day. It’s nice to know I’m not the only person who considers that run rightfully essential.

If you’re a New Warriors neophyte looking to see the team’s glory days for yourself, you’re in luck, as Marvel released the first six issues plus the group’s two-part debut in Thor in New Warriors Classic, and there’s a second volume coming in May with issues #7-10 plus the first Annual and the other three chapters of the “Kings of Pain” crossover with the X-Men, New Mutants and X-Factor.

You can also find single issues on the relative cheap if you scour shops and shows for them and while I wholeheartedly recommend the entire series, here are some choice stories to whet your appetite (issues #1-25 today, #26-50 coming tomorrow or soon after).

“Hard Choices” (New Warriors #7-9)
After taking the first few issues to introduce his cast and firmly place them in the Marvel Universe, Nicieza tackles his first real multi-part storyline and immediately places the book apart from most of its contemporaries as far as not being afraid to hit real world hot button issues. Most of the team heads out of the country to save Speedball’s mother after she gets in over her head with an environmental rights group and run up against eco-terrorists the Force of Nature. Meanwhile, back in New York City, Night Thrasher attempts to protect Father Michael Janes, a respected priest, from Bengal, a Vietnamese orphan whose village he helped massacre during his days in the army; The Punisher also gets involved. These are the issues where Mark Bagley’s art also begins improving by quantum leaps (and it’s not like he was half-bad to start).

“Forever Yesterday” (New Warriors #11-13)
One of the craziest, most fun and plain best alternate reality stories I’ve ever read, as the first chapter drops us straight into a world where once upon a time Moses lost his duel with Pharaoh’s sorcerer, leading to a world where Egypt became a major superpower, black are the upper class while whites are the minority, and a female version of old Nova villain The Sphinx secretly rules it all. Within the first 10 pages, an Avengers team consisting of Captain Assyria, Horus, Storm, Monica Rambeau, a black Iron Man and Nova as the token white fry Wolverine to a crisp—in the first 10 pages. Over three issues we get a boffo “What If?” history of the Marvel Universe with Bagley going balls out and redesigning every character ever to accommodate for racial shifts, a classic “rebels versus the establishment” struggle between mutants and The Sphinx, a decent bit of social commentary, and the New Warriors having to come together as strangers and save reality as they don’t know it.

“Ground War” (New Warriors #15-17)
After a return bout with Psionex—a group of mental cases given powers who were basically the New Warriors’ Masters of Evil or Brotherhood of Evil Mutants—our heroes renew another old acquaintance: their first ever opponent Terrax, a cosmic-powered former Herald of Galactus. The gist is that the first time they met him, the Warriors got really lucky and basically beat Terrax on a fluke, but here he’s fully powered and prepared, so he more or less kicks their asses and nearly destroys New York City in the process. It’s really the Warriors’ coming out party, as they’re in way over their heads and have to take their lumps big-time before formulating a comeback plan that involves asking for help from guest stars the Fantastic Four and The Silver Surfer, but it’s also Nicieza doing the equivalent of a blockbuster disaster movie in comic book form as the action is insane and, again, Bagley really gets a chance to shine.

“Nothing But the Truth” (New Warriors #22-25)
Two huge storylines for the price of one, as Nicieza bids Bagley a fond farewell and in the process really wraps up the first era of the larger story he’s telling with the New Warriors. On one side, Night Thrasher learns his whole life is more or less a lie, with the tragedies he’s faced having been perpetrated by those closest to him, and embarks on a quest for the truth that leads to him and the bulk of the Warriors team—along with honorary members Darkhawk and Rage—having to face down a villain who scared the crap out of me as a kid as well as prevent the end of the world. On the other, Marvel Boy, with Firestar in his corner and Foggy Nelson pleading his case, stands trial for murdering his own abusive father a few issues back when he lost control of his powers. Both stories pack an emotional wallop and Nicieza delivers big-time on all the clues and teases he has laid out over the first two years of the series with shocking answers, high stakes, and a conclusion I sure as heck did not see coming.

The Essentials: New Warriors by Fabian Nicieza

Growing up, I always liked to root for the underdogs; maybe it was the burgeoning Red Sox fan in me, who knows. I pulled for the Buffalo Bills to upset whoever they would inevitably lose to in the Super Bowl, rooted for guys like Kerry Von Erich to win the Royal Rumble, and always made sure my favorite character on any TV show was the third most popular at best (i.e. Laser from American Gladiators as opposed to Nitro, Gemini or Turbo).

In comics, I was no different. The more well-known a character or property was, the less interest I had. Of course the secondary reason for this was that the more undiscovered a comic was the more fun I had learning all about it, but I didn’t really get that consciously until later.

I knew who Superman and Batman were, so I eschewed DC for Marvel. I was at least somewhat familiar with Captain America and Iron Man, so I passed over the Avengers for the X-Men (who of course were anything but obscure to comic book fans, but they didn’t have a TV show or anything yet). Even within the X-Men titles, I always preferred X-Force to the main books because Cannonball was more interesting to me than Wolverine.

And then there was New Warriors.

One day early on in my comic book journey as I was rooting through the back issue bins of my local baseball card store, I happened across three or four issues of New Warriors from the original run by Fabian Nicieza and Mark Bagley. I was mesmerized by these characters who all had great designs thanks to Bagley and the artists he was borrowing from, but who I had no familiarity with whatsoever, yet there was the Marvel logo up in the corners, so they did somehow share a universe with Spider-Man and the rest. That it was a book about teenagers closer to my age than the X-Men or most other prominent characters of the day was a welcome discovery I would make upon returning home and reading the book, but I bought every issue I could find just on the strength of those first few covers and my curiosity about the unknown.

New Warriors ended up becoming the book that served as the spine of my first Golden Age as a comic book collector and remains not only one of my favorite series ever, but one I feel more than comfortable pointing to and saying “This totally holds up as proof the 90’s weren’t all bad.”

I know that looking back at my favorite childhood comic inevitably means many of my observations are going to be tinted through a haze of nostalgia, but I still think I can speak pretty conclusively to some of the things that really made New Warriors work.

In my mind, Nicieza’s commitment to the book and the characters was the most important factor in its success (and for my purposes, we’re talking about “success” more in terms of being a critically well-received and much-beloved by me personally comic if not necessarily a commercial blockbuster), but no doubt the environment of Marvel at the time, at least in terms of their treatment of Warriors, played a huge role in making that possible.

During the 90’s age of super-continuity and titles often being sucked up into bigger events beyond their control, New Warriors was for the most part left to its own devices. Yeah, Nicieza brought in plenty of guest stars from The Punisher to Namor to Darkhawk to an entire alternate Egyptian-themed Marvel Universe in those first couple years, but they added to rather than distracting the larger stories being told over lengthy periods of time in Warriors, stories that felt very self-contained and that as a reader of the book you felt a great deal of ownership over and satisfaction in.

Out of the aforementioned sense of standing alone, I always dug that the New Warriors felt like a far more intimate and welcoming group in opposition to their counterparts at both Marvel and DC. While the X-Men were fighting for Xavier’s dream, the Avengers were Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the Justice League were (at the time) working for the government and so on, the Warriors had no great modus operandi and were really just a group of misfits who ended up becoming friends because they enjoyed hanging out together; it was far closer to my (and I’d think most people’s) junior high/high school experience than any other comic.

To wit, the Warriors were founded thusly: Night Thrasher wanted to create a team of young super heroes to fight crime and avenge the death of his parents (yes, I know it sounds familiar); Marvel Boy (later Justice) wanted to join the Avengers but was deemed too young; Nova got his powers back thanks to Thrash and was looking to kick ass; Firestar was at loose ends; Namorita wanted a place on the surface world; Speedball was just looking for a good time. Six completely different agendas, but through more coincidence than design, they ended up banding together to beat Terrax and decided it made more sense to be a team than not to be one. From there they got a cool warehouse to hang out in, brought in some other directionless recruits, and of course started pairing off romantically like bunnies in heat.

In other words, it’s one of the most unique and yet most realistic depictions of teens as super heroes ever; because honestly, at age 17 were you and your buddies more likely to hold formal meetings with roll calls and such or meet up every so often in your clubhouse, order pizza, and go fight aliens because you saw them attacking New York on the news?

In interviews, Nicieza always said his run on New Warriors was about two things: making hard choices and seeking the truth. Again, as a kid, these were things I grasped really easily and found far more compelling than simply “We’re out to save the world” or even “We’re out to foster peace between our race and those who hate and fear us” (no offense meant to my other childhood comic book loves of course).

With those two guiding principles, New Warriors often tackled issues that you wouldn’t see in your average comic on a semi-monthly basis. Marvel Boy was a victim of child abuse and ended up killing his father accidentally while using his powers for self-defense, which formed the crux of one of the title’s most monumental storylines when he went on trial (defended by Foggy Nelson no less). Namorita led the team into a hostile Middle Eastern country where they were unable to determine whether the dictator in charge or the leader of the rebellion was a bigger scumbag. Foes like eco-terrorists the Force of Nature and the vigilante Bengal had the Warriors constantly having to make those aforementioned hard choices as to what side was the right one.
On the seeking truth side of the equation, the mystery behind what exactly happened to Night Thrasher’s parents ended up becoming far more complex than a simple Batman knock-off and the revelations would for an epic that dominated much of the book’s second year and concluded explosively alongside Marvel Boy’s trial in Bagley’s final issue. Nicieza being able to meticulously plot and unfurl these intricate tales gave New Warriors much of its strength.

And yet while New Warriors did hard-hitting “torn from the headlines” stuff better than most mainstream capes and tights titles, it could flip on a dime to stuff that made the universe shudder as well. That Egyptian alternate universe story, for instance, was the Warriors’ first encounter with Nova’s near-omnipotent old foe, The Sphinx, albeit a female version, and that “Forever Yesterday” trilogy not only stands out as a perennial favorite to anybody who has read it, but also heralded more mammoth tales pitting our young heroes against the immortal lovers in a Shakespearean drama gone cosmic.

The Warriors also took on world beaters like their old buddy Terrax as well as the Inhumans and Star Thief, not to mention having to help Nova save an entire dead world in “The Starlost.” They tussled with The White Queen and her Hellions as well as out-of-control mutant Darkling who brought half of New York City’s good guys under his control, including several Warriors. They had memorable moments from Nova and Namorita’s first hook-up to Rage snapping the neck of the man who killed his grandmother.

Like New Teen Titans, New Warriors was a comic that could adapt to any genre, be it topical issues, fantasy, science-fiction, etc. The heart of the book was the family that Fabian Nicieza and his artistic collaborators created in these characters and that you felt a part of.

Speaking of those collaborators, Nicieza and fans like myself were damn lucky as we not only got Mark Bagley for 25 issues, but then no less than Darick Robertson as an encore through issue 50. New Warriors was always a great-looking book and a lot of the fun in following it monthly was seeing both men grow from the rookies they came on the title as into the superstars they’ve become today.

I think I’ll wrap on that point of the New Warriors feeling like a family, which is an overused cliché in singing the praises of good comics to be sure, but that doesn’t make it any less apt. However, the Warriors never felt like a family in the traditional sense, they felt like the way you call your best friends “family” and know you can count on them to be there for you when maybe you don’t want to go to your parents or siblings. Coming full circle to why I picked up New Warriors in the first place, since they weren’t an established property with years of history when I started reading, I felt like I got in on the ground floor of basically the first week of school and got to become friends with Dwayne, Vance, Angel, Rich, Nita, Robbie and the rest at the same time they were becoming friends with one another; as their fictional bond grew, so did my attachment to following their adventures, hardships and triumphs.

Interestingly enough, I can still draw parallels to that original run of New Warriors to my experience as teenager into the present. In the same way I haven’t really remained close to many of my friends from high school but can still talk to them for hours when we do run in to one another, I don’t feel any great void in my comic book-reading life for lack of a New Warriors ongoing, but I still get excited whenever any two or more members of the team appear together.
Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning illustrated pretty well in an issue of Nova last year where Rich got together with Justice and Firestar to have some pizza and beers that you can never really go home again as far as those glory days. Today, Night Thrasher and Namorita are dead. Nova is off in space. Speedball is a haunted basket case. Justice and Firestar didn’t end up getting married, they went their separate ways. When the survivors hang out, they talk about the good times they had way back when, but their lives are elsewhere now, for better or for worse.

Sound familiar?

Like high school, New Warriors is something I got a lot out of and would never want to trade in, but it’s also something I’m happy leaving on the shelf, revisiting once in awhile before moving onto something else. Those 50+ issues were really something special, but also a neat instance of a comics saga with a good beginning, middle and end that you can always remain satisfied with even as the characters move on to other things.