The New Warriors
Eric S Brown
The 1990s were a rough time for the comic industry. DC was struggling to hold on, Marvel Comics declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and “indie” publishers flooded the market with an endless number of variant and special covers, meant to appeal to speculators which turned out to be mostly worthless. However, the 1990s weren’t all bad because during that decade, Marvel created The New Warriors, a new team of young superheroes much like DC’s Teen Titans.
The team first appeared in Thor issues 411 and 412 saving the god of Thunder from the wrath of the Juggernaut, no small feat for a team of inexperienced teenagerse. The original New Warriors team consisted of Night Thrasher (a Batman style hero), Nova the Human Rocket, Namorita (cousin of Namor the Sub-Mariner), Marvel Boy (a powerful telekinetic with ties to the Guardians of the Galaxy), Firestar (who was originally a character on the Amazing Spider-man and Friends Saturday morning cartoon series), and Speedball (A youth with kinetic energy based powers).
In comic lore, the New Warriors were the reason that Marvel’s Civil War began as most of them and hundreds of children died during a battle in which they were trying to bring a super villian named Nitro to justice. The team would of course be reborn later on and there is much talk of the New Warriors entering the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the next few years. Regardless, they are worth checking out for any reader that enjoys coming of age superhero stories.
