New Warriors

New Collecting Guide: Marvel’s New Warriors (and an explanation of who they are)

November 20, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Today I’m happy to announce a humble page that makes me feel like Crushing Comics’s coverage of the Marvel Universe is mere steps away from being preliminarily complete, although I’ll still have dozens of other things to add to it.

That page is The Definitive New Warriors Collecting Guide and Reading Order. This new guide is available exclusively to CK’s Crushing Comics Club Patrons until January 8th. Want early access? Visit CK on Patreon to learn more.

new-warriors-1990-0001 New Warriors was an early-90s creation of Marvel, who was witnessing the cresting popularity of New Mutants and realizing they never truly had their own analog to Teen Titans despite having plenty of young heroes to staff such a team. Tom DeFalco, then the writer/editor of Thor, decided it was a hole that needed filling and cobbled together a team to do just that in Thor #411-412 in 1989.

Aside from the recently neglected Richard Rider as Nova, none of the other characters could be described a notable … or even memorable. The most high-profile was probably Firestar, created for the 1981 cartoon Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends that was still seen widely in syndication, but introduced into comics just a year prior by Chris Claremont in the pages of Uncanny X-Men.

Speedball was was a human superball created by DeFalco for a Spider-Man annual and expanded by Roger Stern and the imitable Steve Ditko in his own maxi-series. Namorita was a longtime Sub-Mariner supporting character at a time when Namor was making a major comeback thanks to John Byrne.

Marvel Boy was a largely forgotten creation of the 1970s, a youngster introduced in The Defenders to explain away the future Guardians of the Galaxy leader. His big story was being abused for being a mutant.

To that mix, DeFalco added his own creation, Night Thrasher, as their leader. This made sense, since on their own none of them really showed the kind of initiative it would take to assemble a super-team. Night Thrasher was a sort of Batman-esque hero who assembled a team to fight crime – which makes their initiation facing off against Terrax and then Juggernaut seem a bit outsized.

The team lasted through 75 issues in its initial run, guided two-thirds of the way by Fabian Nicieza. The scripter of both X-Force and New Warriors, Nicieza was known for wringing terrific human drama out of his young superheroes. New Warriors worked for the same reason all of Marvel’s best team titles have – not because it was part of a franchise like Avengers or X-Men, but because the team really became a family along the way.

new-warriors-2014-0001 Unfortunately, “assembled to fight crime (but not really ever doing that” and “team as family” combine to make successful reboots a tough prospect. Multiple iterations of New Warriors try the “we stumbled onto a fight” approach and barely live out a year, while an “assembled by Night Thrasher” version lasted for two. The team is probably best known to modern readers for being the cause of Civil War (seriously)! The best return to form was from Christopher Yost in 2014, which found Justice and Speedball in mentor roles across a new team of young heroes that mirrored the original line-up. Unfortunately, it didn’t catch fire and lasted only the requisite year.

Given it’s unremarkable pedigree, why is a New Warriors Collecting Guide so important to Crushing Comics?

It’s the reboots. New Warriors is one of only remaining Marvel series previously uncovered by Crushing Comics that was both long-running and rebooted multiple times. With it now catalogued, there’s scant few Marvel titles that have run for longer than two years and through more than three incarnations I’ve yet to recap – and none with this many issues to their names.

Since New Warriors itself only constitutes 129 issues I took an extra step for this guide. Not only does it cover how to collect each of those issues, but it presents a unified reading order for every appearance of each of the founding members of The New Warriors (except for Nova, who has his own guide, so I added perennial teammates Rage and Silhouette.) Now you can follow the team through events like Infinity War and through times when they were splintered, as in the wake of Civil War.

Just how collected are those 129 issues of New Warriors? [Read more…] about New Collecting Guide: Marvel’s New Warriors (and an explanation of who they are)

New Warriors – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Dec 22, 2024! The New Warriors comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated December 2024 with titles scheduled for release through July 2025.

This guide covers every series titled New Warriors, plus acts as a complete reading order for all of the major New Warriors characters: Night Thrasher, Namorita (AKA Kymaera), Firestar, Marvel Boy / Justice, Speedball (AKA Penance), Rage, and Silhouette. Nova is covered in his own guide. [Read more…] about New Warriors – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #20 to 16

June 12, 2016 by krisis

Omnibus on Shelf A week into this countdown and accompanying annotation and we’ve finally reached the Top 20 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibuses from the 2016 Secret Ballot by Tigereyes. I covered #25-21 in the last installment.

This installment includes two books of fan-favorite material, a long shot second volume to an orphaned first, the long-ignored origin of a hero who has two films to his name, and the highest-ranking vote from my own ballot! There’s a solid chance I would buy all five of these books.

If you have any extra information to add about the probable runs or opinions to share about the comics therein, please leave a comment! Even when it comes to X-Men, I don’t know (or remember!) everything about these books – and you might.

Do you own an oversized tome of your favorite character’s comic books? My Marvel Omnibus & Oversized Hardcover Guide is the most comprehensive tool on the web for tracking Marvel’s hugest releases – it features details on every oversize book, including a rundown of contents and if the volume is still readily available for purchase. [Read more…] about Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses of 2016 – #20 to 16

Nova – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Dec 22, 2024! The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide and trade reading order on collecting Nova comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated December 2024 with titles scheduled for release through July 2025.

Marvel was known in the 1970s for piloting both new and returning heroes in anthology titles before promoting them to their own series. That’s why it was so remarkable that the original Nova, Richard Rider, debuted in the first issue of his own series in 1976!

It was a prescient move by Marvel, with the 70s sci-fi craze due to hit its peak the following year with Star Wars! The character was originally designed by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein a decade earlier in a 1966 fan-zine.

Nova was the first of Marvel’s many attempts to recapture the youthful magic of early Spider-Man at a point in the 70s when very few heroes in their line-up still came off as starry-eyed teenagers.

That gave Nova a strong focus during his ongoing series, but meant he was stranded with few connections in a world of adult heroes once it was over. He disappeared from Marvel for nearly a decade.

That changed when Marvel finally collected a number of existing teen heroes (plus a few new ones) into New Warriors, a sort of unbranded companion to New Mutants transition into the self-directed X-Force. The title ran for years and over time felt more like a family than a team with a charter.

Much like Nova’s original teendom restricted his connections, so did his association with the New Warriors brand. It took another half decade for them to finally break out of their orbit, but it was in a big way.

Richard Rider became one of the heroes to anchor Annihilation, a massive space blow-out that would revive Marvel’s cosmic line of heroes and cultures. It thrust Nova into an amazing five-year epic, during which he becomes a formidable commander who goes toe-to-toe with Thanos.

That all ends with the Thanos Imperative, and Nova going missing in its wake. After a few years of silence, Marvel brought back Nova – only, it wasn’t Richard Rider! Sam Alexander took up the mantle of Nova, but not from Rider – from his father, another prior (and missing) Nova.

Sam carried on the proud tradition of both Spider-Man and Richard Rider as a bumbling, well-meaning teen who does more damage than good. His series is a charming, high-gloss coming of age tail that dovetails into him being drafted by the real Avengers – and, also, finally meeting Richard Rider.