New Warriors #10 Review

“You are wasting time. . .and time is something we have far too little of right now.”

The Kaine Krusaders finally take the fight back to the High Evolutionary as the Second Evolutionary War kicks into high gear. Will this book go out on a high note as it enters its final arc? Click and find out!

WRITERS: Christopher Yost and Erik Burnham

ARTIST: Marcus To

COLOR ARTIST: Ruth Redmond

LETTERING: VC’s Joe Caramagna

COVER by Stacey Lee

EDITOR: Devin Lewis

SUPERVISING EDITOR: Sana Amanat

SENIOR EDITOR: Nick Lowe

STORY: As Herbert Wyndham and the chief of the Evolutionaries fly around the Arctic Circle in their secret ship, the New Warriors abruptly break into their control room, having used the technology in Mt. Wundagore to locate the wayward villains. A fight ensues, eventually reaching a turning point when Wyndham grabs Scarlet Spider by the throat and throws him into one of his machines. Justice calls in the cavalry, Silhouette, Jake Waffles, and Mr. Whiskers, who turn the tide of the battle, allowing Water Snake to free Scarlet Spider and Hummingbird to distract Wyndham by turning the chief of the Evolutionaries against him with her Huitzilopochtli-powers. Burning with vengeance, Wyndham tries to kill Jake, but Whiskers sacrifices his own life, taking the blast for his friend and turning to dust, which enrages Justice into engaging Wyndham directly. When Hummingbird tries to console Jake, she loses her control over the chief Evolutionary, who cold-cocks her. After the Evolutionary threatens to kill her, and Speedball tries unsuccessfully to deter him, Scarlet Spider comes right up to him and shoots him point-blank in the head with Whiskers’ gun before he can land the deathblow. Having wrapped up the fight, the New Warriors barely have time to recover and enjoy their victory before some Eternals come crashing into the mix. . .to be continued!

THOUGHTS: I think that the quote in this review’s tagline best sums up the spirit of this issue. By now this team knows that the book is going to be cancelled, so why did we burn up the majority of an entire issue on a fight scene? I feel like they could have moved the story forward a bit more instead of focusing in on one fight.

Creator-wise, this book has its ups and downs. When I saw Erik Burnham’s name on the credits, I immediately thought, “Oh no. . .” because the decline of Yost’s fantastic Scarlet Spider title in its final issues coincided with his arrival on the book (as Yost was busy working on Thor: the Dark World). I assume that they have a similar arrangement here as they did on the aforementioned title, i.e. that Burnham is scripting Yost’s plot. However, I was. . . I don’t want to say “pleasantly surprised” so much as “contented” that Burnham’s voice did not bring down this particular book. However, that’s only because I didn’t have the highest opinion of this book to begin with.

On the artistic side of things, it’s nice to see Marcus To, the series’ main artist, back on pencils. They look even sketchier than they did in the Inhuman arc the last time he was drawing, but only in certain panels. Ruth Redmond’s colors definitely don’t make To’s art pop as much as David Curiel’s brighter palette did in the first arc, but that doesn’t really take you out of the issue. Her more subdued hues make for a moodier read, which I really don’t mind generally speaking, but this isn’t a crime book. It’s a superhero book, which implies a greater degree of borderline bombastic artwork. However, Redmond’s a consummate professional and the difference probably isn’t all that noticeable to anyone who isn’t dissecting the book for a review.

As for the story, I have some positive remarks to make. Despite this being a fight issue in a book that is in its death-throws, the fight is still fun to watch unfold. Water Snake has definitely developed a kind of professional affinity for Scarlet Spider over the short time they have fought together, and it was fun to see this badass Atlantean warrior recognize awesome when she sees it. She tells him going in that she’s got his back, and then rescues him from Wyndham’s machine, telling him that she saved something for him to hit. Likewise, Speedball has gotten pretty protective of Hummingbird since they spent an evening dancing in Prague last issue. And furthering this coupling trend, Haechi manages to absorb vengeful a blast from Wyndham meant for Sun Girl, absorbing deflecting it back at its source, building on their possibly-more-than-just-friends relationship, which is something I really wanted to see developed if the series had kept going. After all, she was the one to rescue him from the Evolutionaries in the first arc, and she wouldn’t let him go through his abduction by Lash’s crew alone in the third arc, and just last issue Aracely intuited that they were falling in love. In general, although I think this book needs to move a bit faster given its imminent cancellation in two more issues, I go back and forth on this because I kind of feel grateful that Yost and Crew aren’t trying to cram every single resolution to every single plot point they’ve built in such a limited space of time into these last issues. I’m just disappointed because, despite the plug for the storyline in the last issue, I don’t think we’re going to see the resolution of the Mexico story that Yost has been building towards since the beginning of Scarlet Spider, or conversely perhaps it will be speedily resolved in the last issue, which would be a disappointment given the amount of build-up it’s had. If we can’t get another Scarlet Spider solo book, maybe we could get a mini-series to wrap up Yost’s tenure on Kaine’s character? I’d buy them both.

I do have a few negative, or maybe just bewildered, remarks as well. If the Warriors could use the technology in Mt. Wundagore to locate Wyndham so quickly, why didn’t they do it sooner. And the “Get your war on!” battle cry is the one that stuck? Really? Not quite “Cloberrin’ time!” is it. And, beyond the simple idea of reinforcements, why were Jake, Whiskers, and Silhouette held back at first? They didn’t seem to add much to the fight. Speaking of which, I don’t know if Whiskers’ sacrifice was meant to be that emotional of a beat, but it didn’t quite tug at my heartstrings when he took the blast for Jake (somewhere, I’m sure the inestimable George Berryman gave a hearty “good riddance” scoff upon reading this). Yes, it was nice to see such an abrasive character show some heart in his last moments, but we haven’t spent enough time with these characters to really be all that emotionally invested in such a sacrifice. And about the ending, with those Eternals showing up. . . I don’t really get what’s going to happen here (which is probably why I need to chill out and wait until I read the next issue). Are the Eternals the ones who are coming to judge the “human experiment”? Are they the secret benefactors of Wyndham and the Evolutionaries? When they said, “We’ve come to save humanity from you,” to whom were they speaking? Wyndham or the Warriors? Oh well. We’ll see what happens. 

One dangling speculation: is the machine that Scarlet Spider was thrown into meant to take a representative sampling of all the offshoots of humanity in order to wipe out any deviant genetic lines? Again, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

KAINIAC KORNER: My favorite Kaine Parker highlight this issue is a vicarious one. It was when he shot the chief Evolutionary point-blank in the head to protect Hummingbird. It reminded me of Scarlet Spider #2 when he snatched a cop’s gun and fired on Salamander. I remember thinking how awesome that was when I first read it. It was just one of those things that Spider-Man would never do, so it was pretty cool to see his clone/brother get so raw with a baddie, kind of like when he first saw Carnage in Minimum Carnage Alpha and did what I’m sure a lot of Spider-Man fans think Peter should do to Kasady by immediately going for a death-blow. Comparing the two in this context makes me think of a Buster Bluth line from the 4^th Season of Arrested Development: when helping some kids stand up to some bullies at school, Buster shows them both of his hands, one normal and the other an over-sized prosthetic deformity, saying, “Let me introduce you to some friends of mine: Light Drizzle and Thunder. You see, Light Drizzle will just annoy you. But thunder, will EF YOU UP.”

GRADE: C (not bad, not great: nothing special)