New Warriors #’s 5&6 Review

“We get pets?! KITTY!”

   The Wrathful Rouge Arachnid and his non-teammates work to clear their new mountain base of perils! Along the way they unearth anthropomorphized house pets & a demon dwarf born from an evil book-page (like ya’do), and eventually run afoul of Earth’s Mightiest guest-stars. . . Remind me never to go on vacation in Transia. . .

WRITER: Christopher Yost

ARTIST: Nick Roche, with David Baldeon and Tarragona (#6)

COLOR ARTIST: Ruth Redmond

LETTERING: VC’s Joe Caramagna

COVERS by Ramon Perez & Ian Herring (#5) and Takeshi Miyazawa & Matthew Wilson (#6)

EDITOR: Sana Amanat

SENIOR EDITOR: Nick Lowe

STORY: Open #5 on a dog and a dark god playing chess and talking about how the god’s going to use the New Warriors as a means of returning from wherever he’s imprisoned so he can fight the coming Celestials. Meanwhile, in Wundagore, as Justice, Scarlet Spider, and Water Snake are clearing the mountain of traps, Vance manages to piss off both Kaine and Faira by comparing them to their counterparts on former versions of this team. Faira reveals that she is not Namorita, but that she was sent to find her when “mystics” sensed Namorita’s return (I assume during DnA’s Nova run). As she storms off, she is stopped cold by a satanic vision of her and the others suspended dead from the ceiling by chains over bloody pentagrams with book pages everywhere. When Vance and Kaine catch up, the vision disappears and Faira claims she saw nothing. As they go deeper into the mountain, they’re attacked by a giant cat. Vance is incapacitated due to his allergies (lol!) and Kaine is just indignant that his life has brought him into this ridiculous situation. Faira takes the cat down using a nearby water main and, as Kaine prepares to shank the kitty with a stinger, a talking dog-man steps in and pleads for the cat’s life. They claim to be two surviving Knights of Wundagore who hid, “with some assistance,” from Wyndham’s betrayal deep in the mountain. When they share the names the High Evolutionary gave them, “Caninus” and “Felinatus,” Kaine tells them to pick their own names, because “no one can tell you who you are.” As the others talk, Faira hears something whisper her name and turns to see a burning page fall to the floor. Down in the village, Speedball, Sun Girl, Hummingbird, and Mark bust down the door to the local tavern, proclaiming that they have come to “save” the villagers, only to find a bunch of stoic Transians staring back at them. When Aracely reads the villagers’ mind, she learns that these unflappable people pretty much just ignore everything that happens at Wundagore and didn’t even register the previous four issues’ crisis. The heroes decide to stay for some food (although after what they did to this place’s front door, I wouldn’t trust the food in this establishment). As they each share their back-stories over a meal (Bendis style), the conversation turns morbid really quick when Aracely reveals that Robbie is still cutting himself. As Speedball brushes of Aracely’s remark, in Robbie’s mindscape, Penance warns Aracely not to speak of those things anymore. (Nova, by the way, is absent from the next few issues and is off doing whatever he does in his own book) When the heroes reconnoiter back at the mountain, Caninus and Felinatus, now “Jake Waffles” and “Mr. Whiskers,” reveal to the team that they may use the tech in the mountain to take them to wherever they wish to go. Since most of the team requests transport to Manhatten, Jake Waffles teleports the entire mountain to the middle of the Hudson Bay. To be continued. . .

. . .right now! #6 opens on a surreal scene with Faira dropping an old book-page which gives smoky-birth to an evil-looking dwarf. In Avengers Tower, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers are home watching the monitors and catching up on the events of the first four issues when Wundagore materializes in the middle of the River! The Big Three assemble and mobilize towards the mountain. However, much to the Warriors’ relief, it turns out that Wundagore is not actually 100% transported, as boats and water and stuff just kind of phase through it. Meanwhile, to set up a plot point for a future issue, as construction workers clear the subway tunnel from Sun Girl and Mark’s battle with the Evolutionaries from #3, three new Inhumans show up on the scene, hunting Mark for some unknown purpose. Back at Avengers Tower, Justice and Speedball debate with Iron Man and Captain America about whether or not they should start a new New Warriors team, while Thor babysits the others at Wundagore. Eventually, the Darkhold Dwarf from the beginning of the issue plays his hand, wanting to write a new Book of Sins, and makes Water Snake see Thor as a demon, so she viciously attacks him, resulting in a brawl between her and her teammates with the Norse god. Things get heated in both locations as Vance and Robbie declare their independence from the Avengers, not needing the approval of Earth’s Mightiest to be heroes, while the others struggle to contain the wrath of the thunder god. Aracely reads Thor’s mind and uses her Aztec god powers to reveal, isolate, and destroy the dwarven lackey of Chthon. Iron Man, Justice, and Speedball return to the mountain and stumble onto the resulting victory celebration, at which Thor validates the new team for their success in preventing Chthon from gaining a foothold in this dimension. In the epilogue, Justice and Sun Girl escort Mark home and come into his grandmother’s living room to find the three Inhumans from earlier, who promptly blow up Mark’s house, presumably killing Mark’s new friends and his family. Cliffhanger!

THOUGHTS: Phew! That was a long summary. Thanks for bearing with me while we play “catch-up.”

I found these two issues to be vast improvements over the first four. They addressed a few problems that I had with the first arc, primarily that it was nice for Yost to step the plot back and let the characters breathe. Case in point, the Bendis-moment in the Transia bar when the characters just sat and talked over a meal. It was a nice break from what came before.

First off, my MVP award for this story goes to Hummingbird. She absolutely walked away with every scene she was in. Yost’s Aracely goes from bluntly hilarious to innocently dark in her interactions with the other characters, and even snatched the big win for the team against the Darkhold Dwarf when her Huitzilopochtli persona burned it up. Loved her.

Also, because I’m a total continuity fanboy, I liked Justice’s references to other the other Scarlet Spiders when he was talking to Kaine in the beginning of #5. We still don’t get enough Ben Reilly to suit me nowadays, so every reference is a welcome one. And again, liking the specific animosity that Kaine has for Justice as it reflects the relationship Ben had with Vance back when he was in the Warriors.

These issues also stirred a lot of speculation on my part. Was that the dark god Chthon talking with Caninus in the beginning? Not being too familiar with Wundagore lore, I’m assuming there’s a connection between the mountain and the elder god. I’m pretty sure, by the end, that it was him, because the dwarf from the 90’s Darkhold Defenders book was the baddie here, and the Darkhold was written by Chthon. And while I’m at it, why is it that Water Snake of all the characters has the connection with him? Is there some connection between Chthon and the Atlanteans? Oh well, I applaud Yost for yet again using characters and plot points from forgotten periods.

Anyways, we also saw some affection blossom between certain members of the team. Scarlet Spider and Water Snake seem to have a newfound respect for one another, as Faira defends Kaine when Justice gets up in his grill about unmasking, and Kaine returns genuine concern for her when she’s tripping out over dark magic. The crush Aracely gets on Robbie when she sees the dark and brooding Penance in his mind was really cute too. She’s definitely got a type. And Sun Girl and Mark’s friendship continues to develop in a sweet way.

And while I totally understand if the two surviving Knights of Wundagore made this book jump the shark in some people’s eyes, I thought they were by-and-large hilarious. In my head, Jake Waffles sounds like Barney and Mr. Whiskers sounded like Yzma from Emperor’s New Groove, so their dialogue was always funny in my head. And they had the absolute perfect exchange that a cat and dog would have if they were the only two things left alive when Whiskers says, “We are not friends” and Waffles replies, “We are BEST friends.” Then there was Aracely’s “KITTY!” And even when the cat is playing nice, it’s hateful. Likewise, if it was Jake playing chess with Chthon at the beginning, he may not be all that he seems either. (and by the way, I wonder who won the arm-wrestling match, Kaine or Whiskers?)

As for the guest-stars, I know that, right now, the Avengers are the hottest thing since the Doritos Locos taco and are encroaching on being over-exposed in the Marvel Universe at large, but their guest-appearance here made sense to me. I wasn’t thrilled when it looked like they’d be guest-starring, as that doesn’t really bode well for the future of a title, but I like what happened here because one of my issues with this book has been “what distinguishes it from the Avengers?” So when Justice & Speedball quit the team and stepped out of Captain America and Iron Man’s shadow, they took the book with it. And I don’t blame them. Tony and Steve are getting all high and mighty (heh) about how politically incorrect the New Warriors are because of their association with Stamford, and I just kept thinking: “Bill Foster.” Segway: the Thor fight was pretty great too, and was especially funny when he had Kaine by the throat and was staring dumbfounded at the Dwarf. Anyway, I still have issues about the general purpose of this team and its place on the shelves in this market, but Yost won so much good will for me with his great character work here that I was willing to put that aside for two issues and enjoy the book for what it was. 

As for the art, Nick Roche’s grittier style was not as appealing to me as To’s crisper lines, but his characters do move pretty well. Ruth Redmond stepping in as the colorist definitely shifted the tone of this book from “bright” to “moodier,” which may not be a bad thing, but I’m still just struggling to find the tone that this team is trying to establish with the book as a whole, and this didn’t help me.

A final nitpick: Selah calls Mark “Haechi” in the epilogue, but he has not yet been given that name within the narrative.

KAINIAC KORNER: We got some great Kaine-moments from these issues, usually dealing with his interactions with Vance, Faira, and Felinatus (or Aracely’s “Don’t call him ’Spider-Man.’ He gets all stabby about it.”), but the moment that pleased this Kainiac the most in this two-parter was a subtle one: I loved when he told the two Knights to change their names. It really rang true to his character for me. Kaine is a clone. The Knights are artificially evolved animals. Given the extensive history of abuse with his creator, the Jackal, it makes total sense that Kaine, in his own way, would kind of empathize with these two creatures after their own creator had just tried to kill them, and urge them to make their own names because “no one can tell you who you are.” It’s stuff like this that shows me that Kaine’s character has range and isn’t just so one-notably abrasive, as he was portrayed in the past four issues.

GRADE: B+ Very good!