New Warriors #9 Review

“Why is there a hundred-foot-tall stuffed bear attacking us?!”

It’s old home week in the latest issue of “Scarlet Spider Team-Up” as Kaine returns to Houston! But will heartbreak be the only thing that greets the Arana Roja in the town he left behind? Click and find out!

WRITER: Christopher Yost

ARTIST: Tana Ford

COLOR ARTIST: Ruth Redmond

LETTERING: VC’s Joe Caramagna

COVERS by Takeshi Miyazawa & Matthew Wilson

EDITOR: Devin Lewis

SUPERVISING EDITOR: Sana Amanat

SENIOR EDITOR: Nick Lowe

STORY: We come into the issue on a flashback to a minor-league basketball game in Houston, TX where the mascot of the Houston Jets, “Choke the Bear,” is struck by a purple meteorite, cuz comics. Flash forward to Houston where Justice, due to a suggestionn from Aracely, has tricked Scarlet Spider into going back to Houston via their traveling mountain base. Kaine punches Justice in the face and swings off, quitting the team. Vance follows and tries to persuade him to stay, urging Kaine not to abandon Aracely, who adores him. Before Scarlet Spider can justify to himself that Hummingbird is better off without him, they are interrupted by a giant, disgruntled bear mascot. . . Back in Wundagore, the other Warriors are waiting for those two to work things out (apparently Silhouette is sticking around) when Hummingbird suggests they go to a rave in Prague to cheer up Haechi, who, she intuits, is sad for having been rejected as a monster by his loved ones in the last story. Outside, things get even weirder for Justice and Scarlet Spider when Choke explains his backstory: he tried to be Houston’s mascot and caused a lot of trouble, “to get people fired up,” but went to Mexico to do drugs when he thought that people were getting bored with him (sentences you never think you’re gonna type. Oi. . .). However, when he heard that Houston had, as he put it, “its own super villain,” in the Scarlet Spider (this guys is clearly delusional), he decided to return to have a high profile grudge match. So Kaine leaves. While Choke ambushes a distracted and disappointed Justice, none other than officer Wally Layton from “Scarlet Spider” gets his attention and tries to convince Kaine to stay, pulling an abrupt 180 by having apparently discarded his scathing opinion of Kaine from the end of that series. While the rest of the team is struggling to get into a club in Prague, Justice is getting poned by a giant teddy bear. When Choke is about to finish Justice off by eating him, Justice calls out Firestar’s name, but is saved by Scarlet Spider at the last minute. When Kaine proceeds to do some very Parker-y angsting about how he’s really a monster and has killed people, Justice levels with him, confiding that he’s done the same, which convinces Kaine to stay and fight. While the rest of the team dances their troubles away (Selah and Mark seem pretty close, and Aracely tells Robbie, “Mictlan rises. I am going to die.”), Justice and Scarlet Spider make short work of Choke, who turns out to be a kid in a giant bear-suit. Vance apparently wears Kaine down enough to stay on the team. Nuff said.

THOUGHTS: This felt like another issue of Yost’s “Scarlet Spider”, which was a very welcome thing to this Kainiac.

Despite what I thought was very poor art (look closely and you’ll see that Ford gave Kaine’s gloves web-lines on the fingers, a la Spider-Man, which Redmond had to go over and fill in), this story brought the same balance of grim absurdity with genuine character moments that characterized Kaine’s adventures in Houston. For a character that is historically pretty dark, Yost masterfully juxtaposes Kaine’s harsh grit with ridiculous situations that are always so fun to read. I mean, putting characters in situations that challenge them and make them grow is part of what makes for a good story. And what better challenge is there for a pragmatic pessimist like Kaine than some good, old-fashioned, comic book kookiness? (I thought the “Ska-Doosh!” onomatopoeia that accompanied Choke’s fist hitting a building was pretty funny too) While I didn’t love everything about this issue, it’s nice to see a character I love written so well in a fun story.

I mentioned in a previous review that I’m sure Ben would have loved to have punched Justice in the face when he was on the team, and right here in the beginning of the issue we have a moment that I’m sure made Ben Reilly look down from Heaven and chuckle. The interaction between Justice and Kaine was pretty well handled throughout the rest of the book too. Most of it was nothing we haven’t seen before, and while I admit that Kaine’s constant I-hate-you’s to Justice have been getting old, Yost gave us a nice turn in their relationship that I will save for my favorite moment section. And speaking of Ben, there are few people in the Marvel Universe who can say that they have really spent time with both of Peter’s brothers as Scarlet Spiders, so it’s nice to have that list broadened.

Aaand then there’s the eleph..err..bear in the room. “Choke the Bear.” Yost is willing to put just about anything in his stories. Clone Saga and The Other references, dog and cat people, and now he continues the trend with a gargantuan stuffed bear with delusions of grandeur. I found it unlikely that “everyone was too freaked out” to tell Kaine about Choke when he was in Houston though. I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t have been a moment when Wally, Donald, or Anabel, or even Aracely after having read one of their minds, some night when they were hanging out and knocking a few back, would have mentioned the disgruntled mascot who terrorized the city. And though I can see where Choke, much like Jake Waffles and Mr. Whiskers before him, could constitute this book’s “nuking of the fridge,” the absurd and the ridiculous are just a part of the stories now. And, personally, I find neither of them to be arbitrary or gratuitous. I think that Choke represents Kaine’s absurd view of himself. Just like the delusional Choke, Kaine sees himself as a villain, despite his impressive resume of heroic acts. He saved New York from the Queen. He kept Mammon from rising up and causing god-knows-what kind of chaos. He euthanized Cletus Kasady, took down the Assassin’s Guild, then went on to defeat the Jackal, Kraven the Hunter, and Shathra, three villains that have brought Peter Parker himself to the brink of death and madness. Despite himself, the Scarlet Spider has become a hero. And the fact that he thinks he is not is poignantly embodied in the absurd character of Choke. Maybe I’m reaching again, but that made sense to me within the context of this issue.

I mentioned that I did not love every thing about this issue and, other than the choppy art, I was referring to the Warriors who went clubbing, specifically Nova. How old is this kid? Can someone tell me? Because I’m pretty sure he looked a little drunk in that Praguian club. Is he under the drinking age there? I don’t know what the limit is in Prague, but I kind of winced at that scene.

The other thing that kind of took me back was Wally Layton’s very abrupt change of his opinion of Kaine. The slow dissolution of their relationship was what made the end of “Scarlet Spider” truly sad. Now, if this reconciliation (as well as Aracely’s “Mictlan rises” trip) leads to another volume of “Scarlet Spider” (and the resolution of this “Aztec/Mexico story” that Yost’s been seeding for so long), I might be more forgiving, but not much. This felt forced.

KAINIAC KORNER: In a pleasantly Kaine-focused issue, my favorite Scarlet Spider moment in this story was the conversation he had with Justice. Despite himself, Kaine indulged in some very Parker-esque angst, justifying his abrasiveness by saying that he is really not a good person, and Justice confides that he has done horrible things too. Vance once killed his abusive father in self-defense. Justice then gives Kaine (and Yost gives us) some good reasons to remain on the team. If he’s a monster, he needs to be around people that can stop him. If he’s not a good person, he needs to be around people that make him better. And he is not a coward, and leaving would be cowardly. While I don’t think that any Spider-character (except Flash) should really be on a team for long, these reasons are as good as any for Kaine to stick around.

GRADE: B (pretty good)