Welcome To The Archive for "New Warriors"! Yay!
CURRENT MEMBERS: Namorita (Namorita Prentiss), Night Thrasher (Dwayne Taylor), Nova (Richard Rider), Speedball (Robbie Baldwin)
FORMER MEMBERS: Aegis (Trey Rollins), Bandit (DonyeIl), Bolt (Chris Bradley), Dagger (Tandy Bowen), Darkhawk (Chris Powell), Firestar (Angelica Jones), Helix (Rafael Carago), Hindsight (Carlton LaFroyge), Justice (Vance Astrovik), Powerhouse (Zero G, Alex Power), Rage, Scarlet Spider (Ben Reilly), Silhouette (Silhouette Chord), Speedball (Darrion Grobe), Timeslip (Rina Patel), Turbo (Michiko Musashi), Turbo (Mike Jeffries)
BASE OF OPERATIONS: Rented firehouse in the DUMBO (Directly Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York; formerly the Crash Pad factory building, Manhattan waterfront; Penthouse of the Ambrose Building, 57th and Lexington, midtown Manhattan
FIRST APPEARANCE: Thor #411 (1989)
HISTORY: The New Warriors are the new generation of super heroes, costumed adventurers in their teens and early twenties; while the group has always been steeped in youthful idealism, its origins are rooted in an ancient evil. The Warriors were founded by wealthy young adventurer Dwayne Taylor, who devoted his life to fighting crime after the murder of his parents. Mentored by his legal guardians – retired mercenary Andrew Chord and enigmatic housekeeper Tai – Dwayne fought crime as Night Thrasher, forging a vigilante partnership with the superhuman brother-and-sister duo Midnight’s Fire and Silhouette, and romancing the latter; however, their alliance ended badly when Silhouette was shot by a gangster. Blaming Thrasher for the tragedy, Fire disappeared with his fallen sister, swearing vengeance.
Despite this setback, Chord encouraged Dwayne to continue his work, and to keep seeking allies in his war on crime. Inspired by and envious of the family dynamic of the Fantastic Four, Dwayne decided to form his own super-hero quartet: he restored Richard Rider’s lost superpowers (casually risking Rider’s life in the process), persuading veteran adventurer Rider to join him as Nova; he recruited eager young telekinetic hero Vance Astrovik, then known as Marvel Boy; and he pressured reluctant heroine Firestar into joining the group after uncovering her secret identity. No sooner had the four met than they found themselves in battle with the alien menace Terrax, whom they defeated with the aid of Namorita and the clownish kinetic-energy charged Speedball. The six heroes decided to remain together as a team, dubbed the “New Warriors” by Speedball using a television reporter’s description of them. The new group, based in Dwayne’s Ambrose Building penthouse, was funded by the Taylor Foundation, a conglomerate of financial institutions established by Dwayne’s late father and overseen by Chord and Tai, who also acted as Warriors support staff.
After aiding Thor against the Juggernaut, the Warriors crushed an AIM equipped street gang run by the embittered Midnight’s Fire, who was disowned by his sister Silhouette. By this time, the superhuman genetic research firm Genetech had hired the Mad Thinker to investigate the Warriors, gathering information on the team’s powers; however, the Thinker seemed to take a fond personal interest in them. He concealed the details of their personal lives from Genetech and tried to offer the young heroes guidance over the course of several encounters.
Meanwhile, Genetech used the Thinker’s data to create their own team of super-youths, Psionex: Asylum, Coronary, Impulse, Mathemanic and Pretty Persuasions. This unstable new team would encounter the Warriors repeatedly as both enemies and allies. Similarly, Genetech itself would either cause or help defuse a variety of exotic threats over the years, often working with the Warriors.
The Warriors went on to face foes such as the astro-saboteur Star Thief (Ditmil Pirvat); corrupt corporation Stane International; environmental extremists Project: Earth and their super-agents, the Force of Nature; the White Queen and her Hellions; a new female Sphinx whose self-made alternate reality was unmade by the Warriors; the reality-warping mutant Proteus; cosmic custodian Edifice Rex; the Puppet Master; unscrupulous armored marine salvage specialist Sea Urchin; the Hate-Monger and his pawns, the Sons of the Serpent; and a reborn Terrax. Silhouette joined the team, amulet-empowered adventurer Darkhawk and super-strong man-child Rage became recurring associates, romance blossomed between Vance and Firestar, and the group adopted a Taylor-owned factory building as its new “Crash Pad” headquarters.
The Warriors eventually discovered that the Taylor Foundation was corrupt, that Chord had murdered Dwayne’s parents, and that Tai was an evil sorceress bent on world domination, a member of the ancient Dragon’s Breadth cult whose hidden temple in Kampuchea housed a mystical energy nexus known as the Well of All Things. Decades ago, a unit of American soldiers – including Chord – had made a pact with Tai through which they would marry the cult’s selectively-bred daughters and produce offspring fated to control the Well’s power, all in accordance with a prophecy that said a merging of East and West was required to access the power; in fact, Tai planned to sacrifice the children to the Well to gain its power.
All of the soldiers participated in the pact except for Daryl Taylor (who refused since he was already married), each of them returning home to start families with their new brides. Tai’s daughter Miyami married Chord and bore him twins; but to save the children from Tai, she faked her own death and that of the twins, whom she gave up before she went into hiding. To replace these children in the pact, Tai mystically forced Chord to kill his friends, the Taylors, and take custody of their boy, Dwayne. When the truth about Tai finally came out, Tai found and killed Miyami and learned that the lost twins were Silhouette and Midnight’s Fire. Most of the children of the pact formed the Folding Circle, who hoped to claim the Well’s power for themselves. Unwilling to risk the Circle usurping the Well’s power, Tai had long since decided to make the Circle her lieutenants and sacrifice an alternate group of super-youths to the Well – this was why she and her pawn Chord had encouraged the formation of the New Warriors. Tai’s elaborate plot ended in a three-way battle at the temple between the Warriors, the Circle and Tai, whom Night Thrasher killed to save the Warriors.
By this time, Vance had been jailed for accidentally killing his abusive father. Avengers trainee Rage, fired for helping the Warriors steal an Avengers quinjet to reach Tai’s temple, filled Vance’s slot in the team. The group also found new allies in veteran super hero Spider-Man; college students Mickey Musashi and the hapless Mike Jeffries, who took turns wearing a suit of jet-powered armor as the novice adventurer Turbo; the flying mercenary Cardinal; the mercenary Sprocket (Cardinal’s ex-lover), hired as the team’s pilot; the cartoonish Slapstick; the street vigilantes Cloak & Dagger; and obnoxiously brainy teenager Carlton Lafroyge, who provided research and tech support as Hindsight Lad (later simply Hindsight). Namorita took over team leadership from an often-absent Night Thrasher, but after the Poison Memories street gang stole the Warriors’ personal information from Namorita and attacked the team’s families, a guilt-stricken Namorita left the team only to rejoin shortly thereafter as the mutated Kymaera. Meanwhile, released from jail early for good behavior, Vance rejoined the Warriors in a new guise as Justice.
When Nova’s old foe the Sphinx (Anath-Na Mut) scattered the Warriors across the timestream, Hindsight Lad teamed with Dwayne’s estranged half-brother Bandit to form a new roster alongside Dagger, Darkhawk, Alex Power, and Turbo (Mickey). These alternate Warriors managed to rescue their time-lost comrades, and the combined Warriors forces defeated the Sphinx, who merged with his female counterpart and found enlightenment after the Warriors helped him see the folly of his villainy. Silhouette broke up with Dwayne and left the team alongside her new lover Bandit, but the remaining new recruits all stayed on as Warriors reservists, and all but Dagger and Darkhawk would soon upgrade to fully active status.
When Namorita was enslaved by the Undertow paramilitary group during one of Dwayne’s frequent absences, the team expelled Night Thrasher, who left alongside Rage; for a time, the two acted as mentors to Psionex. Justice took over as Warriors leader, and the group was joined by the Scarlet Spider (secretly Spider-Man clone Ben Reilly), the hyper-adaptive Helix, and the time-manipulating Timeslip, who helped rescue Speedball from the kinetic energy dimension where he had been trapped while an alternate-future Speedball impersonated him for months. After liberating Namorita from Undertow, Night Thrasher and Rage rejoined the Warriors in time to help destroy the would-be world-killer Volx, alien queen of the Dire Wraiths, who had slain backup Turbo Mike Jeffries.
The group began to drift apart as its members focused on individual pursuits. The increasingly part-time team fought foes such as Effex, the Elements of Doom, and AIM alongside allies such as the young Kree super-mutant Ultra Girl, the Thunderbolts, and the Avengers (who recruited Firestar and Justice), until Night Thrasher moved to Seattle on a personal mission and formally disbanded the Warriors. Unwilling to give up on the team, Speedball reorganized the group alongside Nova, Namorita, Turbo and new recruits Aegis and Bolt, funded by Namorita’s cousin Namor. When an ongoing conflict with arms dealer Joe Silvermane led to the destruction of the Crash Pad, Turbo’s new boyfriend Dalton Beck helped the team set up shop in a city firehouse; however, Beck was soon exposed as Silvermane’s super-agent Firestrike, though a repentant Dalton helped cripple Silvermane’s operation before entering the witness protection program. Despite the return of Night Thrasher, the group has since lapsed into a semi-active state again. Turbo is determined to retire from heroics, Bolt apparently died, and only a few Warriors such as Night Thrasher, Nova, Speedball and Namorita are frequent participants in the group. But the team stands ready for action when needed, whether against minor threats like the superdelinquent Southpaw or major menaces like the hordes of Hydra. The Warriors continue to fight for the better future they seek to embody.
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