Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Christopher Yost
Artist: Marcus To
Release Date: 19th February 2014

It probably goes without saying that it’s kind of unbelievable that the New Warriors would keep that name, due to the fact they caused the destruction of a town and essentially started the Marvel Civil War. Yeah, there’s a bit of a stigma attached. Yet, here we find ourselves with a re-launch of the series, and not a very exciting or well put together one at that.

This first issue crams a lot of characters into its pages, with only a couple of them actually spending time in each other’s company. Each of our young heroes face the same threat at the end of their respective scenes, which will of course bring everyone together in the future, but initially this is a ‘by-the-numbers’ team assembly issue, and it really suffers for it.

That said, the writing isn’t bad, and Christopher Yost seems pretty comfortable writing these characters, with decent dialogue and some fun interaction between the cast. It’s just unfortunate that he has chosen to throw so many into the mix in the space of one issue.

Marcus To is handling art on this series, and does a really good job on this issue. He doesn’t really get to play around too much here as the action hasn’t really started yet, but there is enough going on in this issue to see that he can handle what’s being thrown at him, so future issues are at least guaranteed to look pretty.

If you’ve been reading Nova, then you may wonder how this particular issue will fit in continuity. With Nova #13 also out this week, Sam Alexander just jetted off into space on a mission with Beta Ray Bill, but this issue seems to put him in a completely different situation come the last page. Not a huge deal, but continuity buffs may raise an eyebrow.

I was keen to pick this book up, purely down to the Nova association, and while the book isn’t necessarily bad, it does suffer from ‘team-building-first-issue syndrome’, which I think could have been avoided. Things may well get better, but as a first outing, New Warriors didn’t get this reviewer hyped.

Rating: 2/5.

The writer of this piece was: Alan Shields aka (Al)
You can also find Al on Facebook