The Super Secret And Mocked Origins Of The New Warriors At Marvel

Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Marvel Comics | Tagged: new warriors, tom brevoort

The super secret and mocked origins of the New Warriors at Marvel Comics, with Tom Brevort, Fabian Nicieza, Gregory Wright and Ron Frenz

In Marvel Executive Editor, Senior Vice President of Publishing and X-Men Group Editor Tom Brevoort‘s most recent newsletter, he is beginning what he calls The New Warriors Chronicles, looking at the creation of that series, and the subsequent iterations and issues caused by the book… hopefully including the one that was killed by Joe Rogan. But first, the beginning;

“The New Warriors had been created by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz, who had introduced the team in two issues of their THOR run. The group was created with the intention of spinning out a series, and they were conceived as something of a Marvel answer to DC’s Teen Titans—young heroes who would have their own ideas about how to fight injustice that maybe didn’t line up with those of the more established adult heroes. The group was made up mainly of characters who had been scavenged from elsewhere: Kid Nova, who had previously been just Nova until Frankie Raye stole his code-name when she became the Herald of Galactus, Namorita from Bill Everett’s SUB-MARINER, Marvel Boy, who was the present day version of future Guardian of the Galaxy Vance Astro, Firestar, who had been created for the animated SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS and Speedball, who’d headlined a short-lived series a year or so previous. The only new character was Night Thrasher, a driven Batman-esque urban crime-fighter who fought the underworld atop an armored skateboard.”

Ah, yes, the Night Thrasher that the late Dwayne MacDuffie wrote about at Marvel Comics so kindly.

He had made his point. Brevoort continued,

“After their first appearance in THOR, we in the office were not kind to the New Warriors. They were derided as a tone-deaf out-of-touch attempt by middle aged men to write a book about young people, which came across as authentically as Bob Haney’s Teen Titans had in the 1960s. I can recall that Greg Wright and Evan Skolnick even had the splash page that introduced the team pinned up on the office dartboard, where it was full of holes. Nobody thought this was an idea with much merit, and nobody was especially angling to write the series. Well, nobody except this one guy who worked in the sales department.”

Now, some former editors decided to chip in on Facebook. Including one who was also that one guy…

Fabian Nicieza: Promotion Department, not sales department. Tom’s been an editor for 150 years and he still doesn’t know the difference…

Gregory Wright:“The splash page from THOR was NEVER on my dartboard in the office. And Evan would never have put it there either. There is truth to the fact that we all felt the IDEA was not going to work and it was derided. However…myself and others championed artist Mark Bagley to do the art on the book. Neither Mark nor Fabian were the first choice for the book as the editor was looking for established superstars to overcome what we all thought was a ridiculous idea and name for the book. Fabian and Mark established immediately that this concept was not only viable, but also FANTASTIC. And Fabian was THE guy who always believed in the book and that SPEEDBALL could be a great character. I did however, frequently mock just about everything by putting it on my dartboard where most of the staff would come to throw darts…even if they themselves were on the dartboard that day.”

Ron Frenz: I was one of the”others that championed artist Mark Bagley to do the art”and ANY idea is only as good as it’s execution. No need to be dicks about it.

Gregory Wright: I am sorry that we were dicks about it at the time. One thing about being IN the office at times was that our ways of blowing off steam with “humor” was it could be dickish. YOU by the way never wound up on my dartboard…

On the newsletter comments, Gregory Wright also added;

“I have to say that despite the fact that putting the Thor splash of the New Warriors on my dartboard was something I was very likely to do…I did not have it on my dartboard. Nope. I did, as did most of the office mock the hell out of the concept and the name. We were certain it would suck, especially with shoe-horning SPEEDBALL in there…who was also mocked at that time. Yes indeed FABIAN is the one guy who thought this would work and had the idea of how to do it. Oddly he wasn’t the first choice and had to wait quite a while to get the gig…and Mark Bagley….also not a first, second or third choice. Myself, Ralf Macchio and Bob Budiansky (likely others) all championed Mark to do the book. Mark had done a lot of terrific work and saved all our butts with deadlines and it was past time he got his shot. But the editor wanted to hire established SUPERSTARS for the writing and pencilling. Not that he didn’t like Fabian’s work our Marks work…in the end he couldn’t hire the “stars” and “settled” for Fabian and Mark…who proved us ALL WRONG with the first issue, and the first pages Mark sent in changed everyone’s tune about this book. I regard what Fabian and Mark did with this book as inspiration for every concept that seems lame, but with enough positive work can be great. It’s a benchmark title for me. Although I’m sure Fabian was on my dartboard at some point.”

And of Fabian Nicieza, Brevoort wrote;

“Fabian Nicieza had been scrabbling around the edges for a couple of years, hungry to break into the field as a writer and taking any assignment that was thrown his way, often dedicating a lot more effort to them than they were seemingly worth. Despite the fact that he didn’t have much of a track record, his pitch for the title beat out several other more established would-be authors (just because nobody thought the book had any future didn’t mean that people didn’t want to earn some checks from it) Editor Danny Fingeroth paired Fabian up with artist Mark Bagley, who had been the winner of the Marvel Try-Out Contest some years earlier. This would be Bagley’s first launch series as well—he’d been doing piecework all around the line, including a lot of stuff for licensing.”

“The combination of Fabian as the boundary-pushing tyro, Danny as the conservative-minded traditionalist and Bagley as the mainstream meat-and-potatoes artist formed an effective triumvirate. NEW WARRIORS became something of a surprise hit, and one of the real bright spots of the early 1990s Marvel line. The team took the characters seriously, gave them rich backgrounds and internal conflicts and connections, and put them in gray area situations where the right thing to do often wasn’t very clear-cut. It was really a terrific book.”

What happened next? Well that’s for the newsletter, isn’t it?

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