A Disappointing Second Issue
This review originally went up on my blog here.
Where one leaves off, another picks up. That seems to be Marvel’s motto of late, especially with their All-New Marvel launch/relaunch of certain titles. Marvel doesn’t exactly have all that many teen superheroes, unless you count some of the X-kids from their various team books. With the recent cancellation of Young Avengers, Marvel launched a new teen superhero book, New Warriors, last month and it seems to be stylistically somewhat similar to the other series. But this brings back (apparently) an old team but with some new faces, so things are certainly interesting.
The first issue was a bit all over the place, and was just about good enough for me to recommend it to you, the readers of this blog. With the second issue however, I am starting to have some serious doubts because this too was all over the place but much more than the first issue. The pacing was odd and the story just didn’t quite click with me either. There were some nice moments here, but I confess that I felt lost most of the time. And the art is okay, no major complaints about it, not at the moment at least, I must say.
The first issue of this new series introduced us to most of the team members. It was somewhat of a fast-paced story that quickly presented all these characters and then gave them all some sort of action scenes that brought them all together, connecting the first phase of all the narrative dots. The second issue launches into the story from where the first issue left off and it works to explain the situation further, while also introducing us to the final member of the team as well. I enjoyed the first issue despite all the mistakes that were made with it, but I can’t say the same for the second issue. Because I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much. It had too many negatives for me to consider it on par with the first issue. Second-issue blues? Possibly.
As with many team books like this, the team is brought together by a shared threat that only it can handle, unique to their situation. All well and good so far. This kind of a narrative is a central concept of superhero books and it is pretty ingrained. No complaints about it at all. Where it goes off the deep end though is when the threat is just that much bigger than the team can actually handle. And the way that the threat in this book is presented is as if the unformed New Warriors are going up against an Avengers/X-Men level threat. The High Evolutionary, some sort of a big-time villain for Marvel comics-verse, is back with a vengeance and he is out to kill pretty much all super-powered individuals. This isn’t the type of threat that some kid heroes can handle. And that’s my big problem with the series.
The writing is decent enough, but I can’t really take it seriously at all. Its like (over at DC) the Teen Titans having to fight Darkseid. That’s just not gonna happen. And any big-time heroes are conveniently absent.
And then, the story moves so fast that everything that is thrown at you is tough to take in. You need time to process what is going on in the pages, but with a blistering pace like this, it doesn’t happen. Too many heroes, too many different action scenes going on. Very little in the way of story elements to actually connect it all together.
Some of the character moments were decent enough. And some of the dialogue was decent enough too. But I just didn’t connect with the story here.
And as far as the art is concerned, it is all the same as last time really. No real improvements, no real backtracking of any sort. Marcus To’s pencils and David Curiel’s colours are serviceable and they get the job done. Nothing really strikes me as having the wow factor, which I think would be essential in a book like this. The details don’t pop out. The splash pages aren’t that impressive. It is all just… banal, I suppose. So I guess the art could be better, but I’m just indifferent to it. It’s okay.
A decent issue at best, but one that could be far better.
Rating: 6.5/10
More New Warriors: #1.