New Warriors #1 debuted last Wednesday and really impressed. Marvel at the moment have been putting out a lot more teen books than DC and for the most part they have been successes - Avengers Arena and Young Avengers have recently ended, but Avengers Arena is returning as Avengers Undercover and Young Avengers was planned from the start to end where it did. Gerry Duggan has also just started his run on Nova - looking at the adventures of young Sam Alexander, and also Kate Bishop - a Young Avenger, plays a primary role in Matt Fraction's stellar Hawkeye series. And now New Warriors #1 is the latest book featuring a young team of teen protagonists and it actually feels like they're teenagers, rather than being written as adults, so that's a massive bonus for the book. If you've enjoyed any of the series that have been mentioned in the above paragraph then you'll certainly get a kick out of this book.
But that's not the only selling point of New Warriors #1. Sure, a large portion of these kids may be responsible for the event that was Civil War - but Yost manages to actually make them likable, interesting and rootable characters. Whilst he has to introduce them all with one issue and maybe he would have been better served with a first arc devoted to introducing the characters, it allows the reader to get the introduction stage out of the way before we can get really stuck into things - and it should be very interesting to see where we go from here.
You don't have to understand everything about the characters in order to know what's going on. Nova may have his own book which has played host to Justice and Speedball, and Kane and Aracely may have been in the cancelled Scarlet Spider along with Sun Girl in Superior Spider-Man Team-Up, but the best part about New Warriors is that you don't have to hunt down the respective series to read what's going on here. The end result is fun - enjoyable and very entertaining - even if its sole purpose of introducing the team may mean that there isn't much room to develop the plot as you'd like.
The artistic talent comes from Marcus To and he is pretty amazing - the book feel similar in tone to the likes of Young Avengers and Nova as well as the Kate Bishop issues of Hawkeye - and there isn't any real weak spots in the book. It's great to see Yost and To team up as they really know what they're doing - with To capturing the youthful look and knowing just what makes these characters look great.
If you've been missing a teen hero superhero team book since the end of Young Avengers then whilst New Warriors may not have any of the members of the previously mentioned team, it's something that you should pick up all the same due to its strong introduction and interesting cast members. It may even spark an interest in readers who have dropped out of (or didn't pick up) Nova - which was also out on Wednesday with a .NOW issue that was #13. It'll be certainly interesting to see where things go from here - and New Warriors could be the next best thing.
VERDICT: 4/5
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