Introducing the New 'New Warriors'
The classic team reunites to mentor a new generation of heroes!
by Marvel
When Kamala’s Law goes into effect in the highly anticipated one-shot,
OUTLAWED, super heroics will be left to the adults and underage heroes will be banned unless they have official government assigned mentors. That’s where
THE NEW WARRIORS come in.
Former teen vigilantes Night Thrasher, Firestar, Rage, Speedball, Namorita, and Silhouette step up to impart their wisdom to a batch of promising young kids, teaching them the ins and outs of surviving as a hero in the Marvel Universe. But will they be able to bridge the generation gap?
This group of all-new characters were created by Emmy-nominated writer
Daniel Kibblesmith (
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert) and rising superstar artist
Luciano Vecchio (IRONHEART).
4:35
NEW WARRIORS Trailer | Marvel Comics
Check out Vecchio’s designs below along with Kibblesmith’s inspirations behind this one-of-a-kind team of young heroes!
SCREENTIME
A Meme-Obsessed super teen whose brain became connected to the internet after becoming exposed to his grandfather’s “experimental internet gas.” Now he can see augmented reality and real-time maps, and can instantly Google any fact. Does this make him effectively a genius? He sure acts like it does.
"I wanted to have teen characters who felt as "now" as the New Warriors did in 1990,” explains Kibblesmith. “The New Warriors have been zeitgeist characters from the beginning, you get edgy skateboarding Night Thrasher in the '90s and the Reality TV team in the 2000s, and now in 2020, we have New Warriors who have never grown up without the Internet, and one character who appears to essentially live inside it.
“The word ’screen time’ is only ever used in a sort of restrictive sense, and because we’re doing a story about teenage rebels, a lot of the names are about teens fighting against labels that are put on them. So with Screentime, we liked the idea that he has infinite screen time.”
SNOWFLAKE AND SAFESPACE
Psychic Twins. “All twins are psychic, but we’re psychic-er.” Snowflake, a cryokinetic, can materialize snowflake-shaped shuriken projectiles for throwing. Safespace can materialize pink forcefields, but he can’t inhabit them himself, the reflex only works if he’s protecting others. They’re hyper aware of modern culture and optics, and they see their Super Heroics as “a post-ironic meditation on using violence to combat bullying.” They're probably streaming this.
"Snowflake and Safespace are the twins," the writer says, "and their names are very similar to Screentime; it's this idea that these are terms that get thrown around on the internet that they don't see as derogatory. [They] take those words and kind of wear them as badges of honor.
"Safespace is a big, burly, sort of stereotypical jock. He can create forcefields, but he can only trigger them if he's protecting somebody else. Snowflake is non-binary and goes by they/them, and has the power to generate individual crystalized snowflake-shaped shurikens. The connotations of the word 'snowflake' in our culture right now are something fragile, and this is a character who is turning it into something sharp.
"Snowflake is the person who has the more offensive power, and Safespace is the person who has the more defensive power. The idea is that they would mirror each other and complement each other."
B-NEGATIVE
A teen “living vampire” exposed to Michael Morbius’s blood as a child in a rogue, but life-saving medical procedure. He still ages like a regular kid, but has all the abilities of Morbius. He’s also obsessed with all the music and attitude of a “classic” long-past decades like the '90s, and the '00s. “The world is a vampire…and so am I.”
"B-Negative is the goth kid. When he was a baby he got a rogue lifesaving blood transfusion, we assume, from Michael Morbius. And now he has a very similar look, and very similar vampire powers," shares Kibblesmith. “B-Negative ages like a regular person (or does he?) and he definitely drinks blood (or does he?), but designer/artist Luciano Vecchio took brilliant inspiration from the '90s
Spider-Man cartoon and gave B-Negative the 'leech suckers' that the animated version of Morbius had on his palms.”
TRAILBLAZER
A regular kid scooped up into the world of teenage Super Heroing. Her “magic backpack” is actually a pocket dimension with seemingly infinite space, from which she can pull out useful or random objects—it’s not always under her control. She claims to get her power from god, but “not the god you’re thinking of.”
"She's a group home and foster kid who is volunteering at a senior center when this mysterious threat shows up and Night Thrasher runs to the rescue," the scribe adds. "And because she helps him, she ends up in the crosshairs of this new 'Outlawed' law...
“Trailblazer wants to help people, but she doesn't think of herself as a Super Hero (yet!),” Kibblesmith concludes. “The Marvel Universe is a reflection of our own, and when a new law gets put into place, it affects people in unforeseen ways.”
Watch the video above for the full breakdown, then get to know the new kids on the block when NEW WARRIORS #1 hits stands on April 15!
The classic team reunites to mentor a new generation of heroes!
www.marvel.com
