The last story arc for this team went deep. It exposed government corruption, corrupted cloning by a former Nazi, and unsanctioned use of alien technology that killed several heroes and even more civilians. SHIELD Director Tony Stark leads a hearing, swearing in and interrogating Initiative liaison Henry Peter Gyrich.
That’s an interesting change from the 1980s, when Gyrich was introduced as the government’s “minder” of heroes. Now the hero is minding the minder.
We also learn there that Thor Girl did NOT die in the last arc, despite appearances to the contrary.
And apparently, neither did Trauma. This is just dumb. The impact of the last storyline was that so many people were killed but now…Is ANYONE dead?
The former New Warriors members of the team all quit, citing that the chaos of the last arc should never happened. And frankly, they’re right.
They leave to form “Counter Force,” made up of the Scarlet Spider Clones, Vance Astro, Rage, Debrii, MVP, and Slapstick.
But far be it from Tony Stark to back away from one of his own ideas, even it’s a bad one. So, in the aftermath, the main characters of this series so far all “graduate” and head out to one of the State Initiative teams (Cloud 9 goes to Montana, Komodo to Arizona, etc.), and a new trainee team is launched. Notably, two get new identities when they graduate: Ultragirl becomes the new Captain Marvel and Triathalon is recast as the new 3-D Man.
3-D man???? Why????
Anyway, it’s a major lineup change but with all the graduations/new identities/people quitting/etc. it’s a little hard to tell what the new cast will be. In all, a solid read and an unexpected cast turnover, despite a lot of unexplained resuscitations and the promise of consequences reverting to a full-on graduation (making me wonder–if the whole point here was to prevent another event like Stamford then…Why are these people graduating?).
English (US) · 