New Warriors #14-15 (2008): Secret Invasion

Do folks enjoy reading this series?  I don’t.  I have trouble caring about any of it.  These issues have “big reveals” but I have trouble reading closely enough to even follow what is going on.  I still like the idea of de-powered mutants using tech to take on new super-identities, but the execution is so…Flat.  Everything feels so low-stakes.

The new New Warriors face off against the old New Warriors who now call themselves “Counter-Force.” It’s Secret Invasion time, so there are suspicions that the new team are really skrulls, especially Night Thrasher, who finally reveals the truth to the other characters (but we readers already knew), which is that he is NOT a skrull but is also NOT the original Night Thrasher.  He’s his brother.  Dwayne Taylor is, in fact, really dead.   (In fact, they find his body in a SHIELD lab, steal it, and give him a proper burial at the end of this arc.)

Once they know he’s not a skrull, they all team up and punch skrulls about for about ten pages until the army shows up and then they all run away.

Then comes the funeral for Dwayne, at which his own brother gets a phone call and steps away (rude!), telling the mysterious voice on the other end that “it’s time.”   

This is what I mean.  The Donyell Taylor conspiracy story has been running since issue #1, and all it really does is generate a promise of future menace that’s never delivered.  It’s tiresome.  If you’re going to base a series around a mystery, there’s got to be some ongoing revelations or turning points.  It can’t just be yet-another scene of a mysterious phone call about something bad, over and over.