Tuesday 22 May 2007

Thrashing the Punny...

Fabian Nicieza is one of my favorite writers. A large part of why is because in the 90s he took a bunch of third rate nobody characters, teamed them up and made them more interesting than they'd been since their inception. The New Warriors WAS a fantastic book, I miss it still.

Of course where would those loser characters be without a leader to motivate them? So Fabe created a brand new hero with all the attributes you expect a strong leader to have: funky armour, a psychotic temper, a razor edged skateboard and a high top fade.

Night Thrasher was born! Who's snickering? I heard that! You at the back, if you're not going to take this seriously then get out!

Okay so Night Thrasher was the dodgiest character idea since Rocket Racer but Fabe still managed to make us take him seriously each and every issue.

Take for example New Warriors #8. Thrash's secret crush Silhouette is in trouble so Dwayne decides to ditch his teammates to impress his chick. He's a class act I tells ya!

Unfortunately for Thrash helping Sil brings him into conflict with the most dangerous 90s guest star of them all - The Punisher. Frankie boy is in top form too. He's brought his AK 47 and a headband he stole from one of the kids from FAME, and he's not afraid to use either!

The fight that ensues is pretty brutal, especially by mainstream Marvel standards. Thrash takes no prisoners and proves he can fuck shit up as good as Punny can:
Who's an extra from 'Gleaming the Cube' now bitch?


Fabe doesn't play favorites. It may be Thrash's book but Punny gets his licks in. He's listened to enough Vanilla Ice to know what do when a skateboarding, street punk tries to mess you up - you pop a cap in their ass - - or several caps as the case may be:
Frank worried that at target practise he just wasn't pushing himself anymore


From the first issue Fabian's been making sure that these second stringers won't be taken lightly, and he does a bang up job. This issue is one of many examples I could've picked. To this day if I see a book by Fabian with a New Warrior in it - I'm buying it - -

- -and he's writes a mean Punisher too:
..I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

No way the best thing about this book is Fire Star. She should've been the leader cos...hmm...um she's a girl and girls are better than boys. Oh and she has a nice yellow suit.