Issue(s): New Warriors #18
Cover Date: Dec 91
Title: "Everything you always wanted to know about the Taylor Foundation but were afraid to ask"
Credits:
Fabian Nicieza - Writer
Mark Bagley - Penciler
Larry Mahlstedt - Inker
Danny Fingeroth - Editor

Review/plot:
An important development in this issue, but not a lot to cover, actually. Let me start with one side note. Marvel Boy and Nova, in their civilian identities, check up on Pretty Persuasions, one of the members of Psionex that fled during the fight with Terrax. She is working at a strip club.

After her time on stage, they go to talk to her, to try to intimidate her to not go bad. I'm not sure it really works out the way Nova intended.

It's said that Namorita is checking on Mathemanic in the meantime.

But the main story is about Night Thrasher finding out that his Taylor Foundation is not on the up and up, and going after Chord.

Thrasher has found out that the foundation has been involved in shady deals with a number of unethical corporations.

Chord, meanwhile, gathers the other New Warriors (except Silhouette, who is with Night Thrasher) and convinces them to protect him.

But there really isn't a fight, because Chord starts firing on Night Thrasher immediately, and the other Warriors don't like that. When he's confronted, he seemingly kills himself.

The Warriors then decide to go after Gideon (from X-Force), who seems to be behind a lot of the Taylor Foundation's shady dealings.

Chord doesn't die (Marvel Boy rushes him to the hospital), but obviously this is a big shake-up for the team (the cover calls it "the beginning of the end", which is overstating things, but you get the idea).

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Next issue starts with the New Warriors already captured by Gideon, with the story leading up to that told in flashbacks. I'm therefore allowing some space in between issues, but the New Warriors probably shouldn't appear elsewhere in between.

References:

• The first clue that something was wrong with the Taylor Foundation was when Night Thrasher saw that they had dealings with Ophrah Industries, the company that Gideon used in New Warriors annual #1.
  
• When Chord says that Night Thrasher tries to kill him, Marvel Boy wonders if Night Thrasher is possessed the way he (Marvel Boy) was in Fantastic Four #356, and Chord lets him believe that.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Night Thrasher should get together with young Bruce Wayne on "Gotham". They could compare notes on how companies are run without the knowledge of the main shareholders.;)

Clyde, to be fair, Tai and Chord are Dwayne's legal guardians, so the idea that they might have authority over the Taylor Foundation is not a stretch. Now Gotham, on the other hand...

So Mark Bagley is moonlighting Btw Amazing and New Warriors? And wasn't Amazing just bi-weakly?

In a way that cover blurb was true. This issue leads in to the resolution of Night Thrasher's storyline and backstory, all of which I recall being the reason he founded the New Warriors in the first place.

By the time it's all done around issue #25, Bagley leaves the book and that's it for the "classic" (for lack of a better term) period of New Warriors. It starts going downhill from there with much more 90s extremism in the story and, frankly, progressively worse art.

So Mark Bagley is moonlighting Btw Amazing and New Warriors? And wasn't Amazing just bi-weakly?

Yes, JC, he was. Mark Bagley is one of the most prominent artists who started working at Marvel in the late 1980s who was really good at meeting a deadline. I think he later penciled 115 consecutive issues of Ultimate Spider-Man. Bagley is good *and* fast, a combination you would rarely see after the early 1990s.

The only other artist who I can think of who was as fast as Bagley and who was also popular was Erik Larsen. Yeah, I know, some people don't like Larsen, but I'm a huge fan. I'm not as big on Bagley by any means, but he is still a good, solid artist in my estimation.

All the other guys who were still in the biz in the 1990s who could hit a monthly deadline, such as Ron Frenz, Paul Ryan, Alex Saviuk, and Sal Buscema, unfortunately fell out of favor when all the hot, stylized artists came into prominence. Which I guess is why I do appreciate Bagley so much: he was pretty popular and in-demand at Marvel, but he remained a consummate professional, always meeting his deadlines.