Issue(s): New Warriors #4
Cover Date: Oct 90
Title: "Genetech potential / Broken break-ins / Of dreams and nightmares / Psionex -- The Way of the Future! / Of right and wrong"
Credits:
Fabian Nicieza - Writer
Mark Bagley - Penciler
Larry Mahlstedt - Inker
Danny Fingeroth - Editor

Review/plot:
After learning that Genetech hired the Mad Thinker to investigate them, the New Warriors have decided to break into the company. To that end, they've been practicing, although not specifically on locks, i guess.

Unfortunately, their preparations are for naught, because they are immediately knocked out upon arrival.

Firestar is knocked out with something like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Total Perspective Vortex.

The ace in the hole for the New Warriors is Speedball's perpetual lateness, thanks to the fact that he is trekking from Connecticut.

The rest of the New Warriors wake up in a cage, talking to some of the Genetech people that we've seen in previous issues - Harmon Furmintz and Walter Rosen (the latter of which was at the site where the Warriors fought Terrax in New Warriors #1). Furmintz explains that they're only being help prisoner because they are trespassing, and that they don't mean the Warriors any harm. Furmintz believes that he was one of the candidates that was considered for the program that created Captain America, and his rejection there set off a life long quest for genetic enhancement. He worked with Howard Stark and later taught Reed Richards, and considers his brush with those two more evidence that he's continually missed opportunities for himself. He says now that he's used the New Warriors as the foundation for a new race of super-humans. The information from the Mad Thinker (he gave Genetech information on their powers, but not their identities) has allowed Genetech to create a new group of super-powered kids, one of whom is Iceman in a miniskirt.

Can't say i'm too impressed with Pretty Persuasions, the ex-stripper with the power of sexy, but Psionex does seem to be a group with a diverse set of abilities.

Speedball arrives to bust the New Warriors out of their cage, and they fight Psionex for a while.

I'll say one thing for Nova: he's consistent in his non-PC mannerisms. He calls Tai "Confucius" and he calls the mental patient a "loon".

Pretty Persuasions is about as bad as i feared.

Namorita is forced to drop Coronary, shattering him (her cavalier response: he "made a complete glass of himself"), and Night Thrasher goes berserk fighting Impulse.

When Furmintz begs Night Thrasher to stop beating on Impulse, Thrasher pulls a blade on the old man, and Nova has to stop him. At that point Namorita notes that police and reporters have amassed outside, and the New Warriors debate fleeing vs. making Genetech "pay". Then Walter Rosen tries to make a deal, offering to be more "responsible" in the future.

The issue ends with Genetech claiming that the New Warriors helped them with a problem in their facility. And someone watching on television takes notice.

There is a complaint in the lettercol this issue about the depiction of Nova, with a suggestion that Fabian Nicieza read the original Nova series. The response, which notes that these types of complaints are coming from a "very vocal minority", is that Nicieza has read the original, but is trying to show a Nova a few years down the line, after he returned from space without his powers and whose life stagnated while his friends and brother went to college. The final page in this issue, showing someone with Egyptian trappings observing that "The boy is back" (i.e., it's the Sphinx, or at least a Sphinx) is perhaps an assurance to those fans that Nova's past isn't being forgotten.

There's an idea here that's somewhere between subtle and underdeveloped, which is that the New Warriors are attacking Genetech without any kind of authority or end game in mind. Just what do they hope to accomplish? I like that idea. And i also like the idea that this issue doesn't end with the obvious cliched conclusion to that idea, with the team slinking off with their tails between their legs because there's nothing they can do. The idea that Genetech actually agrees to change their behavior is interesting. Of course it's not clear what exactly that will mean in practice, and the fact that the New Warriors eked out a victory that they didn't really earn isn't really highlighted. It's unique plotting, but it almost feels accidental the way it's handled. But it's interesting either way, and Bagley gives us some fun fight scenes.

Psionex are featured pretty regularly in this book, but for the most part they don't break the barrier and appear outside of this series, hence the moderately low Significance rating. Pretty Persuasion does appear in a few issues of Fabian Nicieza's Thunderbolts.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Psionex (Coronary, Pretty Persuasions, Mathemanic, Asylum, Impulse)

Chronological Placement Considerations: I'm allowing an indefinite period of time for planning and training between the end of last issue when the New Warriors learned that Genetech was investigating them and this issue when they make their move.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

In the Adventures of Captain America series, Furmintz IS depicted as one of the candidates for Captain America but the MCP decided that series wasn't canon.

The MCP decided it wasn't canon, but the Obscure Character Appendix site (run by many of the same guys who write the Official Handbook) decided that it has to be, even if the events didn't happen exactly as depicted in the mini (much like how most of the events in the SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK series are considered to be 616-comic-book versions of She-Hulk's 'real' adventures). There are just too many characters and events from ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN AMERICA which get referenced or turn up again later for it to be entirely dismissed.

For my own future reference, see also the comments on Captain America Comics #1.

It does sound like i should be covering Adventures of Cap similar to the Man Without Fear miniseries, in a "something not quite like this must have happened" way. I've added it to the What's Missing page. It won't be a priority for me, though.

Something interesting about this issue and the issue before it... in the standard "Stan Lee presents" introduction on the first page, when it lists the stars of the book and a little bit about them, Marvel Boy is left out. I don't know if it's due to a blunder or maybe the character being a last minute addition. He's added to it with #5.

I love how Furmintz treats hemophilia as just a minor thing.