Issue(s): New Warriors #73, New Warriors #74, New Warriors #75
Cover Date: Jul-Sep 96
Title: "Damn the Torpedoes" / "Surprise..." / "Sweet sorrow"
Credits:
Evan Skolnick & Dwight D. Coye / Evan Skolnick - Writer
Patrick Zircher - Penciler
Andrew Pepoy - Inker
Glenn Greenberg - Assistant Editor
Tom Brevoort - Editor

Review/plot:
Dwight D. Coye is credited with a plot assist for the flashback portion of issue #73. That is because (per an editorial in place of issue #73's lettercol) Coye and Evan Skolnick co-created Turbo back in 1989 and wrote the first issue of what was intended to be a Turbo solo series. That series never manifested, and eventually Fabian Nicieza incorporated Turbo into the New Warriors. The flashback in #73, detailing Turbo's origin, came from that script. One thing of note is that the original Turbo in question was meant to be Mike Jefferies, with Michiko Mushashi acting as a supporting character who would borrow the suit sometimes, but as the script was passed around at Marvel, people found Michiko as the lead to be more interesting (and i think that worked out better).

(I should note that this also puts to rest the speculation - see Captain Marvel #1, which he scripted - that "D. Coye" was a pseudonym or something; it turns out that he worked at Marvel as an "art-returns guy").

We saw in New Warriors #67 that Turbo (Michiko) was getting antsy about being a superhero and wanting to strike out on her own and use the suit to explore the world. But it seems she got sidetracked, so in this issue she gets a push when Danny Jones, the son of the Torpedo, shows up at Mike's home, demanding the suit back.

This causes Michiko to call the New Warriors together. They do a review of the suit's history. The new information, which would have been in the Turbo #1 script, is that Mike Jefferies found the Torpedo suit in his parents' attic (the Jefferies are related to the Brocks; Danny is Mike's "second cousin")...

...and gave it to his friend Michiko to use for a Halloween party.

At the party, they were attacked by Rocketeers (there was a tracker in the suit that activated once it was put on).

The flashback ends there, but it's said that Michiko handled the Rocketeers, who were just people who worked at the lab where the original Rocketeer armor was built.

Since Michiko wants to retire, the New Warriors consider inviting Danny Jones to replace her, continuing the shared custody agreement that Michiko had with Mike. But they allow Mike to put on the suit before contacting Danny, and that turns out to be a mistake because Mike has actually been killed and replaced by Volx, the Dire Wraith Queen.

Wearing the Turbo/Torpedo armor greatly enhances Volx's powers.

She steals Friday!

That attracts the attention of Garthan Saal, the current Nova.

Meanwhile, the Mad Thinker has kidnapped Cut (who he refers to as Sharpe, which is i guess his civilian name) from the weird Undertow goon squad.

He mind-probes Cut anonymously sends the information to Night Thrasher. Thrasher and Rage use the information to rescue Namorita, who has been a prisoner of Undertow for some 20 issues now.

This is all wrapped up quickly. As noted by Michael in the comments for the previous Undertow story (New Warriors #54-56), this wasn't the intended resolution to the Namorita situation, but Evan Skolnick took his time getting to that and now the series is cancelled.

Thrasher then traces the tip back to the Thinker and, with Rage and Namorita, confronts him. The Thinker reveals that he has a nephew, David, with uncontrollable fire powers. He says that he's already accessed research from people like Mr. Fantastic and Professor X and found no way to cure David. He says the reason he's been monitoring and helping the New Warriors all along is that he expected that the Warriors would find a way to help David and welcome him to the team. The idea was supposed to be that the young Warriors would be more open than an established, older group. But it's moot anyway because by now the Warriors have became "hardened" by the grim & gritty 90s.

One of the elements of the fight against Volx is that everyone is willing to just blow Friday out of the sky. Only Alex is treating Friday like a real conscious entity. But he doesn't really make a strong case; he just simpers that Friday is his friend.

This is a world where plenty of AI lifeforms exist and are treated as real people (the Vision, Machine Man, etc.) so there really shouldn't be any question about treating Friday as a living being.

During the same chase, Firestar proposes to Justice.

Meanwhile, Volx recreates a Neutralizer using Friday's databanks, with the plan of wiping out all of Earth's superpowered people's powers so that she can then wipe Earth out. The Neutralizer is to be powered with the Torpedo suit.

Night Thrasher, Rage, and Namorita rejoin the team for the final fight against Volx. The non-powered Rich Rider also participates.

I feel like Namorita should have been restored to "pink" skin, both as a "put your toys away" end-of-the-series things and also for her "out of the blue... in more ways than one" line to make sense.

Garthan Saal is killed during the fight, and he passes the Nova power back to Rich. The Neutralizer is detonated early, causing only a local effect, but that doesn't prevent Night Thrasher from killing Volx with his wrist blade.

The plan is to bring the Neutralizer back to the Mad Thinker to help David. Unfortunately for the Thinker, he's got too many irons in the fire. He's messing around with Thor for reasons unknown at this point, and in the course of that story (Thor #498-501) he gets his mind blown. So we'll never know if he's able to help "David" (who doesn't appear again, in any event). To be clear, there's no coordination between this story and Thor. The Thinker is shown to be in prison in the Thor issues, which i guess means he's doing the thing where he projects his body into a robotic double for this story.

Other fallout for this series: Timeslip seems to have permanently lost her powers. Turbo decides to keep the armor, but, now that Mike is dead, she says she might share it with Hindsight Lad. Alex, upset about the treatment of Friday (whose personality core survives), decides to quit the team ("Power Pack would've found a way that didn't end with Friday in pieces").

This series goes out on a high note. I love all of the history behind the Turbo/Torpedo suit and this story makes good use of it. There's even a pay-off to the idea that the Torpedo suit was made by the Wraiths as a copy of Galadorian armor, since that's what allows it to power the Neutralizer. And you really can't go wrong with a Dire Wraith piloting a Kymellian Smartship while fighting a Xandarian. It's what the Marvel universe is all about. This run kind of makes me regret skipping a good portion of Evan Skolnick's run, but then i remember Undertow (Right and Wrong! Cut and Dry!) and things like that. It's also the case that the New Warriors became too much of a "franchise" with Night Thrasher and Nova spin-offs (and a Justice mini) and the forced connection to Spider-Man. It was just too much to keep up with. It's even said that the reason the team was so bloated with newer members (including Turbo) is because the plan was to split them across two books after issue #50.

Quality Rating: B

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - end of the New Warriors (including the death of Mike Jefferies & Garthan Saal, Timeslip's power loss, and more)

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Mad Thinker appears here before Thor #498-501.

References:

• Torpedo's origin is from Marvel Premiere #39-40.
  
• The Rocketeers appear in the above story, but actually first appeared in Daredevil #131.
  
• Brock Jones was actually the second Torpedo, having gotten the suit from Michael Stivak in Daredevil #126 .
  
• Torpedo met ROM in ROM #21-22, and in that story we learned that the Torpedo armor was actually the Dire Wraith's attempt to recreate Galadorian armor.
  
• ROM enhanced Torpedo's armor, allowing him to see Dire Wraiths in their true form, which is why Turbo was able to identify Volx in New Warriors #60. Volx first appeared there after a lead-in from Nova #18.
  
• Torpedo was killed "in the crossfire between the Wraiths and their longtime enemies, the Skrulls" in ROM #50.
  
• We first met the Turbos in New Warriors #28.
  
• Garthan Saal says that he's destroyed some satellites that he had been ordered to place around Earth, which i'm sure is a reference to something from the Nova series.
  
• Volx wants vengeance on humanity for helping ROM banish the Dire Wraiths to Limbo in ROM #65.
  
• ROM #63 is pointed to as the issue in which Forge built the Neutralizer (it's a little more complicated than that, but we get the idea).
  
• Timeslip says she hasn't done a time-slip "since that whole Advent thing" which i assume is a reference to the Future Shock story in New Warriors #68-71. There's also a specific footnoted reference to Firestar cutting loose against the Sphinx in issue #69. There's also a mention of Firestar not being able to have children, which may also have been from those issues (and is something that is picked up on in Kurt Busiek's Avengers).

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A