Amidst the current Coronavirus crisis, Marvel revealed their lineup for a new take on the New Warriors. The New Warriors is a Marvel comic about a superhero team, like the Avengers, which features much younger characters usually in their teenage years. Ever since its inception in 1989, the team has undergone several makeovers with certain heroes, and sometimes the entire team, being replaced. In this case, it seems that Marvel is introducing an entirely fresh set of faces. Unfortunately, following their debut, these new characters quickly became some of Marvel’s most hated characters. So, why exactly are fans so upset? Well, this article will give a quick rundown.
Before we get into why people hate it, let’s first introduce the characters. From left to right, we have Snowflake, a non-binary cryokinetic, Safe Space, Snowflake’s brother who has the ability to make force fields, Screentime, a teen with the internet connected to his mind, Trailblazer, a girl with a magic backpack, and B-Negative, a teen vampire. What’s not to like about this gang? A lot of things.
Firstly, it attempts to connect to a younger audience and fails. I think YouTube commenter L Lawliet said it best:
That sums it up pretty well. Take the character Screentime, for example. He’s described as a “Meme-Obsessed super teen” Now, when I first read this, I didn’t think “wow, that’s so relatable.” In fact, I didn’t say anything. I just buried my head in my hands and sighed. Most young comic book fans felt the same way. This didn’t come across as something relatable or juvenile. It just felt like something an adult came up with in order to be popular with the kids. And that’s exactly what happened.
In addition to that, the New Warriors are derivative and lazy. In terms of their superhero designs, they don’t bring anything new or revolutionary to the table. They all take something that’s already been done before and try to make it “hip” with the kids. Screentime’s abilities resemble many half-robot, half-human characters like Cyborg. Trailblazer is just Ben 10 with a backpack instead of a book. B-Negative is canonically a kid version of Morbius, another vampire in the Marvel universe. Safespace is one of many heroes with force fields like the Invisible Woman. And don’t even get me started on how many ice-powered characters there are just like Snowflake. All five of these “original” characters aren’t original at all, and it feels old, even though this is just their first appearance. And even the very few things that could be called “new” weren’t well received by fans, which leads me to my next point.
In an attempt to diversify their cast of iconic superheroes, Marvel has made the New Warriors as progressive as possible. Trailblazer is a plus-sized person of colour. Snowflake is a person of colour who’s non-binary. Safespace is a person of colour who’s a guy with earrings and pink hair. Now, when “progressive” steps such as these are made with a huge company like Marvel, usually the response is mixed. One half of the community, the right-wing conservatives, are furious with the changes, while the other half, the left-wing liberals are delighted with the representation. In this case, however, the response was fully negative with both left and right wing fans uniting together to bash on these heroes. So, why didn’t more progressive fans find these changes to be good? Well, for a start, naming a non-binary character Snowflake didn’t please the LGBTQ+ community at all. Similarly, many fans deemed these changes to be in poor taste, that the intention was there, but the execution was terrible. For instance, when talking about Snowflake, they introduced her right away as non-binary. This led many fans to point out that Marvel made gender Snowflake’s sole defining characteristic, rather than having it be part of a larger backstory. Fans don’t hate the New Warriors because of the plus-sized, LGBTQ+, racial representation, they hate it because that’s all there is to it.
So, that’s a quick rundown of the New Warriors and the hatred surrounding them. If, for some reason, you still want to check the comic out, it comes out on April 15th digitally and physically! Thanks for reading!