New Warriors retrospective issue 32-34 and annual 3.

Seriously, WHY would anyone in the Marvel Universe live in NYC anymore? Its pretty much a war-zone for supers!

On the site arousinggrammar.com it has been calculated that a more popular hero, like Spider-Man, probably has a twenty super-villains in their main rogue gallery. That’s not counting the hundreds of minor villains they have fought. Counting crossover baddies, let’s say fifteen super-villains for every superhero. And by the amount of superheroes operating in USA alone, it’s probably at least a hundred or so.  That is 1500 bad guys running around at one time, minus those in prison or alternative dimensions. That's an awful lot of super-crime!

Besides the daily super-villain crime-activity and alien-invasions that somehow always just happens to take place in the big apple we also have events like Infinity War and Civil War. Not to mention today's subject; Forces Of Darkness, Forces Of Light.

The issue begins in a drug-rehabilitation clinic, where we see a young man named Manny, who is scared out of his mind. He screams that "the Dankness" is trying to take him, but no one takes him serious, thinking that he is "just a punk who doesn't want to get better". That was a mistake. 

You see, the Darkness IS “talking” to him. The poor Manny is a mutant with the ability to control and manipulate the Darkforce (an energy-source from the Darkforce Dimension that has the ability to assume the properties of both matter and energy depending on the needs of the user). In his cell, the Darkforce takes a humanlike form and asks Manny to accept him. Manny does so, and all hell breaks lose.

Darkforce spreads around in NY like a black ocean and infects everything it touches. All the people in the town starts to run amok, and only a handful of heroes are there to try to keep the situation under control, which is easier said than done. Even some of the heroes are infected too, so its not just powerless bystanders.

Meanwhile Doctor Strange allows himself to be captured by the Darkforce, in the hope that he can discover its source and a way to defeat it from within. Using the Eye of Agamotto, he peeks into the Darkforce dimension where he finds super-powered individual who are all empowered by the Darkforce, like Cloak and the New Warrior known as Silhouette. But they are prisoners, not the cause of the disaster in NY.

When Strange finds Manny in his sell at the clinic, he tries to remove the Darkforce from Manny, but discovers that Manuel’s survival depends on the Darkforce, but at the same time is screwing u is already fragile mind. The good doctor instead tries to reason with the boy, explaining that he is tearing the city apart, so Manny can pull himself together… and it has the exact opposite effect. Manny now fells some sort of power for the first time in his life, and decides to be an actual part of the havoc in NY, taking the name Darkling.

Taking on the Avengers, the Fantastic Four(more likely the Dynamic Duo, since Reed and Sue are out of town at the moment), and the New Warriors, Darkling proves that he is not a pushover, as he toy with them as they were nothing. The only one of them who is actually capable of hurting him is Firestar, but the amount of the microwaves needed to doing so would also irradiate everyone across the city.

It’s Firestar who finally takes to the skies and cuts loose on her power; the blinding light frees all of those ensnared by the Darkforce’s influence; rendering Enrique momentarily stunned.

At that moment, Dagger and Nova arrive, sending one of Dagger’s “light blades” into Henrique’s eye. He buckles over, explaining that he needs the Darkforce, because it is the only thing that has ever “cared” for him and the only thing that made him feel he mattered.

Doctor Strange then arrives and uses the Eye of Agamotto to show Henrique what people aren’t as bad as he want them to be. That even in this crisis was there compassion and hope. Manny realize that even though he has never experienced it, there IS hope and love to be found, and he feels the soft touch of hope.

But he doesn’t believe that it is for him, and that he long ago lost the means to love and be loved. Still, it doesn’t means that anyone else should share his fate, so he consumes all of the the Darkforce back into himself. He decides that he is too dangerous to live in this plane with his sort of power, and travels to the Darkforce Dimension, so he can learn how to control it and might even learn how to use it for good.

In the annual is also two sub stories. The first is about Speedball dealing with a school bully in his identity as Robbie Baldwin, and the second is about how Mikey and Mike, the two teenagers who shares the identity of the superhero Turbo, saves Fabian Nicieza (the writer of New Warriors) during a comic-con.

This is my favorite NW story-line. It’s the classic tale about heroes fighting evil, and those never gets old. The ending where Manny goes to the Darkforce Dimension is bittersweet, and its what makes the story complete. But it may not really be a NW story, but more like a crossover with the Warriors in focus.

That's all for now. I'm Waezi2, and thanks for wasting time with me.