Marvel's New Warriors TV Show is a 'Docu-Comedy'

Marvel's upcoming New Warriors television series will be presented in a "docu-comedy" format. That's the word from writer Fabian Nicieza, who wrote the first volume of the New Warriors comic for Marvel Comics and has had several conversations with the New Warriors show-runners regarding the series.

First appearing in a two-part story in Thor #411 and Thor #412, The New Warriors were rather unique as far as teen superhero teams went. The original line-up was assembled by writer/editor Tom DeFalco, from teenage superheroes who had been created by other writers and artists for earlier stories. This included Nova, Firestar, Marvel Boy, Speedball, Night Thrasher, and Namorita. None of these heroes was the teen sidekick of an established hero and none of them, with the exception of DeFalco's creation Night Thrasher, were original characters created exclusively to be part of The New Warriors.

Fabian Nicieza discussed the upcoming New Warriors TV show as part of an interview with SyFy. While he primarily spoke about his upcoming Black Panther mini-series, Nicieza did let a few details slip about New Warriors while discussing his talks with the show-runners:

"The TV thing is not the original comics thing; it is its own entity, and my desire is for it to be as good as it can possibly be for what it is. And what it is is a half-hour dramedy, comedy docu-comedy show about a young group of 20-somethings living in a house, pretending to be superheroes."

Based on Nicieza's description, it sounds like The New Warriors television series is primarily taking inspiration from the third volume of the New Warriors comics. The six-issue mini-series, written by Zeb Wells with art by Skottie Young, saw Nova, Night Thrasher, Namorita and Speedball join with a new character called Microbe to serve as the stars of a reality TV show that focused on their exploits. This version of the team was most notable in that their blundering resulted in the super-villain Nitro destroying a school - an incident which kicked off the events of the Civil War storyline, as the public demanded government regulation of super-powered individuals.

While modestly noting that his volume of New Warriors was the longest-running and most successful version of the team, Nicieza was quick to note his fondness for the brand as a whole. He also offered his two cents as to what made his take on the characters succeed where others faltered and what the New Warriors television series needed to borrow to be a success:

"What I think is the core underlying ethos of New Warriors that made my run so successful and that others struggled with was the strident, passionate, and relatively immature perspective the young bring to seek change in the world. There has to be an element of anger and passion to that, which infused the original series. There also has to be an element of positive aspiration to it, too, because they're supposed to be good people who just don't know enough about the world yet. I hope they use those elements in the TV show, because then, to me, it's the brand of New Warriors. If they don't, it will be other iterations that Marvel published, and there's a reason those didn't succeed: because it lacked the core DNA."

Given what little else we know about New Warriors, it seems that Nicieza's optimism is well-founded. It seems unlikely that the show-runners would be including Squirrel Girl - a light-hearted character who has never been part of any previous New Warriors line-up - as part of the show if their intention were to do a dark, subversive take on the superhero genre more in-line with the cynical mentality of Civil War. Either way, Marvel Comics fans are sure to be waiting for the first episode with baited breath.

More: 15 Things You NEED To Know About The New Warriors

More on Marvel's New Warriors as it becomes available.

Source: SyFy