[MUSIC PLAYING]
 My name is Daniel
Kibblesmith, and I am
the writer of New Warriors #1.
I got interested in
the New Warriors later.
I remember seeing them on the
shelf when I was a kid picking
up comics in the
'90s and just feeling
like they were too cool for me.
Like, I was intimidated
by, you know,
Night Thrasher, who had a
blade coming out of his wrist.
You know, Nova was really buff.
And they were all edgy
characters for the '90s,
as the cover said.
New Warriors, I
thought, were really
interesting characters,
because they
occupy this really cool space.
They're forever young.
But they've now been
around for 30 years.
My editors on the
previous books I've done,
like Loki and Black
Panther Vs. Deadpool,
asked if I'd be interested
in doing a New Warriors
tie-in that actually poses
them as the authority
figures in this conflict
instead of the rebels.
And I really liked
the attention of that.
So because the New Warriors
are the authority figures
in this story, they have to be
mentoring new New Warriors who
are under 21 and
subject to the laws that
triggered the outlaw event.
This new law is making it
illegal to be a vigilante
under the age of 21.
The artist on New Warriors
#1 is Luciano Vecchio.
He designed all of
the new New Warriors
and gave them costumes that
felt as modern as the New
Warriors' costumes to
sort of feel classic
and instantly familiar.
So the first character
that we're introduced to
is Trailblazer.
She's a group home and foster
kid who is volunteering
at a senior center when this
mysterious threat shows up,
and Night Thrasher
runs to the rescue.
And because she helps him,
she ends up in the crosshairs
of this new outlawed law.
And she inherited
from her grandfather
a magic backpack
of divine origin.
We picked the name Trailblazer
because she's somebody
who charges into action.
She knows that she can do some
good with this mysterious gift
that she's been given.
Screentime is a internet
kid taken to its sort
of logical conclusion.
As a youth, he was exposed
to his grandfather's
experimental internet gas.
And that has patched
him permanently
into the world wide web.
The word "screen time"
is only ever used
in a sort of restrictive sense.
And because we're doing a
story about teenage rebels,
a lot of the names are about
teens fighting against labels
that are put on them.
So with Screentime, we
liked the idea that he
has infinite screen time.
Snowflake and Safespace
are the twins,
and their names are very
similar to Screentime.
It's this idea that
these are terms that
get thrown around
on the internet
that they don't
see as derogatory--
to take those words and kind of
wear them as badges of honor.
Safespace is kind of a big,
burly, sort stereotypical jock.
He can create force
fields, but he
can only trigger them if he's
protecting somebody else.
Snowflake is non-binary
and goes by they/them.
Snowflake has the
power to generate
individual crystallized
snowflake-shaped shurikens.
The connotations of
the word "snowflake"
in our culture right now
are something fragile.
And this is a character
who is turning
it into something sharp.
Snowflake is the person who
has the more offensive power.
And Safespace is the person who
has the more defensive power.
The idea was that they
would mirror each other
and compliment each other.
B Negative is the goth kid.
When he was a baby, you've
got a rogue life-saving blood
transfusion, we assume,
from Michael Morbius.
And now, he has a very
similar look and very
similar vampire powers.
B Negative, also,
is obviously a pun.
It's a blood type, which is
great for a vampire character.
And it's also a proud
ownership of the idea
of having a bad attitude.
I want the people who
read our New Warriors
to feel all of the
excitement that they
felt if they read the '90s one.
We wanted to have big, colorful
characters, personality
clashes, romance, a diverse
cast, which is something
that the New Warriors
titles have always
strived to make a priority.
Every New Warriors comic has
always felt like a reflection
of the year that it came out.
And I don't think we're
worried about being dated.
I think we're way more
interested about being now.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
