Still seems weird and also perfectly understandable that Bags only did covers on this adventure at the same time. The ORIGINAL Sphinx. Original original? Is this the statue? I mean, that sounds dumb, but this is comics and I have no idea. It’s strange from jump because this issue has a different creative team. New Warriors writer Fabian Nicieza tags in, which makes sense to a degree. His book, after all. But it’s not like this is crucial material, and having one guy write 3 parts of a 4 part story is just odd. And the art team has nothing to do with anything, why couldn’t it be the team from the last 3 issues? It’s penciler Brandon Peterson, soon to break out drawing X-Men and begin a career that continues today, inked by Keith Williams, Mark Stegbaur, Al Milgrom AND Jimmy Palmiotti, with colors by Marie Javins and Sarra Mossof. That many people on art duties suggests either the artists from the previous 3 issues were supposed to do this one and couldn’t make the deadline, or Brandon Peterson couldn’t make his deadline. I’ll never know. I think this might be Brando’s first published work, poking around the internet. Interesting. Well, by the time I saw him in X-Men, he was doing his Jim Lee impression like anyone else doing comics in the early 90s (Especially X-Men), so let’s see what he’s up to here. All the heroes are in a bubble, Sphinx is monologuing, captions are recapping, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.
I can see the style he would employ in X-Men, but it’s not quite as Jim Lee-y. After the heroes fail to break out of the bubble using Firestar’s powers, Speedball decides to break out of his separate glass tube prison. Something something he pulled all his energy back into him and let it all out at once, shattering his prison and the bubble. I dunno, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but this is the final chapter, we gotta start turning the tide.
Didn’t take long for Nicieza to have someone say “feeb.” It seems hard given the circumstances, but I bet he can manage to get someone to say “caught us/you napping,” too. He usually does!
It’s becoming apparent that Sphinx has fought The Warriors before. Maybe he’s one of theirs. Oh, wow, turns out he goes back to the 70s Nova series. Ok, well, ok. Spider-Man calls refers to Speedball as “the twerp” on the next page, which is obviously tremendously out of character, as they discuss how he could maybe control the energy Sphinx stole from him, but Speedy is bouncing out of control. Nova and Silhouette try to take Sphinx by force and are quickly knocked out. Spider-Man and Firestar are the only ones left standing, and they retreat to try to find a way to salvage the situation (and find the out-of-control Speedball).
Okay! We cut to Speedball waking up on the ground somewhere else in the facility. I’m really not sure how he got there. But some guards find him, and in his state, he almost kills them by accident, but then Firestar appears and disables. Them. Back at the ranch, the remaining Warriors are once again restrained, and Sphinx has swapped back into a business suit to tell Nova he doesn’t know how he’s alive. He says he was hoping Nova could tell him. What? Then Nova explains how they fought another Sphinx, an appropriately female one, who now has his “Ka-Stone,” and blah blah blah, who cares, this isn’t a New Warriors blog. He’s doing all this to get enough power to go get his rock back, is the thing. We cut to Spider-Man, who… is listing unpleasant things he’d rather be doing instead of this? He’s also finding Speedy and Firestar by crawling through air vents. Speedball thinks Sphinx’s stolen power will be wearing off soon without him to syphon.
Boy, Fabian writes a terrible Spider-Man. Sphinx has now changed BACK into his Sphinx suit, begging the reader to wonder why he changed out of it, about to try to steal the kids’ energy again when the other 3 heroes burst in. Sphinx siccs Hammer’s goon squad on them, but suddenly, Firestar can handle everything by herself.
Sure coulda done this last issue, Angelica. The heroes free the other heroes, and Sphinx blows up all his own guys using a self-destruct in their armor, so he can syphon the energy from the explosions. What a good boss.
Wow the inking got bad on this page! That’s so bad I wonder if they just got a layout instead of pencils, wow. Everyone starts fighting Sphinx. Firestar zaps him real good. How does he absorb energy? Wouldn’t her zapping him be a good thing for him instead of an attack? Then Speedball attacks him, but Night Thrasher warns Sphinx is absorbing ambient energy, so that attack only helped him… which… means Firestar’s blast 100% should have also, but whatever, I’m kind over this mess. Robbie decides he can cancel out Sphinx’s powers, but worried it might kill them both. He gives it a shot anyway, tho.
Yeah, yeah. This sure didn’t amount to much. What a dumb ending. “Where’d all the bad guys go?” “I don’t know.” “Yeah, it doesn’t actually matter.” The rest of the book is a bunch of New Warriors stuff I have no desire to talk about. Next time, it’s back to regular programming, and a comic that may blow a secret I’ve been really trying to keep the whole time I’ve done this blog.