"The End" Week: Night Thrasher #21!

I'm trying to recollect how long I read New Warriors; since I remember their debut in Thor, and I think I read it for at least two years? Long enough for Bagley to leave, anyway. I didn't get far enough for today's solo book: from 1995, Night Thrasher #21, "Role Models" Written by Kurt Busiek and Steve Mattsson, pencils by David Carrasco Jr, inks by Hector Collazo and Tim Tuohy.

This didn't read like it was intended to be the last issue: distraught over the recent murder of his grandmother (Sigh, because of course she was...) Rage has gone a bit berserk. He's imitating a B-movie vigilante, and out to kill "the Grind." Not a skater, but a local small-time crime boss, "a modern day Fagin and drug dealer," who had control over a ton of street kids. Unfortunately, you could throw an army of seven-year-olds at the superstrong Rage, they aren't going to stop him; so it comes down to Night Thrasher; who was basically raising his teammate. Thrasher couldn't have been older than 23 on the outside, but Rage was only 14. (Still, since that reveal back in or around 1991's Avengers #328.) Still, Thrasher had a bit of guilt, over not being a better foster dad, for letting him watch a movie he wasn't ready for, and that in his secret identity of Dwayne Taylor, he actually owned the company that produced the film! (A financier/investor type, he does lament having not done more research before buying it.)

Rage and Grind are separated, but neither one stopped; so the next day Dwayne confronts the producers, suggesting it would be a moral choice to not make a sequel. The producer, somewhat correctly, notes movies aren't usually the problem, it's usually at home; which Dwayne gets a little defensive over. Later, Thrasher has a conversation with his pilot, who points out if Rage was looking for a violent and obsessive role model, he wouldn't have had to look very far. (Then, a one page ad for a super-fun Sega game, Road Rash 3; but the ad follows the unfortunate trend of game ads of the time. Not even a screenshot!) While the Grind had time to set up defenses, Thrasher is easily able to disable them, then uses a lifesize inflatable dummy of himself as a decoy! Grind's men shoot the decoy, to his dismay: he was counting on Thrasher to save him from Rage, who shows up mad. Grind had a bunch of kids with grenades, but catches Thrasher's billy club-thing to the head, knocking him out and freeing his slaves. Thrasher then talks Rage down, by admitting he had done a far better job of dealing with his grief than he ever had. (Thrasher's origin was pretty Batman, and he had swallowed a lot of his feelings.)

Ooh, looking it up on Mike's, this came out the same month as the last issue of Morbius. But, I know Night Thrasher and Rage would probably return in New Warriors before that title wrapped.