NewWarriors.com turns 25 Years old!

How did this all begin?

Back in the infancy of the Internet’s popularity (around 1994 or 1995), when I searched the web – something I wasn’t finding was a representation for this astounding comic I’d fallen madly in love with – a group of young misfits, banded together – to try and make a difference in the world – The New Warriors.

So I ended up using a free online site called Geocities (which most people probably don’t even remember what Geocities was – but back when people were first sharing their interests, Geocities was the hub for websites). Not even Archive seems to go that far back.

Not long after that, I took to starting a New Warriors mail list using eGroups (Editor’s Note – Link no longer works, not even through Archive), which was later purchased and became Yahoo Groups. But that group was founded way back in December 13th, 1998 – making it so that some of us – most of which have never met in person – have known each other for over twenty years because of our passion for New Warriors. 

On February 3rd, 2020 my wife surprised me by purchasing the NewWarriors.com domain for me. The site went through thousands of redesigns as I continued to explore new ways to design the website. I eventually put a forum on the website (thanks, Archive) as I began moving things away from Yahoo Groups to a more controlled format. However, it wouldn’t be long before social media began to take off – and I closed down the forum as less people went there and ended up on Facebook, which was doing great – until, one day, it was brought to my attention early in the morning that the Facebook page I’d created was gone – all the content – just… gone. But what was in its place? Well, apparently Marvel contacted Facebook and took over the page and set it up for the show. Even though it looks as if the show is dead in the water, finding no home; I never did get my page restored. But I had created a new Facebook page and Group, figuring as much! (I strongly recommend joining the Facebook Group rather than the page, as the Group is very active and fun!)

I can’t even believe that the site is officially 25 years old. I had originally run the site off of Geocities (which was then purchased by Yahoo, then went away). Prior to all of that business with Yahoo taking it over, my wife saw my passion and love for New Warriors, and as a gift, purchased me the domain of newwarriors.com. The site has gone through a great, great, great many number of changes. When it first went up, it had nothing. No, really. It just looked like this:

After a little while, I added a Message Board/forum and created a mail list (though, for the life of me, I can’t remember if I did anything with that mail list back then).

This is what the forum looked like:

I began adding profiles and summaries to the site after a little bit, but man, what was I thinking? This is some blinding formatting here.

Eventually I created another forum, that wasn’t hosted on the site…

When I look at how simple the character profiles were back then… I cringe…

Sometime in 2004, Corey set up a New Warriors petition and launched his own site, and at the same time, that’s roughly when I began really looking into how to make something of the site I had in front of me…

In 2005, the site got it’s first face lift…

I also launched a phpbb forum hosted on the site, that I really enjoyed.

The profiles also began to look far more like the Marvel Universe Handbook which had always been my intention…

By 2007, the site was coming along nicely, and a new series was born…

The site remained relatively the same from 2007 to 2012 (which is wild to think), other than adding and updating profiles and issue synopsis stuff. I focused more on the content of the site rather than the look and ease of the site. But in 2012, the site would undergo yet another change, and it was all for ease of navigation (with menus on the top and left) and news being posted on the front page as it happened, or if there was significant updates.

This look is pretty much the same exact site it is today, 13 years later – just much, much, much, much more content on there. Every solo series (with a character who is a main character of the New Warriors, from Night Thrasher, Nova, Firestar, Justice, Darkhawk, Cloak and Dagger, you name it!) to every New Warriors series has a synopsis on the site written up for it. Every character has a profile. I went through and began working my way through the villains and adding the many, many, many villains the New Warriors have fought.

In 2014, a few of us launched The Crashpod, a short lived New Warriors podcast.

I think it survived to three episodes. Every blue moon (and I mean, every blue moon), I will record something myself, just going over the issues of the New Warriors (but it’s not so fun to talk to yourself… people start to look at you funny, don’t you know!) Corey and Doug (Doug Smith, Don Lund, and Corey Blake) launched another podcast.

Back in May or June of 2017, I had made this almost a year ago, and had forgotten to officially post it on the site – but I made a New Warriors Chat Room on Discord. It’s now linked on the right under Social Media also.

The idea here was, that since many of us have known each other for over 20 years, that we could maybe meet on Discord and chat on there some time; or maybe see if we could get some of the folks who had a creative hand in with the New Warriors to come to Discord and do a Q&A.

That was my idea back in 2017, but I’ve still not really done much with it in that regard.

Oh yes, then in 2017, with news that the New Warriors were headed to TV, and how I assume Marvel requested Facebook to take ownership of my New Warriors facebook page and proceeded to wipe it (without telling me, which in the end was their right) and hand it over to Marvel to make it about the TV show… which, they never did anything with. Both the TV show and the Facebook page. (So many, many, many years of Facebook posts were wiped needlessly! It would have been nice if Facebook reached out to me and asked me to rename the ‘domain’ of the page to something else, to preserve that). This resulted in me created a Facebook Group instead of a Facebook Page and naming it after the website. This proved to be a good thing as the Group felt like a forum.

Meeting Fabian at San Diego Comic Con in 2017, was also a massive highlight. So I’d only ever had the good grace of seeing Fabian Nicieza once – and I mean, this way back in the 1990s, when he was writing New Warriors (just another site I run…). I was such a fan when I saw Fabian, at his booth, I was too star struck. I felt like, back then, I’d just fumble over my words. So I actually didn’t approach him.

Not the case when I saw him in 2017. As a matter of fact, when I heard he’d be at San Diego Comic Con – I loaded up my backpack with only New Warriors comics – and one other comic – X-Force Annual #2. And then I carried a poster in a holder around, until he was finally at his booth signing. I immediately approached him and told him to tell me if this was too much – as I broke out a pile of New Warriors, X-Force Annual #2, my New Warriors poster, and – the big surprise – original art from Captain Marvel that featured Adam-X. If you’ve listed to any of the podcasts on here you know my love of Adam-X.

He signed it all – and we talked the entire time – he was shocked that I had no Deadpool comics, for which he was truly getting to be known for due to the movie’s success. But I wasn’t there to get things signed that were “in” – I wanted books I cared about, a poster I cared about, and the original art from the Captain Marvel book. (Side Note – Captain Marvel back then was not Carol Danvers, but rather Genis Vell, the son of Mar Vell, the original Captain Marvel)

I do all of this, because I’ve always loved the New Warriors – I loved what they originally represented – people, who came together, despite all of their differences – to try and make a change – and all the things that they went through from start to finish that changed who they were fundamentally – and made them feel so… real.

Running this site has created so many memories. A very recent one was being able to do an interview with Martrese Beck. If you’re asking yourself “Who is that?” Well, she was the one who posed as Namorita on the cover of New Warriors #44. If you missed it, you can read that here. She even sent me an autographed copy!

Finally getting my own copy of Namorita #1 (what an ordeal that was).

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Thanks! And all we ever wanted to do was change the world.