A Fan Letter to Night Thrasher
Night Thrasher is a character I have always liked for the same reason I like Green Arrow or Nightwing. They are basically normal guys trained in one weapon or skill with no superpowers, but who can — almost — hold their own in the rough and tumble world of superheroics, going toe to toe with robots and demigods, aliens and mutants.
He is also about as generic a super as you can find: rich kid, parents killed by gangsters, uses his fortune to train himself in martial arts and get a suit of high tech armor. Rides a skateboard.
And he organized his own set of vigilantes from among the has-beens, also-rans and newbies of the Marvel universe, twisting arms and making enemies to do it. The team included the totally lame Speedball, the utterly forgettable female Human Torch called Firestar (one of the only characters who started on the telly and ended up in the comic), the utterly forgettable female Namor called Namorita, also known as Marvel’s answer to Aqua-Lass, and Vance Astro, whom I remember from the old-timey version of Guardians of the Galaxy. I think Nova, the human cannonball, was in the mix too. They were dubbed with the most generic superteam name ever: THE NEW WARRIORS.
Despite all these drawbacks, I liked it, and I like him. He was a total badass. Who got his ass handed to him on numerous occasions.
But he never gave up.
I came across Nighty (as we like to call him) in The Mighty Thor #411 & 412, where this doofus in a skateboard attacked the Juggernaut like a mongoose mugging a rhino. It was both totally silly and totally awesome.
THIS is why I liked Night Thrasher: ‘We intend to FIGHT for justice! Punish the guilty and CRUSH them like VERMIN!’
I don’t remember what color he is offhand. Who cares? Vermin-crushing justice fighting awesome comes in all colors.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
