New Challengers (2018-) #3

by Aaron Gillespie

[Quirky Cat]

We’re steadily getting further and further into this mini-series, and so far I’m still curious about what’s going on. For those that don’t remember, New Challengers is a spin-off of events set in motion thanks to Dark Nights: Metal. I know there’s been a lot of that going around though, but it is what it is, right?
In the last issue we had quite the curveball thrown at us – supposedly the ‘real’ Challengers have shown up, and they didn’t believe that the Professor is actually the Professor…so they sort of killed him. That sort of felt like jumping to crazy conclusions, especially considering how everybody on the team has already died once anyway – so shouldn’t we assume that the Professor isn’t the exception to this rule?
Anyway, moving on. It’ll be nice to see how that whole mess pans out. The cover only shows the original team (as in, the team we originally met, not the original Challengers) on it, so I wasn’t sure what that implied for the newly arrived team…
Like the last issue, this one starts out with a glimpse into the past of one of our Challengers. It doesn’t tell us much about him, other than to help reinforce his stubborn nature. It did transition perfectly into what was happening in real time though. The newly arrived team of Challengers are claiming that well, the Professor isn’t the Professor and this was the only solution. They’re also claiming that they were removed from their stasis pods because of Aquaman. This raises SO many questions. Either they’re not legit, or the Professor didn’t trust them, or the other way around. One is obviously more concerning than the other.
Things get a little crazy and confusing from that point onward…but that was clearly intentional. There’s a lot going on, and while the team of Challengers we know the best are clearly the most trustworthy, they’re also the most in the dark. Right now, at least. Hopefully they’ll learn more in the near future – but you never know.

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