Marvel’s new Midnight Suns video game has added the powerful witch Nico Minoru to its roster, bringing the Runaways character to the spotlight alongside other major characters like Iron Man and Captain Marvel. And while she’s always been plenty capable on her own, her time on the all-female Avengers-level team known as A-Force showed her struggle in a team dynamic.
Nico is most well known for her role on the young superhero team known as the Runaways and as the wielder of the Staff of One. But for a while, the clever and powerful witch ran with an all-female Avengers-level team known as A-Force. With fan-favorite She-Hulk as its leader, A-Force was assembled in the Battleworld nation of Arcadia after the Multiverse was destroyed as a result of Marvel’s Secret Wars.
Marvel’s A-Force Featured Avengers From Another World
A-Force originally existed in the Battleworld, which was a makeshift world created and and eventually destroyed by Doctor Doom. A-Force’s leader, She-Hulk, assembled the team to protect the island nation of Arcadia from Battleworld’s mightiest threats. Among the team were originally She-Hulk, America Chavez, Captain Marvel, Loki, Dazzler, and Nico but the heroines were quickly joined by a mysterious being that readers would come to know as Singularity.
Singularity is essentially a pocket dimension as a being and her introduction disrupted the delicate and fragile balance among the current members of A-Force. Singularity’s existence caused mass amounts of internal strife among the team, to the point where She-Hulk, Nico, Dazzler, and Captain Marvel were exiled and Loki was appointed as the new baroness of Arcadia. However, this inter-team fighting didn’t last long, because Loki was discovered to be a traitor. In one final act of defiance, she caused a Zombie attack from the Deadlands to swarm Arcadia. Singularity seemingly sacrificed herself to save the others. It did not matter in the long run because the Battleworld was destroyed and the Multiverse was restored.
A Decision Divides Nico From the Rest of the Group
With the Multiverse restored, none of the A-Force members aside from Singularity, who was alive and resting among the stars, remembered the events of the Battleworld. She reunited with the rest of the team, by crashing Nico’s cousin’s wedding in A-Force #2 ( written by G. Willow Wilson, Kelly Thompson, and Jorge Molina). The team traveled together for quite some time but for the most part, Nico’s role was not as stable on A-Force as it is on the Runaways. To complicate matters even further, the precognitive Ulysses predicted that Nico was going to murder a woman by the name of Alice. Learning this, Nico fled to the city of Ouray in Colorado which had been overrun by bug-infested individuals.
Captain Marvel tries to convince the rest of the team to arrest Nico to prevent the murder, causing a rift between the two members. Eventually, it’s revealed that Alice is not only affected by the disease turning people into insects but is the source of it. By killing her, Nico would save everyone else affected, which at this point, included all of A-Force except herself and Singularity. And in A-Force #10 (by Kelly Thompson and Paulo Siqueira), Nico does kill Alice and A-Force disbands, with She-Hulk giving up being a superhero altogether. With Nico’s difficult decision, A-Force’s defined sense of morality separate her from more strong-headed individuals like Captain Marvel. Ultimately, A-Force’s breakup led Nico back to the Runaways, but fans still miss the best all-female superhero team Marvel’s ever had.
