Name: The Rise of Scourge – Trip Through Time | Warriors Analysis
Uploaded: 2024-02-18T12:00:56.000Z
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Time for another manga, though not  part of the Graystripe series anymore.  

Adverbs of manner

This time we're focusing on the famous  leader of Bloodclan and, evidentially,  

the path that led him to where he began in  the last chapters of The Darkest Hour. But  

Scourge only appeared sparingly at the end of  one book which at this point was already almost  

4 years old. With Scourge long dead and whatever  remained of Bloodclan abandoned in the forest,  

is there any worth in telling this  story? Well, that's really up to the  

reader to decide. Even if it doesn't end  up affecting the future of the series,  

this book could still be fun and shed some light  on a last minute character who became beloved for  

his immense and dramatic presence despite his  lack of spotlight or depth. At the very least,  

I can give it a chance. Oh and, for the  record, this is the page I'm drawing this time.

The Rise of Scourge came out on June 24th of  2008, two months after Outcast and Warrior's  

Return and the same day as Cats of the Clans,  the field guide I covered in the last episode.  

Unlike the mangas that came before it, this  one is a standalone adventure and gets to be  

about 10-20 pages longer as a result. It was still  written by Dan Jolley like the Graystripe series,  

but this time the artist is Bettina M. Kurkoski  (apologies if I'm mispronouncing that) who only  

otherwise worked with the Erins for the Seekers  series, the bear one if you aren't familiar.  

The art style differences between her and James L  Barry are immediately apparent but not detracting,  

and in fact Kurkoski's sharp style lends well  to the harsh main character and the climate  

he finds himself in. Back on the similarities  side though, this book also features an opening  

note from an anonymous Erin Hunter suspected  to be Vicky where they talk about how little  

Scourge's past was thought about when he was  first introduced. He was the closest thing to  

pure evil that the forest had, which made him  a good enemy, and that was all that was needed.  

But now that they have stopped to consider his  backstory, they realized it could be interesting  

to go back in manga form and track his progression  into the cat he would become. This Erin also drops  

briefly that she imagines Scourge starting sort  of like Firestar but taking a much darker path,  

which could explain why that idea was so prevalent  in the fandom for many years. As we'll soon see,  

it's not exactly that clear cut. But before  we get into that, let's cover the cast notes.

In a sharp increase from all of the Graystripe  mangas, The Rise of Scourge has a speaking  

cast of 28 cats, even by combining some cats who  are likely intended to be different characters,  

and it has a named cast of 10. The  top 5 cats have 83% of the lines,  

the lowest we've seen yet in a manga,  but Scourge does of course have the vast  

majority of those with 262 lines while the next  closest, his mother, has only 31. That said,  

even line spreads don't seem to be all that  likely in the graphic novel area, so I don't  

have any particular qualms with this book.  Let's just see how these characters are used,  

and what information the manga will tell  us about the fearsome Bloodclan leader.

We open with our protagonist, a little black  kitten named Tiny, squishing into the corner of a  

bed while his brother and sister, Socks and Ruby,  play fiercely on the other side. Their mother,  

Quince, watches as Ruby accidentally kicks  Tiny over onto his back while trying to run  

after Socks. Quince then scolds Socks and  Ruby for playing roughly with their brother,  

and they complain that they don't like playing  with him at all because he's too loud and scrawny.  

Quince doesn't give in, but Tiny is already hurt  to know his littermates hate him, which just about  

defines their relationship for the first part  of this book. Tiny is confused about how to play  

games and not especially good at making twoleg  kits like him in the way that Socks and Ruby are,  

but he would like to get better. On a whim, he  asks his mother about the forest he saw outside,  

which apparently his father explored a couple of  times. The cats of the forest, as Quince tells us,  

are ruthless and desperate, having to fight every  day to survive against each other and all sorts  

of beasts. She calls them a scourge on the name of  all good cats. Also, we learn that Quince's mate,  

Tiny's father, had ginger fur. Moving on, Socks  and Ruby get closer and better at playing while  

Tiny keeps being excluded, even feeling less  loved by his mother. The couple of times he  

does try to join them, he is quickly bullied away,  and Quince's scolding never seems to make Socks  

or Ruby change their minds about their little  brother. Eventually Tiny decides to prove them  

wrong by exploring the forest, and although he  faces some early success, when he returns home,  

his siblings and mother don't believe him,  and Socks and Ruby now berate him even more  

for being a liar on top of being a wimp. The last  straw comes when a twoleg family comes to look at  

the kits and are only immediately taken with Socks  and Ruby. Ruby tells Tiny that kits who can't find  

twoleg families get thrown in the river, and he  is terrified, enough that he decides to run away  

before anyone can get rid of him. Especially after  a taunt about his size from a couple of kittypets,  

Tiny is determined to live on his own and prove  he's strong, first by going back into the forest.  

However, he immediately runs into a patrol made  up of Thistleclaw, Bluefur, and an apprentice,  

Tigerpaw. Though Bluefur tries to calm them down  and let Tiny go as he's just a kit, Thistleclaw  

is insistent that an intruder is an intruder, and  Tigerpaw seems eager to “teach him a lesson” by  

fiercely attacking him while Tiny can't fight  back. When Bluefur finally makes them back off,  

Tigerpaw leaves Tiny with a warning that he'll  never forget him, and Tiny runs away. With no  

home to go back to, no welcome in the forest, and  no friends near his house, Tiny wanders deeper  

into the twolegplace and quickly finds that the  desperate cats there are even more aggressive than  

the ones at home, and not just to him. A friendly  old cat lets him know that he is a kittypet,  

marked by his collar, and Tiny becomes determined  to get it off, but isn't able to by himself.  

Luckily, he happens across a very slow and old  dog who happened to drop one of his teeth before  

being called back to his owner. Tiny uses the  dog tooth to try and rip his collar off, but  

ends up getting the tooth stuck inside his collar  instead. The next day, he asks a different group  

of cats if he can share their food, and instead  of answering they ask where his tooth came from.  

Tiny, beginning to catch on to what gets someone  respected in his world, boasts that he ripped it  

off after a battle with a fearsome dog who was  going after *his* food. The cats don't seem to  

believe him immediately, but they let him have  some food regardless, perhaps just to be safe.  

The next day though, two cats, Brick and Bone,  actually come looking for *him.* They heard a  

rumor that he fights dogs and want him to take out  a big and strong dog on his own, one that has been  

keeping all other cats away from the food in that  area. Seeing as they still don't quite believe  

him, they give him until moonhigh to deal with the  problem, or he'll have to leave this twolegplace.  

As terrified as he is, Tiny climbs a building  and looks out over the twolegplace where tons of  

overtly aggressive cats are desperately fighting  over the smallest bits of food because of how  

hungry they are. He feels connected to those cats  as they are all scared together, and decides that  

he's not leaving another home. He will fight for  real. As soon as he turns to fight the dog though,  

it becomes scared of his big shadow and all he  needs to do is swipe at its tail once for the dog  

to run away, yipping sadly. At that point, a large  group of the twolegplace cats are ecstatic and  

immediately want to know the name of their hero.  But Tiny doesn't want to be defined by his size  

anymore, and instead chooses the language that  Quince used for the forest cats, deciding to be  

called Scourge. He now has access to all the food,  shelter, and help he could want from the many cats  

who now fear him, but the memory of Tigerpaw  biting into him still angers him and he knows  

he's not finished. For the moment though, he is  content to be treated like a heroic leader by the  

twolegplace cats who now give him food and come to  him for help with their problems. A confrontation  

with a trio of cats from the forest is the first  to truly give him pause, as they don't fear him or  

see him as anything other than a runt, but as they  laugh at him in front of his underlings, he knows  

he must stand up to maintain his power, and he  claws at the leader's throat, which quickly gets  

his own cats back on his side and sends the forest  cats running. Scourge starts using his power more  

to place rules on who can and can't take from  areas of the twolegplace, and also begins adorning  

his collar with more of the teeth and claws  he gathers. He feels his heart growing colder  

and welcomes it, a trend that comes to a head when  Socks and Ruby show up again, begging for help  

finding food and shelter since their housefolk  moved away and abandoned them. Scourge, declaring  

for the first time that his twolegplace cats are  called Bloodclan, (a name we must assume he based  

on the “Thunderclan” that he heard Thistleclaw  mention at their encounter) relishes in his  

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The Rise of Scourge – Trip Through Time | Warriors Analysis

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