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  

siblings' desperation before letting them eat  and sending them on their way, saying they aren't  

welcome in his territory anymore. Several more  moons pass before he finally gets what he had most  

wanted, as Tigerpaw, now grown into Tigerstar, is  led into Bloodclan territory and asks Scourge for  

his help. Scourge decides to delay his revenge for  a short while until he and Bloodclan are called to  

the forest. As we all know, they are presented by  Tigerstar as a threat to Windclan and Thunderclan,  

but when he finds an opportunity (and in this book  without even mentioning Firestar's speech about  

Tigerstar's evil deeds) he viciously attacks  and kills Tigerstar. He ends with a speech to  

himself about how, even though his littermates  underestimated him, he has proved to be strong  

and to “live for blood,” the only answer in this  world. He is Scourge, the leader of Bloodclan, and  

he has won…for about 3 days until he dies but this  book doesn't cover that so never mind. It's fine.

Before anything else, it should be immediately  apparent that this book recontextualizes the  

original arc's events substantially. Based  on what little we see in The Darkest Hour,  

it didn't seem as though Scourge knew Firestar  or any of the clans before arriving, and it was  

presented as though Firestar's speech to him  was what convinced Scourge to turn on Tigerstar  

and take the forest for himself. This story of  having a lifelong vendetta to pay to Tigerstar  

and not even caring enough to mention Firestar's  speech doesn't contradict the story we knew,  

but it is certainly a retcon in that nothing  implied a connection before. With that said,  

it does sort of explain one thing: why Bloodclan  is even called Bloodclan. Scourge could only  

imitate the naming convention if he had heard of  the clans before, so even if this book doesn't  

delve into the specific reasons for him to have  chosen the clan part of the Bloodclan name and  

only gave Scourge an experience with the clan name  in passing during a traumatic childhood event,  

it's a better explanation than we had before.  Importantly though, the scene between Bluefur,  

Thistleclaw, Tigerpaw, and Tiny is completely  new and in a time period that hasn't been touched  

before, meaning that if we ever were to visit the  time when Bluestar was a warrior for some reason,  

this scene would have to have played out.  But that would be silly so let's move on.

Easily the greatest effect of this book  was actually not in the books at all,  

but on the fandom. In the latter half  of 2008 and especially going into 2009,  

Scourge was suddenly one of the most popular and  drawn figures in the fandom. His utterly painful,  

edgy, dramatic backstory spoke to a lot of the  fans back then and he got an awful lot of art,  

videos, animations, and more, often with  bangs, extra bright colored hair tips,  

or collar variations to make him as evil  looking and exaggerated as possible. Many of  

these videos and art pieces are dearly beloved  pieces of nostalgia or even inspiration for  

members of the fandom to this day, so this  manga's effects aren't to be understated.

One thing I do have a small issue with is how  Scourge puts such an extreme amount of emphasis on  

his one awful encounter with Tigerpaw as opposed  to the other dozens of cats who treated him badly  

or his siblings who bullied him needlessly and  relentlessly for his whole time as a kittypet. He  

doesn't spend nearly as much time even thinking  about Socks and Ruby's taunts or Quince's  

quiet disappointment as he does Tigerpaw's  fearsome face, and when his siblings arrive,  

though he revels in taunting them for a moment,  he offers them food without explanation and still  

thinks about Tigerpaw during the interaction  rather than anything Socks and Ruby ever said.  

This was definitely done to give more emphasis  to the final encounter Scourge would have, but  

thinking about it on its own, it doesn't make much  sense. However, it's a small and forgivable note.

This story also has some small hallmarks of the  stories I least enjoy in the modern books. Almost  

everyone around Scourge (with the exception of  the one nice old cat who quickly disappeared)  

is mean for little to no reason, and for the  first half of the book he has little agency  

in bringing on or fighting back against  his bullies. The twolegplace is suddenly  

full to the brim with the most aggressive  and self-centered cats we've ever seen,  

entirely devoid of the sweet house cats  that were shown in Firestar's childhood  

or in The New Prophecy when cats were taken  captive by the twolegs. However, The Rise of  

Scourge distinguishes itself from the modern  stories I take issue with by having Scourge be  

a distinct and driven character who takes actions  to learn from and escape from his circumstances,  

even though those circumstances were unfair  and, in some ways, unbelievable. He goes out to  

try and prove himself strong and important to his  siblings and when they don't believe that either,  

he eventually chooses to leave the house entirely  and learn from the cruelty of cats around him,  

taking on their stance of power and strength  ruling over everything as he tells just the  

right lies and becomes just passionate enough  about bloodshed and leadership to become the