Review: Nova #15 (Duggan)

And the foolishness continues.

Duggan has been writing Deadpool so long that he’s forgotten how to write anything else (if he ever could write anything else in the first place).  This issue of NINO is just silly, campy, DUMB child-oriented fantasy at its absolute worst.

I think about so many titles that were so much better than this garbage – Agents of Atlas, Young Allies, Incredible Hercules – (not to mention Volume II of Guardians of the Galaxy and Volume IV of Nova) – and Marvel keeps this trash on life support?  There’s something in the works we don’t know about at this point.

We do know that Bendis is going to write the fate of Rich Rider as part of his GotGINO tie-ins to Original Sin.  That ought to be about as enjoyable as a combined root canal and colonoscopy.  There’s one thing we can count on:  with Bendis, Brevoort, Alonso, Loeb, Wacker, and Duggan having anything to do with it, Rich definitely won’t be returning – at least not in any way any Rider Nova fan will find satisfying.  The Marvel Clown Car drivers are determined to cram NINO down our throats.  If you’re still buying NINO, you’re just making it easier for them.

Anyway, in this issue NINO continues to bumble his way through the situation somehow using powers he’s never been trained to use in heavy combat situations to best THREE rogue Spaceknights. Yeah. That’s plausible.  He then takes a break to attend school. Yeah. That’s plausible, too.  At school, he sleeps through class (great message to the kiddies at whom this book is aimed), and then agrees with his science teacher that there are no aliens.  I guess that teacher slept through Bendis’ Secret Invasion?  Come to think of it, I did, too, after I got bored with counting all the alien invasion movie concepts Bendis ripped-off while writing that utterly derivative and boring “event.”

Next issue’s cover features the little idiot lifting Stormbreaker.  NINO isn’t worthy of the uniform he’s usurped – and Marvel wants to portray him as worthy enough to lift Stormbreaker, too?  Yeah – you’ve pretty much got to have the mentality of an 8-year-old to buy into the entire concept of NINO.  I find myself rooting for the villains in every issue.  I’d rejoice if one of them killed the little idiot.

The funny thing is that Duggan et al just keep doubling-down on everything that isn’t working despite falling sales that should be telling them that the NINO concept has been soundly rejected.  Nix NINO, and bring back a Rider Nova book aimed at adult readers is the message Brevoort and Alonso are deliberately ignoring to push the worthlessness that is NINO.

The art and coloring are certainly acceptable; though I found portraying Cosmo to be morbidly obese a bit off-putting.  But, again, that’s just a single off-putting example of a book filled to the brim with off-putting bastardizations and ret-cons of the much better true cosmic that preceded it written by actual talented cosmic writers such as Giffen and DnA.  Marvel’s strategy of firing the talented writers and bringing in the hacks has worked wonders for cosmic hasn’t it?  Good job Alonso and Brevoort.

So buckle-up Rider Nova fans.  Unfortunately it’s been bad – but the worst is yet to come.  Marvel isn’t through insulting, disrespecting, and underestimating us.  They’ve commissioned Bendis to deal the death blow.  They think we’re too few in number to matter, and that we’ll eventually just give up and/or fade away – and they want to hurry that process along with Bendis writing Rich’s ultimate dire fate.  Let’s prove them wrong.  Join me in continuing to boycott NINO.  Boycott Original Sin and GotGINO, too.  Marvel needs to be punished in the only manner they understand – monetarily – for their “original sin” of running cosmic into the ground and disrespecting/insulting/underestimating cosmic fans in general and the Rider Nova fans in particular.