Well, that didn’t take long.
One day after Stephen Wacker was named the new Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, Marvel announced Sam Alexander is back in Nova: Return of the Rings #1, a new one-shot from Marvel’s Voices, the publisher’s diversity-focused imprint, hitting stores October 14 in celebration of Hispanic & Latin American Heritage Month (via AIPT).
The one-shot comes from writer Josh Trujillo and artist Rafael Loureiro, with a main cover by Champions artist Humberto Ramos, a variant by Phil Jimenez, and a backup story by Juan Ponce and Andy Pereira about Sam’s home life.
The plot: the Ten Rings, previously launched into deep space because they were too dangerous to stay on Earth, have escaped containment. One of them has found a new bearer who wants the Worldmind, Richard Rider’s Xandarian supercomputer, as step one of galactic conquest.
Trujillo calls Sam “one of Marvel’s biggest teen heroes.”
Sam Alexander Is Pure Wacker-Era Marvel
If the timing feels like a mission statement, it should.
As I covered Thursday, Wacker was the editor behind the 2011 Sam Alexander Nova reboot that replaced fan-favorite Richard Rider after Marvel blew up the Abnett and Lanning cosmic era, the same run that inspired the MCU’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
The news also comes amid Marvel Comics abandoning New York for Hollywood after nearly 90 years.
And the track record for the woke Marvel NOW! characters of that era speaks for itself: they never sold, and they never stopped getting canceled.
Sam’s Nova was relaunched and canceled three separate times between 2013 and 2017, with the last two volumes lasting just 11 and seven issues.
Ms. Marvel, whose introduction Marvel touted as a highlight in Wacker’s own announcement, has been relaunched and canceled over and over, to the point Marvel killed Kamala Khan off in a Spider-Man comic and brought her back as a mutant just to generate headlines.
The Champions, the teen team built around Sam, Kamala, and Miles Morales, opened big thanks to retailer incentive variants, immediately collapsed, and saw all three volumes canceled.
Marvel’s Cosmic Relaunch Just Died Out Of The Gate
If anyone thinks the answer is more Sam, look at what just happened to Marvel’s cosmic line.
Jonathan Hickman’s Imperial event was supposed to relaunch Marvel Cosmic, with a slate of new ongoings announced out of last year’s SDCC, including the first Nova ongoing since Dan Abnett’s stellar 2007 run.
Within months the whole thing collapsed. Planet She-Hulk was cut short at issue #6, Nova: Centurion ended at #6 as well, Dan Abnett’s Imperial Guardians went from “ongoing series” to a canceled five-issue mini in a single solicitation cycle, and the planned Exiles book never even shipped.
Before anyone spins that as “fans don’t want Marvel Cosmic,” let’s be clear about what actually happened. Marvel killed Marvel Cosmic back in 2011 and 2012 when it canceled Abnett and Lanning’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova, a line that, per the editor at the time, was solid and sold well, to make room for replacement characters exactly like Sam that synced the comics with the MCU.
The fans didn’t lose interest. They were sent packing, and 15 years later they still haven’t come back.
The stories haven’t been any good since Marvel canceled the Abnett stuff, either. Even finally giving Richard Rider a book again couldn’t fix it, because the current run is mid, they botched the design right down to the star symbol, and the audience Marvel chased off is long gone.
Case in point: Jeff Loveness, who wrote the seven-issue 2017 Nova volume before it got canceled, is the same Jeff Loveness Marvel later handed Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Fans rejected that movie so hard it blew up the entire Kang plan, with Loveness dropped from Avengers: The Kang Dynasty before Marvel scrapped the Kang era altogether.
The same post-Abnett pipeline that ran the comics into the ground ran the MCU into the ground right behind them.
Feige Adapted These Characters And Killed The MCU
This is the same roster Kevin Feige built the post-Endgame MCU around, and audiences rejected it just like comic readers did.
The Ms. Marvel series was reportedly the least-watched MCU premiere in Disney+ history. The Marvels followed at around $206 million worldwide, the biggest bomb in MCU history.
Add in Ironheart and the rest of the Phase 4 and Phase 5 youth movement, and the result was a franchise in free fall.
The course correction tells you everything: the MCU is now forced to reset around Robert Downey Jr.’s return as Doctor Doom in this December’s Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, with the original cast coming back to save the day.
So the movies are sprinting away from this era while the comics, one day into the Wacker regime, are running straight back to it.
Meanwhile, Where’s Richard Rider?
Here’s the kicker: Marvel Studios has a Nova movie in development with Michael Waldron writing, and Glen Powell has gone from wishful thinking to frontrunner for the role.
The comics’ big Nova move ahead of that? A Sam Alexander heritage-month one-shot where the MacGuffin is literally Rich’s Worldmind.
New Editor-in-Chief. Same Marvel.
NOVA: RETURN OF THE RINGS #1
Written by Josh Trujillo & Juan Ponce
Art by Rafael Loureiro & Andy Pereira
Cover by Humberto Ramos
Variant cover by Phil Jimenez
On sale October 14
