Writer: Jed MacKay
Artist: Lopez
Colorist: Mattia Iacono
Cover Artist: Alessandro Cappucio & Rachelle Rosenberg
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed herein are purely the opinions of the author of this article and do not necessarily reflect the official opinions of CosmicBookNews. Timelord regularly reviewed the 2007 “Nova” and 2008 “Guardians of the Galaxy” series with his reviews directly sent to the books’ editors and creators. Timelord’s reviews have been quoted by Marvel in cover blurbs, press reviews, and solicits.
Warning: Contains some spoilers.
As an (approaching) 50-year Nova fan and being of the opinion that Giffen’s original Annihilation (2006-2007) series with Rich Rider Nova as the protagonist was the best cosmic story Marvel has ever produced, I approached yet another attempt to re-capture Annihilation’s glory for the Nova character with some trepidation as there have been so many failed attempts in the intervening years. I came away from reading Nova Centurion #1 with some mixed feelings, but trending positive with hope.
MacKay has obviously spent some time familiarizing himself with the Nova lore and has correctly identified some of the mistakes that have been made with the character and lore since the high point of the excellent Abnett and Lanning (aka “DnA”) Nova (2007-2010) series. He obviously realized that the verbal interplay between Rider and the original Xandarian Worldmind was a stroke of DnA genius that had been lost by the hack-jobs perpetrated against Nova and the rest of the cosmic characters by the likes of Bendis, Loeb, and Loveness & Perez. He found a way around the particular Cancerverse-infected Worldmind hack-job perpetrated by Bendis and Loveness & Perez, and we now have a return to the banter between Rider and the original Worldmind that all true Nova fans came to love. I thought DnA made a mistake by replacing the original Worldmind with the Ko-Rel personality, and though it doubtless crossed MacKay’s mind to bring Ko-Rel back, he wisely chose the original and best iteration of the Worldmind to “re-boot.” Thank you, Mr. MacKay.
I like Rich’s new beard. In a way, it is a tribute to his late father who was always portrayed with a similar beard style. It is a shame that his father was un-ceremoniously killed off for no good reason other than to make a cheap dramatic point in the deplorable (mercifully & deservedly short-lived) Loveness & Perez series as his father always got way too little page/story time and was always a grounding character for Rich. The paltry use of his father as a guiding figure in his life has been a wasted opportunity for character development in the Rider Nova-verse.
I’m a WW-II-phile and I think a large part of Annihilation’s success is due to its grounding in WWII themes. Yet, the Marvel writers keep going back to the western “Lone Ranger” and “last man (Nova Corpsman) standing” theme even though it has been way over-used in Nova history. MacKay has blended the western “Have Gun – Will Travel” theme into the Lone Ranger theme and for now it works only because he’s created an ensemble cast to support the blended western theme, but I hope to see a move away from the western themes and back to the WWII themes because, while the western theme worked for Firefly in the sense that it gained a small but ardent fan base and ignited the imagination of young writers, the western themes for Marvel Cosmic have never worked for long. I point to the “Spaghetti-Westernization” of various Guardians of the Galaxy mini-series as egregious examples of how poorly the western themes have translated to Marvel Cosmic. If you missed those, be glad you did. It is way past time to move on from the Lone Ranger theme for Rider Nova and back to the WWII themes which made Annihilation the hit that continues to reverberate to the present. Nova works best as Military Science-Fantasy and is only mediocre as Wild West Science-Fantasy.
While we’re on the subject of World War II themes, as much as I like WW-II, I’ve got to say that the bomber jacket has to go. It is too anachronistic for a cosmic book. Plus, it ruins the look of the new Nova Prime uniform. I’m a fan of the original and iconic Nova uniform from 1976 and would be totally happy with a simple return to those roots. The Nova Prime Uniform from Annihilation is visually striking, but combat impractical. All those points would be just as deadly to the wearer as to the foe – perhaps more so to the wearer. This new uniform eliminates the points while maintaining the basic Annihilation-era design, making it more combat practical, but not as visually striking. If we can’t go back to the iconic 1976 design, I think some tweaking of this new uniform is in order to make it a bit more visually striking – and let’s start with giving Rich back the Nova Prime helmet star. Enough with the “acting Nova Prime” nonsense. He is and has been The Nova Prime for a long time now. Also consider thinning the breast plate and bulking up Rich’s torso and arms – more of a Captain America physique.
As to the ensemble cast, in addition to the original Worldmind, we have Pip the Troll acting as Rider’s agent, Aalbort acting as his “Combat Accountant,” and a grown up Cammi returning to act as his sarcastic foil. I’ve always said Nova works best with an ensemble cast, so I’m looking forward to seeing how well MacKay uses the cast to develop the Rider character. I do have one note of concern. In a recent interview, MacKay indicated that he would be introducing the Sam Alexander character at some point in this series. A word of advice: Please don’t. “Kid Nova” was a bad idea from the start. It was just Loeb’s cynical cash grab and an attempt to replace Rider with a woke character. It never worked out, Sam Alexander has been the kiss of death to every book where he has been featured, the Rider Nova fan base widely despises him, and he will just cheapen this series because as I’ve always said, it is ridiculously irresponsible to have a young teen character imbued with powers of mass destruction and immoral to place said character in the combat situations that a true Nova Corpsman must regularly face. At least Rich was essentially 18 when he received Nova powers and received military training shortly after receiving the powers when he served in the Xandar-Skrull War. Hopefully Xandar will be resurrected and Nova Corps command will do the right thing and remove Sam Alexander’s powers as they were illegally attained in the first place. In the meantime, let’s just ignore the little bastard and pretend he doesn’t exist.
Speaking of resurrecting Xandar, there were some possible Easter Eggs in this storyline. I’ll leave it to each of you to identify those. It only makes sense that at some point the Worldmind would execute its primary duty to preserve Xandar and Xandarian culture by resurrecting the Xandarians via cloning as it has multiple times in the past. This business about its power supply being limited needs to be reconsidered. Nova Power has never been fully explained, but it certainly bears resemblance to Zero Point Energy. If it really is ZPE, then it is as abundant as there are atoms in the universe. Let’s get past this “working for energy credits concept” in the near future, give the Worldmind back unlimited power, and get to work resurrecting Xandar and the entire Nova Corps. Let’s give Rich a huge ensemble cast with which to interact and galaxy-level threats for the Corps to address.
Lopez seems to have a penchant for cosmic art. I enjoyed his renditions of Rich and the other characters – especially the close-ups. Iacono’s colors were spot-on for a cosmic book. I hope this artist-colorist team stays on the book for a good long time. I honestly wasn’t wild about the primary cover art or any of the variants. They all lacked the “wow factor” that entices someone who has never read Nova to grab a copy off the shelf at the shop to see what’s inside. If this book is to have a long run, the cover art is really going to have to substantially improve the appeal to first time buyers by igniting their imagination at first glance, just like the iconic 1976 Buscema cover art for the original Nova series did for me and many other long-term fans and the iconic Annihilation: Prologue (and for that matter, all the Annihilation covers) did for new fans.
I know this book is probably potential pilot material for a Nova TV series, and if so, MacKay has done a good job of beginning the salvaging and distilling of the concepts that made Nova great in the original 1976-1979 series, Annihilation, and the 2007-2010 DnA Nova series for consumption and implementation by the producers, writers, and directors of such a TV series. I hope he continues to rehabilitate the Rider Nova character from the indignities suffered under Bendis, Loeb, and Loveness & Perez – and if he continues to hold true to the concepts that made Nova great from 1976-1979 and again from 2006-2010, I sincerely hope this series has a good long run. I encourage every Nova fan to buy a minimum of 2 copies of the book each month to help keep sales high.
Here’s to nearly 50 years of Rich Rider Nova! Long live Rich Rider Nova!
