Nova

Happy Day!  This trash book is finally over!  It can now be relegated to the dust bin where it and other bad memories belong.  Hopefully, Brevoort and Alonso will join it there when their Secret Wars event flops.

The art is particularly bad this issue.  I have always hated this Manga-ized version of the Nova uniform, but NINO looks particularly stupid in it this issue.  In some panels, his neck is the size of a pencil.  When his helmet is off, he has Dumbo-sized ears.  I guess that’s the source of his flight powers.

The story is just as dumb as always with NINO improbably beating a much more powerful and experienced fighter after his actions place Earth in danger.  I, as always, was rooting for the villain.  The perfect ending to this story would’ve been NINO’s death.  Sadly, he survives.  And his unfit parents look to be letting him continue to wear the helmet.  Hey Marvel, this isn’t entertainment.  It’s a tragic example of why kids shouldn’t have super-powers and shouldn’t be soldiers/cops – and why unfit parents shouldn’t have kids.  Not to mention an example of why Duggan shouldn’t be allowed to write cosmic.

Rocket Racoon and Beta Ray Bill have cameos in this issue – showing up just in time to keep NINO’s screw-up from laying waste to Earth.  Yet literally thousands of fairly large asteroids are shown left circling Earth – with no indication that NINO actually cleaned any of them up.  Irresponsible?  I guess anyone can be made an Avenger these days.   At least NINO’s upcoming Avenger book will have a short life span.  Maybe after that, Marvel will give up on this failed experiment.

NINO’s gone, and good riddance to him and his fans.  It’s been too long in coming and he won’t be missed.  Leave this one on the shelf.  Nothing to see here.  And the last issue needs to go out selling less than 18K to ice the NINO failure cake and send Marvel a clear message:  No more NINO’s!

An Opinion-Editorial Oriented Review Decrying Political Correctness in Comic Books

Duggan, like Bendis, has no real understanding of science-fiction.   They both just rip-off plot and action elements from popular cinema and televised science-fiction and science-fantasy.  This issue, Duggan copies some elements from Babylon 5 and Deep Impact to make yet another thoroughly insipid and totally implausible NINO storyline.

Duggan admits he copies teen Spiderman plot elements from the past, and he likes to take to twitter to talk about what a brave, filled-to-the-brim with integrity kind of guy he is because he resists the harsh criticism leveled at him about NINO and keeps churning out NINO trash.  Hey Duggan, that doesn’t make you brave or full of integrity.   Re-packaging well-worn tropes from comics, cinema, and TV just makes you a hack.

The eye-rolling and stomach-churning moments go hand-in-hand in this issue with Duggan having NINO take on an ultra-powerful and ultra-experienced trained warrior – and of course, totally implausibly winning.  Stupid.  Unbelievable (in a bad way).

Of course, NINO predictably continues to screw up and his screw-ups result in Earth being put in incredible danger from multiple sources including a storm of asteroids heading straight for Earth.  Also, predictably, NINO (just like all the other current cosmic characters) has the Avengers on speed dial to call to save the day because cosmic characters are such buffoons under Bendys, Duggan, Loeb, Brevoort, and Alonso – that all cosmic characters can do is screw-up and place Earth in danger.  They can’t save Earth (or anything else).  Cosmic characters can no longer effectively single-handedly deal with cosmic threats.  They just trigger cosmic threats.  Then they’ve got to call The Avengers or The X-Men for help.  How dumb is that?  Pretty dumb.  But what else do you expect from Bendys, Duggan, Loeb, Brevoort, and Alonso?  They wanted to reduce cosmic to bathroom humor level buffoonery and they succeeded.

The art continues to decline on this deplorable book.  NINO continues to look thoroughly stupid in a poorly designed manga-ish military uniform he never earned in the first place.   It’s actually painful to look at the little idiot.

With sales under 20K despite all the marketing hype, a regular cartoon appearance, and shoehorning the little idiot into every major event, Marvel needs to wake up and declare this trash the failure that it so obviously is.  But that would make too much sense.  Instead, they decided to double-down on the failed formula and do an even more politically correct version of NINO, a PC-NINO-ette as it were.  Out with the half-alien/half-Hispanic male kid and in with the black female kid.  I guess the reasoning was, “If it worked for Ms. Marvel, maybe it’ll work for NINO.”

If you’re a true fan of the original Nova concepts and you’d like to see Rich Rider back in his rightful place, its past time to take action.  Boycott, NINO and PC-NINO-ette.  Send Marvel a clear message that they need to stop replacing beloved classic characters just for the sake of appealing to political correctness in the general population.  The general population could care less about comic books. 

That being said, despite all evidence to the contrary, if Marvel thinks that there really is an enormous demographic of buyers out there just dying to buy books about female, racial minority, religious minority, and sexual orientation-minority characters – then by all means please create such NEW characters from scratch and give them a book.  Let’s have a book about a super-powered, bi-sexual, female, half-Gypsy/half-Pygmy, wheelchair-bound, Shinto priestess who’s seriously considering sex change surgery.   Sounds hilarious.   I might even buy the first issue.  This ultimately PC character would certainly please the “small but vocal” PC crowd (and their PC police force who frequently shoot the rest of us in the back as we try to flee this PC nonsense).  But please, don’t use that ultimate PC character as a replacement for Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Nova, etc.   Live up to your name as the “House of Ideas,” do the courageous/non-lazy thing, and create a brand new character with the demographics you want to capture.  

When will this waste of paper be over? 

The annual sold about 18K.  That would be cancellation time for most any Marvel book – but Marvel keeps this trash on life support?  To chase a demographic of 7-12-year-old buyers that doesn’t really exist?

Hey Brevoort – you’ve got 18K of buyers with the mentality of 7-12-year-olds, but that’s about it.  Few to no actual 7-12 year olds buying comic books.  Psssst – here’s a secret:  They’re too busy playing video games. 

Despite a near unprecedented marketing campaign, a cartoon series, and shoehorning the “little idiot” (Loeb’s own description of this character) into every event – the best you’ve got is 18K for a NINO annual?  To quote NINO himself, “Epic fail!”

And Duggan, you can keep underlining Rider’s death and insulting Rider fans as much as you like in your book and on forums, but most of us will NEVER accept or embrace your NINO or your upcoming “Politically Correct NINO-ette.”  And we’ll never forgive you or Loeb for mangling the Nova mythos with this puerile garbage or for your continued disrespect for fans of the true Nova, Rich Rider.

Fact is, Duggan, like Bendis and Loeb, has no idea how to write a true cosmic story.  He writes farce.  That’s it.  The space setting is incidental, and the aliens are around purely for comic relief.   Substitute any city – New York, Mayberry, Los Angeles – literally anywhere for the space setting and change the aliens to doofus humans, and the story would read exactly the same.  Duggan even alludes to this himself when he has NINO dress up like Deadpool in this painfully bad issue.  He’s basically writing a less hypomanic Deadpool, throwing in some stars and aliens, and calling it “Nova.”  That’s pretty much what passes for “cosmic” at Marvel these days – forgettable, farcical, hackneyed stories aimed at the lowest common denominator.

The cover art looks like graphics from a bad manga-inspired video game, and the interior art is even worse with NINO looking even more ridiculously scrawny than usual wearing his dad’s uniform.  That’s not a superhero or a soldier/police officer.  NINO literally looks like what he is – a child playing dress-up. 

Tell me, NINO fans, how do you conveniently overlook the fact that NINO’s mother allows her minor child, NINO, to go off into space alone for the foreseeable future?  How is that decision even remotely plausible for anyone other than an unfit parent?

Tell me, Avengers fans, is it even remotely plausible that the real Captain America, a responsible adult in every other comic but this one, would be supportive of a minor child wielding powers of mass destruction and going into space alone risking his life and perhaps endangering the Earth with his actions (as actually happened in this issue)?

I guess NINO fans and Avenger-zombies have a low bar for plausibility.

So NINO goes looking for his dad, screws things up along the way, Beta Ray Bill and a few others have a few head-slapping “Doh!” moments as they observe his teen antic screw-ups, and the 18K of zombies who buy this clichéd nonsense will take to comic book forums and insist that it’s brilliant and original.  It’s like P.T. Barnum said, “There is a sucker born every minute.”  If you’re buying NINO, you’re one of those suckers.

What is wrong with Marvel?

They actually think this “story” about playing “hot potato” with “The Black Vortex” is entertaining?

Silly, yes.  Entertaining, no.  Unless, of course, you’re an easily satisfied zombie who will buy anything and take to the internet to defend it to the end.

It’s just typical Duggan in a typical NINO story.  Screw-up after screw-up that somehow works itself out in the end mostly due to NINO’s dumb luck or another NINO screw-up that fortuitously ends well.  Of course, the requisite cardboard villains written as if they belong in an episode of Scooby-Doo are prominently on display as always.

Of course, Duggan, not satisfied with his appearances on forums to insult Rider fans, has to throw in an insult to Rider fans in the body of the story.  Seriously, if there are any Rider fans still buying this trash, this has to be the final straw for you.  Join the rest of us in the boycott.

This is just another episode of Marvel Cosmic gone horribly wrong.  It isn’t even cosmic, really, as the space setting is just incidental.  It’s just puerile, juvenile trash aimed at 8-year-olds and played as a farce for cheap laughs for chronologically older persons with the mentality of 8-year-olds (aka Marvel Zombies).

The art continues to decline.  Thane’s “googly eyes” turn what is supposed to be the only serious dramatic scene in this ultimately stupid story into yet another Scooby-Doo moment of farce.

Cancellation of this garbage can’t come too soon.  Marvel needs to man up and admit that this experiment has been a total failure.  Unfortunately, Brevoort and Alonso are in charge, so that will never happen.  Like NINO, you can only count on them to do the most stupid thing possible and double-down on the failed formula.  Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for Bonso’s Double-Down:  “Politically Correct NINO-ette (PC-NINO-ette).”   Join us in boycotting her, too.

Silly, juvenile, disrespectful of Nova mythos and fans, and un-heroic – this book is everything you’ve come to expect of NINO.

At least NINO admits at various times in the book that he’s stupid and doesn’t know what he’s doing.  That places him in the company of the 19K of zombies still buying this trash.

Of course, Duggan either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that Xandar hasn’t existed as a planet for a long time now.  He blithely sends NINO and the Hulk on a selfish quest to repair NINO’s helmet.  Upon arriving at the somehow re-constituted planet of Xandar, they find a powerful alien who has enslaved the “remaining Xandarians” and is forcing them to perform heavy labor.  Again, Duggan either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that Xandarians are nearly identical to humans as he portrays the Xandarians as very alien.

Do you think NINO and Hulk do the heroic thing and free the Xandarians from slavery or make some attempt to resurrect Xandar?  No.  Hulk temporarily disables the alien slave lord, finds some parts to fix NINO’s helmet, then he and NINO selfishly and un-heroically leave the remaining Xandarians to be re-enslaved.  What a nice thank you to the culture who provided the loser duo of NINO and his dad their powers.  Pathetic.  Immoral.  But that’s why this trash is and ever will be “Nova In Name Only” – because no other being worthy of the uniform would ever behave so selfishly, un-heroically, and utterly disgracefully.

The art and coloring are mediocre with NINO continuing to look ridiculous in his manga-ized version of a Nova uniform.  The art used to at least distract readers from the atrocious writing, but even the art is slipping as this book comes ever closer to its recently announced cancellation date.  Given that NINO is a Loeb vanity project, it’s probably too much to hope that we’ve seen the last of NINO.  I’m not too worried about the upcoming politically correct NINO-ette – as she’ll be DOA.

So good riddance to NINO (and a hoped for quick riddance to PC NINO-ette).  Your final issue can’t come too soon and you won’t be missed.