Marvel Pick Of The Week - January 28, 2015 [SPOILERS]

Pick Of The Week:

Nova 26, by Gerry Duggan and John Timms

Nova has been a consistently fun title since the relaunch, when Sam Alexander’s teenage struggles to overcome the shameful legacy of his father infused a sense of wonder and fun almost infectious enough to make me miss Rich Rider a little less. (Rich Rider was the original Nova, and I cut my comic teeth on New Warriors books, and nothing will fill this aching maw in my chest.) The book has made Honorable Mention for Pick Of The Week here, but though I have usually enjoyed the book, it’s never risen above the Wednesday competition until now.

Flawed though the execution may have been, the idea behind recent crossover AXIS was a good one: Bad guys turn good, good guys turn bad. It’s a trope I generally like, but usually, fallout is pretty limited. Everyone laughs it off and forgets what happened. Readers have a fun escape, but then we have to turn the wheel hard to return to regularly scheduled programming. Gerry Duggan makes different use of it for this issue by mapping it perfectly onto the title’s main themes of growing up and taking responsibility.

See, Sam is a high school student whose father had a reputation as a pathetic alcoholic, and even before he became a hero, he was taking good care of his mother and kid sister. When his dad disappeared, Sam found an old Nova helmet and realized his father had untreated PTSD from fighting on a black-ops space team, and since then, the son has been taking increasing levels of super heroic challenges. What sets this book apart is that Sam also experiences consequences. When he’s not careful, the bad guy might destroy his house, and his mom can’t afford to repair it. He’s missing so much school that the principal has forced him to join a chess club and stop skateboarding. He’s had so many concussions that his short-term memory may be permanently affected.

And now, he has revealed his secret identity to a man he thought was an Avengers teammate but has since reverted to the monstrous serial killer, Carnage.

Carnage has been one of my favorites since I started reading comics. The original New Warriors Nova wasn’t involved in the violent megacrossover, Maximum Carnage, but his teammate Firestar was. Carnage held Manhattan under a terrifying siege, and in most of his subsequent appearances, he’s used his alien costume to cut innocent people into as many pieces as a decent publisher will allow. So even though Carnage isn’t especially angry at Sam, he can’t pass up the chance to raise a little Hell in Carefree.

If the book had just been a match-up of one of my favorite new heroes and one of the scariest villains since The Joker, it would have made it to the Honorable Mentions, but Duggan raised it even higher. Sam’s not just fighting Carnage; he’s learning a lesson about his responsibility to his family and his town, and he’s learning to make amends for his mistakes. His time learning chess has taught him to think outside the box, so his first response to the monster is to improvise a story about how he gave the guy a fake name, and even though that doesn’t work, it’s a lot smarter than I would have been in that spot. The rest of the fight scene shows this kid throwing more and more creative uses of his superpowers and even a way to recruit his civilian girlfriend into an endgame.

Nova is a book that parents should be happy to read with their children. He is a relatable, flawed, inspiring hero, and his adventures are tons of fun. But after the kids leave the room, I encourage parents to flip through these books again – adults are still trying to learn the lessons Sam Alexander has such trouble with.

Honorable Mention:

Spider-Man 2099 8, because even though I think the Steampunk thing is pretty tired, the design on “The Six Men Of Sinestry” is pretty great, and extra points to Lady Spider for pointing out that “Sinestry” is in no way a real world. Man, it sounds like they’re all just left-handed or something. Maybe they are. Nothing wrong with that. Just not a particularly imposing common trait.

Uncanny X-Men 30, because Maria Hill gets that if Cyclops were indeed dead (and for purposes of this issue, he is, but come on, even Bendis is making it pretty clear he’s not really taking Scott Summers off the board for longer than it takes to finish this story arc), the X-Men would be pretty split on their reaction. So would Marvel’s readers. I am clearly announcing my allegiance to Team Flowers.

Amazing X-Men 16, for bringing in as much loving appreciation of continuity as in the amazing X-Men Legacy title used to have but getting extra points for using it to arm Pixie in taking down Colossus just as hard as Storm did last month. At some point, this man is going to have to see that even the little Welsh Kitty Pryde, who started out with just pretty wings and hallucinogenic dust, feels like a bigger man than him, and he is going to start taking psychotherapy seriously.

Thor 4, because despite this issue being an amazing fight scene tying together tons of backstory, supporting the new Thor’s claim to the title, and ruling Freyja out as a potential secret identity, the main thing this intrepid homosexual reviewer took was the following panel, which I read multiple times imagining Chris Hemsworth doing his best Mommie Dearest impression. And that mental scene will never not make me smile.

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Marvel Pick Of The Week – January 28, 2015 [SPOILERS]

By Matt Conner | Jan 28, 2015

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