I was just strolling along, minding my own business and wondering where my wife had gotten to, when Michael S. Bracco's Novo (Alterna Comics) reached across a craft show aisle and grabbed me by the eyes. Before I knew what happened, I was halfway through Volume One, with 10 fewer dollars in my pocket, and anxiously wondering when the next book would be out. Fortunately, it wasn't a long wait.
Novo, the titular character of this graphic series, is the last of his kind and the first of his kind, and he is searching for his place in the universe. Two races, the Aquans and the Terans, fought a great war which has wiped them both out. Novo, somehow, is a child of both races; the only child left. Even though the first volume is subtitled "The Birth of Novo," most of his personal history is left out. Instead the story of the great war's start is told twice, once from each perspective. The tales are so clearly biased, however, that, if anything, I think they leave the reader more confused. That's a brilliant piece of story telling, I must say.
How often has that happened after a fight? You get the details from one person, and find out that it was all the other person's fault. You've no reason not to believe them, and so that story becomes fact until you hear the other side. The funny thing is, the other side sounds a lot like the first story, save that the good guys are now the bad guys and vice versa. About halfway through Volume One, this is Novo's dilemma. The first story came from his mother, the second from a book owned by his father. His confused sense of betrayal is palpable and something the reader can easily sympathize with because it is, unfortunately, a common occurrence. That familiarity seems to be a defining characteristic of Bracco's writing.
Throughout both books so far, Novo reminds me of nothing so much as a regular American kid. He burps, he complains, he yells at his mother when she's being evasive. Early on, when she is trying to explain his significance, telling him "You are a promise kept, a promise fulfilled too late. As you search your past, you will find your way." Rather than accept this with due consideration and respond in a similar tone, he says "What does that even mean? Mama, you're making me craz[y!]" At first this disjuncture in tone between Novo and his surroundings left me a little dissatisfied. I had trouble reconciling Novo's teenage angst with the epic nature of his hinted at importance. When I took a step back from the story, though, I began to appreciate Novo's uniqueness. Too often, 'chosen-one' characters accept their fate rather blithely and lose a good deal of depth in the process (see under Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace). Novo's petulance gives him somewhere to go, something to overcome through trial, and leaves plenty of story to be told. I must be frank, however, and admit that these revelations were not what first attracted me to Bracco's work.
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