Loved:
Nova #4
Out of all the new titles coming out of Marvel, I am rooting for Nova the hardest. I still don’t know who Dan Abnett or Andy Lanning are, but they’re doing a remarkable job of writing the story of Richard Rider and they’ve been piquing my fascination so far. With issue 4, we’re already into crossover territory with Anihilation: Conquest, and I thought this would ruin my fun and force me to read some other event title. Thankfully, it doesn’t.
Nova decided in issue 3 that he needed to do his job as space cop and look for some disturbances around the cosmos. This time, something finds him before he finds them. A techno organic race known as the Phalanx (remember them, '90s readers?) is up to no good, and Nova decides to smash all their big purple robots. Everything is going alright until the Phalanx and the beautiful green alien Gamora throw even more robots at him.
Richard Rider - Nova to you - has to think fast and make some desperate decisions. The story flashes to a Kree character who has her own problems. Without spoiling it, Nova shows up again, and I was shocked. I can’t give away too much, because none of what I saw in the last few pages of this issue was expected. I did know beforehand about who was on the cover of issue 5, but the game has been changed for the Nova title.
Anything can happen from then on, and for an issue that’s tied into Annihilation: Conquest I didn’t notice where the event ties in at all. I guess the Phalanx has something to do with it. Whatever. Nova has been great since issue 1. I didn’t know I would be this interested in a cosmic or space title, but Richard Rider is an average guy who just happens to be the last remaining Nova Corp member, a defender of Earth and any other planet in need. I think Abnett and Lanning do a better job of making Nova look great than I do, but I hope that my singing the praises of this title gets you to pick it up as well.
X-Factor #21
X-Factor is back on track. In the last arc, Jamie Madrox and crew were taking on a group named X-cell, or something like that. Wasn’t too impressed with that detour. Now, X-Factor is moving on with a new villain and some new weirdness going on.
For a moment, I thought this issue was going to be a rehash of old conflicts between the principal character, but that drama does not last long. We get it, Madrox made it uncomfortable for the ladies of X-factor Investigations to live with each other. We had two issues of that before.
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