Happy Anniversary: Nova #100 Review

There are bigger and more ostensibly important comic books that have been released this week, but none of them had quite as much resonance with me when I saw the cover as Nova #100. Not because Nova is the biggest book in the world, but because it sure as hell isn’t the biggest book in the world.

My dad bought me Nova #12 when I was about five years old, mostly because Spider-Man was on the cover. And I really fell for the character, as I did DC’s Firestorm who debuted at about the same time, because even at five years old, I kind of understood that there were so many Spider-Man and Batman and Superman stories that I would never be able to never be able to read them all. But when you find a new hero that I found on the 11th issue? Well, that was someone who could belong to me.

However, I soon learned that the world of comics publishing didn’t revolve around the excitement of five and six year olds with 50-cent per week allowances willing to contribute a big $4.15 to the annual bottom line for a single comic book, because it was cancelled in 1978. And then it was cancelled again in 1995 after Eric Larsen brought it back, and again in 1999, and again in 2010 before returning in its current incarnation with a different dude under the helmet.

So it’s kinda cool that after 37 years, Nova has finally hit the hundred issue mark, showing simultaneously that sometimes the things you love when you’re five stick with you forever, and that the tastes of five year olds should never be used as a publishing strategy unless you want to wind up owned by a toy company, or worse, Disney.

But I’m not writing about Nova #100 just because of nostalgia, even though that is the reason it made its way to the top of my stack. It’s because in recent months, this book has become a fun and solid read, getting the mix of millennial spirit and fun, goofy dialogue that the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon on Disney XD often whiffs in trying so hard to deliver. And this issue is no exception, with a couple of cool stories about a kid trying to figure out how to be a hero when he’s got classes in the morning and his family has money trouble out the yang. And it’s a lot of fun.

Boy’s (Super) Life: Nova #7 Review

There are bigger comic books this week than Nova #7, written by Zeb Wells with art by Paco Medina, but you’re not gonna find too many that are more fun. Not in the sense that there’s a lot of big action or spectacular demolition or exciting team-ups (although we see Nova meet Spider-Man, which was a nice bit of nostalgia for a guy who fondly remembers the original Nova’s first crossover with Spider-Man back in 1977 – to this day, I remember the reveal that the murder victim fingered his killer from beyond the grave by tearing out the last pages of a calendar to spell JASOND), but in the sense that the issue asks the question: if you were a teenager from the sticks who had powers and you wanted to become a superhero… how exactly would you go about it?

I mean, I’m an adult who lives in a major American city, who has been known to drink heavy in questionable bars, and I can count the number of actual crimes I’ve personally witnessed in the last decade on one hand. The last house fire I saw was a rural chimney fire I saw right around when I was reading that 1977 Nova / Spider-Man crossover (despite all of my friends’ predictions that I would eventually see a house fire thanks to years of reckless chain smoking while drinking whiskey), and I see my high-speed police chases on TruTV at 2 a.m., the way God intended. Even if I had the power of Superman, I wouldn’t know where to find a crime to fight if I had to, and I’m someone old enough to know what a Bearcat Scanner is and what it’s for.

So what would you do if you were a 15-year-old from the middle of nowhere, imbued with the power of a cosmic hero, looking to make himself a superhero?

And the answer is: apparently, fuck up all over the place.

Don’t Mind Stepping Into The Twilight Zone: Carnage USA #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. Because I’m a bad man! And I keep thinking bad thoughts! But since I live nowhere near a cornfield, all I can say is that you have been warned.

People talk about the Spider-Man Clone Saga as if it was the low point of comics in the 90s… and those people are arguably right. But the problem with designating something as the worst thing ever is it makes it easy to forget, and sometimes wrongfully forgive, other things that were also awful, just not quite as bad. After all, it’s hard to bitch about a stubbed toe when it happens on the way back from a botched colonoscopy.

The Clone Saga was the worst. That doesn’t mean that Carnage wasn’t also truly, truly horrible.

A knockoff of Venom introduced at the height of Silence Of The Lambs mania who was probably created at an old-school Marvel Summit (Two guys in a Manhattan nightclub men’s room saying, “Hannibal Lecter as a Venom whatchacallit!” “Genius! Let’s gack up another rail!”), Carnage was unoriginal on his face.  And he became so prevalent and irritating that it only took Brian Michael Bendis two issues of New Avengers to have Sentry not only drag Carnage into outer fucking space, but also tear him apart. For a writer of slow, decompressed, all-foreplay comics like Bendis, that was the equivalent of hatefucking Carnage and wiping his dick on his knee on the way out. It was awesome.

Doubleteaming: Avenging Spider-Man #1 Review (Analog Edition)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Avenging Spider-Man is the first book in a new Marvel Comics initiative where they provide a free download codes for a digital copy of the book inside the print edition’s back cover. This review is about the story and art itself. We will be publishing a secondary review about what it was like for me, who has never downloaded or read a digital comic in my life, to try and download and read the digital copy. I imagine it will be slightly more difficult than downloading pornography, which I accidentally did four times while writing this paragraph.

Amanda made me promise that I wouldn’t start my review of Avenging Spider-Man #1 ranting about Marvel’s lack of internal logic in it’s own continuity. She made me swear that I wouldn’t start screeching about how the book depicts Mayor Jameson taking time to officiate the New York Marathon not ten days after the conclusions of the Spider-Island and Fear Itself events, both of which had left Manhattan looking like a fraternity toilet the morning after Bladder Bust night. And she made me promise on a stack of Holy Books (Well, my issues of Miracleman) that I wouldn’t sneer in pointing out that Thor is shown in this book as the most dedicated Avenger, reporting to duty to battle a giant robot despite a prior commitment made in Fear Itself to decay and smell bad.

So, being a man of my word, let’s talk about Avenging Spider-Man #1 on it’s own merits. To start with, the title “Avenging Spider-Man” is a much better title than “Marvel Team-Up”, which is really what this book is.