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Nova vs. Galactus! Um… ‘nuff said?

The last few years in comics have really been the years of the comeback kids. The Lone Ranger, The Immortal Iron Fist, Buffy: Season Eight, and more. But the one that keeps coming back for more punishment (but in a good way) is Nova. For many years, I thought of Nova as the poor man’s Green Lantern. But when Annihilation came out and the Nova Corps were wiped out, with the exception of Richard Rider, and Rider got himself some payback big time by pulling Annihilus’ guts out through his mouth, Nova, as a character, was back in business. Now, he has certainly been through some rough stuff. He’s saddled with Worldmind, a rather arrogant but brilliant A.I. program that carries the gathered intelligence of the entire Nova Corps and the history of the Xandarian race, and if Rider dies, so can Worldmind. He’s been infected with the Transmode virus. At one point, a brave Kree woman had to become Nova after Rich took a hell of a beating. He’s dealt with talking Russian dogs. But now in Nova #15, he has to square off with possibly the single greatest threat in the universe: Galactus. Will even the combined power of the entire Nova Corps get him out of this one?

Previously, Nova was assisting in the evacuation of the planet Galactus wants for dinner and came across a psionic body-swapping killer called Harrow. He was able to defeat and imprison Harrow just in time to get the remainder of the evacuees off-planet, but not before a shiny foot belonging to The Silver Surfer was kicking Richard’s ass all over the place (Time to hit Wikipedia again, because I had no idea that the Surfer was the Herald of the big G again…). Eventually, the fight stopped and the Surfer helped Nova, but Harrow escaped and gave Rich the big K.O. punch. So now Rich and Worldmind are trapped on a planet that Galactus is going to start eating and there’s nowhere to run.

Well, nowhere sane.

Richard, much to the dismay of Worldmind, decides that the only conceivable escape is through one of the syphons that Galactus uses to make a Planet Slurpee, but that involves almost certain death. When he goes careening through the syphon, Worldmind shuts down, but Richard survives by the skin of his teeth. But now, without Worldmind booting back up, a very rudimentary backup unit in Richard’s suit comes online, and while Richard tries to find a way out, he finds Harrow, who has apparently been staking a claim on Galactus’ ship for a while now, feeding off the fear of dying planets. Disgusted by this, Nova and Harrow face off one final time, and only one’s going to walk away alive.

As I stated before, for years, I thought that Nova was just a cheap rip-off of Green Lantern. At least I did until this series started. This title has been awesome. The writing team of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have been kicking alien ass and taking names since issue 1. And the art of Wellinton Alves has been some of the best that comics have had to offer recently. It’s got all the elements of a great comic: action, wit, smarts, imagination to spare, great dialogue and slam-bang cliffhangers. This issue brings this arc to a close, but it still has all these elements. The confrontation between Nova and Harrow is just terrific. I love how incredibly brave Richard is, and how Worldmind keeps haranguing him about that bravado. I’ve been really loving Worldmind as a character, and without giving too much away, the situation here is kind of a bummer for him. But this is just a terrific intergalactic saga, and every issue is praise-worthy, and this issue is certainly no exception.

I’ve really loved this comic for a long time now, and it just narrowly missed being on my ‘Best’ list of 2007. But at the rate Nova is going, it’s going to be there at the end of 2008.

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