Written by: Jeff Loveness and Ramon Perez
Art by: Ramon Perez, Ian Herring
Publisher: Marvel Comics
It’s the Novas versus a tentacle monster!
This was definitely a weird chapter. At one point it was a very tender family drama and at the others well, it was Nova vs a Tentacle monster! Loveness manages to bring some humor to this throughout the fight, especially with some unexpected help Sam gets throughout a fight. What makes this work is the fact that there were some more revelations about Ryder and how he has managed to come back.
Loveness and Perez manage to bring the crazy aspects of this down to earth partially with the ultimate reveal as to why all of this was happening. It makes for an interesting plot twist, as well as a good set up for the ongoing chapters of the Nova books. So on that sense Loveness and Perez have managed to give us a satisfying closure to the first arc of Nova.
Ramon Perez continues to be an artist on this book, which benefits from an artist not leaving a book after several issues. His art complements the story very well and with Ian Herring’s colors it is a complete package. Perez manages to bring his style out especially in the detail of the creature Sam and Richard are fighting which truly looks menacing at points.
It is also how he handles some of the more tender non action moments that are the true shining of examples of an effort he is putting in this book. The moments between Sam and his family are some of the best that this book offered so far, even though there are few oddities in few close up panels.
Nova seems like it learned a thing or two from the Champions book. They are both superhero books, but they are not taking themselves too seriously and while this does not benefit every book on the market, it does benefit the books with the younger heroes. It is also nice to see that Sam is truly having his own book as the rest of the Champions even though mentioned do not have to come in as a crutch this early in the series.
Overall this is a really good first arc to the series with the book having a lot of potential. Hopefully this is going to be one book that is not going to be bogged down by countless incoming Marvel cross overs, as Spider-man and also Ms Marvel did suffer from during the Civil War era. As much Nova was part of that, he did not get bogged down by the events and can continue to have an independent story from the major going on’s in the Marvel universe. Being this is one of the rare books that does this, it is worth picking up, even though it is not without it flaws.
