Bill Mantlo's prolific Marvel Comics Group comic book work holds many personal kid memories for me. ROM #24 is one of the first two comic books I ever bought with my own money It’s a nice way to tie up the Nova series, though I’m glad Erik Larsen and subsequent creators like Abnett/ Lanning continued his story. (Wolfman left for DC just before ROM #24 was created so it was a way of tying up the character’s legacy for the time being.) Now when I came on to assist Joe Phillips for a brief while, one of our first conversations was how interesting it was to bring Rich Ryder back to Earth sans powers. That one idea sparks a corner of my own creative universe: it’s like Howard the Duck’s “What to do the Night After You Save the Universe?” story, that kind of quiet interface that makes the comic book world merge so readily with our own, especially when we are the young “secret identity” ! (You're welcome to check out my 'Sunstrike' posts in Be Chill, Cease ill, our siste...

Rom's blow sends Firefall painfully hurtling towards the road ahead of the FBI agent/ Wraiths. Brandy acts: she opens the door on the laser-wielding agent, hit head on by Steve’s car. She wrestles the driver, leadin to a crack-up. Steve rushes to her, and watches as the driver changes: its true form, barely glimpsed, leaves smoldering, foul-smelling dust in its wake. They emerge beside the final confrontation between Rom and Firefall. Now he tells of his friend, Karas, who we see swim and save impetuous, human Rom in the earliest flashback of the series. [IMG]http://i54.tinypic.com/nla1cz.jpg[/IMG] To owe one’s life on Galador sacredly links “two individuals as surely as marriage links lovers!” (Well, sometimes! Nowadays marriage has fallen a bit out of style...but you know how old-fashioned Rom is!) Rom and Karas, when the war came, both learned of the forms and powers they would possess before the conversion that grafted their forms to spaceknight steel. “ Manning t...

MACHINE MAN #13 Writer/ Editor Marv Wolfman Artist Steve Ditko Letters Irv Watanabe Colors George Roussos Consulting Editor Jim Shooter “Xanadu!” (Our cover has another building; any of my budding artists willing to try that building under construction?--Uncle Lue) Machine Man’s gotten the shaft: an elevator plunges towards him as his telescoping limbs hold in place before the crushing blow. He works a little classical physics and struggles while being observed on a screen in the chambers of Khan, who's now referred to as Kublai Khan. He and manservant Tong observe Machine Man's stubbornness. He's resourceful, too; he reaches down to the generator engine, taps into it, and creates a repellent magnetic charge. Khan's pleased; he has superior intelligence, he says, but a useless, obese body. Machine Man might become his answer! He checks in on Gregarian, "finest sculptor in Vienna"; Khan honors his warrior pose "best work to date!" wit...

“Song of Nova” The caption sings the song of Nova; his bard Mantlo asks, “How long ago was it that a dying alien ship sought out Richard Rider and passed on to him the powers of a Xandarian Centurion? Not long, as the universe tells time, but long enough for the astonished Earth youth to understand that with great power comes great responsibility...and come to grips with his mission as a Nova Prime!” (I can hardly express how mysterious and important these words seemed to me as I learned to read them all, sending me to the dictionary and Mom many times. The little adult in me found the idyll of the Human Rocket an intriguing drama, even when it puzzled me.) Here Rider uses the Nova Prime power to rip a gash all the way down the side of this mile long ship; the vacuum of space replaces the environment, as the Skrulls desperately try to change to some form of life that wouldn’t need to breath. “As for the traitorous Diamondhead,” Manto inveigles, “the accident that made...

China, 1966. The Cultural Revolution. A scientist, as brilliant as any, is wheeled to an operation room. The doctor tells him “the general” feels he’s stalled too many tests, and will now make him test “Project: Mind!” The heart’s stopped; his brain is removed, to an anti-matter receptacle! The link with computers will give this brain greater knowledge than a man has ever known. But with it, comes power, including some bizarre blast that totals the surgeons! Sun needs blood to survive...and no greater scavenger ever there was, than cunning, powerful Dracula. Sun chose another vampire to be the receptacle of Dracula’s mind, but Brand was destroyed, and the man-machine chose to work behind the scenes (including a part in the plot for the Chimera; this is all courtesy Tomb of Dracula #18-25, and then a reprise around 41-44---lyrical Lue). His assassin Juno engaged Dracula very physically; temporarily taking his accursed life---only to have the kidnapped vampire hunters under Van H...

Eternal space gives way to night upon a world I’ve never seen Yet danger’s hot trails of radiant evil from the dark of distant galaxy Pulls me from eternity to a nightside earthfall. My pure Planadium armor gift again has brought me my enemy’s door Which I seek where ne’er I walked before. My heart sings not in vengeance as I flame into the sky below. My will craves no adventure as my landing smashes the ground with a crystallizing blow. I am here. Nothing can stop me. My analyzer: created to detect the Dire Wraiths, whate’er shape they shift My translator: created for communication’s drift My neutralizer: created to banish the Dire Wraiths to a nether realm where their evil can harm none living. Until my last outpost is secure, there is no humanity of Rom for giving. The ingenious nature of that which has flown me by the heart of suns Stands me stead in battle, turned the Death Wing from Galador by our spaceknight-given hands: No limit has yet been found for my spirit. Nobody feels th...

“Is the world ready for the secret of Nova?” \ Wolfman/ Buscema / Bob McLeod / Joe Rubinstein / Costanza/ Sharen Robbie doesn’t know it, but he’s just accused his brother of murdering their father. Thing is, Rich Rider, a.k.a. Nova, has yet to reveal his secret i.d. Charles Rider seems all right enough for Nova to pursue the Inner Circle leader, so he tells Robbie call ahead to the hospital. One bashed door later, Nova stands before the throne of the Corruptor, looking like nothing so much as an indigo Andrew Jackson, complete with eye beams capable of repulsing the Human Rocket. The Inner Circle acolytes gather with their special rifles, prepared to atomize the super hero. He follows the megalomaniacal villain into his “Computech” lab, one of many he suggests he has throughout the city. He points to a hologram intended to track his controlling influence (remember from #4? He can control people through chemicals secreted and spread skin to skin). He exclaims the change to more...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGgfHZ02I2k&p=80C2E5D8C76C19AE&playnext=1&index=19 Sheena is a Punk Rocker “Death is the Yellow Claw!” Wolfman/ Infantino / Palmer / Rosen / Vartanoff Richard’s sweating the essay portion of a Spanish test, and as we see, letting his worries isolate and distract him helps him not a whit. Ginger’s really had it with this trend; rather than enable it, when she runs into him in the hall, she asks why he’s avoiding their friends---what’s happened to the easy going guy “I once cherished”? Deciding to nix talking about Nova problems, and his dad’s guarded troubles, Rich’s attempt to slough it off, but she makes a point of HIS reticence. Ginger Jaye switches from firm confrontation to asking him to share, open up, as she reads his eyes. He keeps the burden of his splitting family, as well as his life as a lone and secret star, to himself. “If we’ve ever meant anything you can tell me what’s wrong” she says, but he runs out, nearly kayo’ing Caps...

First I wanna say Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen, who wrote a later revival of NOVA, has been reading along! Pretty cool. [i]Not ready for Nova Prime Time Players[/i] When this issue hit the stands, the general American public’s ideas of super heroes most likely came from campy sources, as BATMAN and WONDER WOMAN were the two most successful adaptation of super heroes in a decade. The popular culture has seen THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN since 1974, and other than WONDER WOMAN, that’s about it when you think about it. Saturday morning cartoons and comic books were seen as about on the same level by most of the public, despite the deeper characterizations and more mature themes that had crept in since the Silver Age. STAR WARS is coming, bringing less costumed-seeming super-heroes, or rather, bringing a super villain and mostly a motley crew playing hero in super circumstances, with powers, yes, which they're only beginning to grasp. SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE is still a year away, ...

MACHINE MAN , THE LIVING ROBOT #2 1978 X-51's strange life continues as we see for ourselves his symbolic fear. Meanwhile, Doctor Spalding, who had met X-51 hitchhiking in #1, orders sedation of a patient, who cries out repeatedly in technical language, despite his apparent eight-grade education. Dr. Spalding deduces his delusion involves a space-ship falling into a sun. As Cragg and his men move in, MM bursts out of the gas station (thank you Kirby Museum---I always felt he over-paid for the tires and never considered his down payment on collateral damage). He moves like a hot rod on his new wheels (three tires attached to him with rods), which afford him an escape worthy of Evel Kneivel. Asking some cyclists for directions, since he shocks one of them into wiping out, is a bust, but he's within half a mile of Central City before you know it. He then goes to see the doctor, surprising him with a laser light for his pipe. Harried, Machine Man bluntly asks to stay a few...

“Photon is Another Name For...?” Writer/ Editor: Ocean Doot Penciler: Ross Andru Inks: Mike Esposito Colors: Glynis Wein Letterer: Joe Rosen Spider-Man looks over the crime photos of the wall melted out and Doctor Rider’s body lying before the ripped out calendar pages of the last half of the year. We get our six suspect ovals again, as Inspector Steel reminds him it’s a matter of police jurisdiction, and he has no plans to deputize Spider-Man and Nova. Spider-man insists there’s a good man, dead, and they will find the killer one way or another! The warning stands. Then he recaps the entire murder scenario written up above. All suspects but Michael Lincoln have fled, and the butler, who nearly revealed Photon’s i.d., is a cold body removed now by the police---one of whom announces a train left unchecked, excluded from their roadblocks. They stand near the wall melted outward by Photon. Nova’s on the case; he speeds past a hydrofoil on the water and overtakes the train, zoo...

“West Virginia Reel “ (from ROM 31, courtesy retro-constructed scenes preserved in Mantlobot circuitry aboard the cyborg computes of Galador's greatest spaceknight, Rom). “West Virginia Reel “ It’s another Marv Wolfman creation, the Torpedo, who encounters the strange re-assembly of the Hybrid on Earth. The grey, physically corrupted horror battles Torpedo on the sight of the Old Marks Farm where he was raised for thirteen years...until the Dire Wraiths revealed his heritage to him. The super-conveyance taking the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to Windust Prison nearly runs down some prisoners who as a chain-gang desperately shovel snow in blizzard conditions that make the flying mode of the unit less than optimal. Rom arrives to stop the unit in its tracks, leading to its condition red blast off, complete with Destiny, the Blob, Pyro and Avalanche aboard, suspended by Stark technology. The prisoners convince Rom they work as slaves, a concept he finds abhorrent, and he breaks t...

Read Only Memories The Partially Salvaged Cyborg memory banks of Galador’s Greatest Spaceknight, Rom, as discovered by --....(Illegible) Neural engrams corresponding with great emotional significance connect most deeply with pyramidial neuron structures of the brain mimicked by this unit. Consciousness thread begins: Planet Earth This is the night where first I realized with all my being: I fight for this woman’s planet, and all she might love, for now she has my heart. “On a shattered stretch of highway somewhere due south of Clairton, West Virginia...” (Mantlobot file: saved. Run BuscemaPlex visual.) War with the Dire Wraiths brings me again to a world, the latest in two hundred years. By their Dark Nebula nature, they can shift their shape into the appearance of anyone that lives upon the planet they choose to invade. There is no world they have visited they have not also sought to destroy, making habitation impossible for the majority of dominant species. All resources, by ...

Since I have the entire twenty-five issue run of the series handy, and fondly remember the potential of the character from borrowed back issues read in middle school, I think a Nova thread might be fun, and I welcome you along. That’s the spirit of these types of threads (“Bob threads”) on this board, anyway: your pal sneaks you a Trapper Keeper folder full of goodies between classes. So have fun, and don’t get it taken up by the teacher, okay? [img]http://i30.tinypic.com/2nqqhqr.jpg[/img] Before I dive into a summation of the issues, here’s some general remarks placed at the onset, to address themes recurrent in the series. [i]The Man Called Nova[/i] is actually pretty close in tone to a Saturday morning cartoon, which gives you an idea of the kind of public profile Wolfman and Marvel wanted for the newest star in the mid-70s firmament. It’s as different as possible from its contemporary, Omega the Unknown, which inverted every super hero comic trope that NOVA celebrates. The mood ...