The intensity’s been building; I think you’ll agree, we’re heading into one of the best issues! “From the Dregs of Defeat!” Wolfman / Infantino / M. Hands / Novak / Cohen / Shooter Atop his rather cool and strange robot body, the brain that is Doctor Sun watches the Comet and Nova on one of those spy-screens that, Bob assures us, constitute one of hundreds these super villains manage to secrete in satellites about the Earth! (Not an actual Church of Sub Genius joke, but sounds subversively similar to one!) Sun watches the pair follow a holographic version of the super criminal Diamondhead, who cleaned Nova’s clock just the issue before. Comet’s electron energy revitalized the Human Rocket, whose life, we learn, has been haunted by Sun for some time now, behind the scenes in the Yellow Claw and Inner Circle stories. Not only did he divert the rocket headed for a spy satellite he’s commandeered, towards Washington, D.C.---he spies on brother Robbie, whose Sherlock robot he built...

“The Coming of the Comet” Wolfman/ Infantino / Leialoha / Gasper / Gafford / Shooter Three safe crackers are in the green, when the wall shatters with the might of Diamondhead. The bulletproof (almost “mullet proof”) villain shows them who is boss. Sherly the robot dressed by Robbie as Sherlock Holmes sits at the Rider dinner table, where all Riders hang on young Rich’s every word regarding his revelation that he has a double life as the Human Rocket. They decide to borrow Aunt Ellen’s summer house at Montauk Point to picnic and take rides with Rich, as Nova. With Mom, they happen to spot a U.F.O. While everyone eats and discusses Nova’s dangers, Mike Burley waits in a hospital commissary, as the “old man” he found in the alleyway takes an x-ray bombardment. Unbelievably, the energy coursing through him revitalizes him as a man in his thirties, with powers he didn’t want to have anymore, he says. Why this curse, he asks as he blasts away. “Why must the Comet live again?” Mike B...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiYq-545nkQ Suspiria (horror movie theme) Zingy-BUNG-Wahhh! “Tidal wAve” Wolfman/ Infantino/ Palmer / Rosen / Vartanoff Nick Fury and Nova: bound inside plexiglass bubbles, helpless aboard the neutron missile directed at Washington, D.C. Do any of Nova’s powers help now? He flies...as a matter of fact, he rides on electrons across the air. Can he point himself to a path of electrons pointing away from dry land...but the pain! So great, he wants to surrender...but force the rocket away, he must---and his second “honest-to=the super=hero-union-guidebook idea” of the day works! With Yellow Claw’s pressure dome to protect Fury, Nova has time to snap his titanium straps. A few minutes later they rise from the water, to see the missile explosion wake. Late! Richard’s changed, beating the bell to class, only to run straight into Caps. Suddenly all the tension between Ginger, Caps and Rich ---his surly reply, their questions, the lack of...

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, ...

Here's Andrea DeVito's Sphinx redesign, from NOVA #32. Now, longtime Marvel fans may have thought The THING #34 marked the end of the old Nova villain, but the present team of Abnett and Lanning have worked in a revival of the Sphinx that better uses his long life and time traveling possibilities. Me? I actually look forward to catching up with Nova again. Here I'm going to finish off my Machine Man reviews for now very soon. I'd love to hear from any fans of these series and encourage people to give my original material a try in this blog as well!

[IMG]http://i32.tinypic.com/2uyq45f.gif[/IMG] 14 “Massacre at Truman High!” Wolfman, Buscema and Giordano Costanza letters, Michele Wolfman colors Hiroshima Mon Amour http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMkPtOw_r90 The Sandman completely understands Karl Von Horstbaden’s plan to kidnap Mike Burley from Harry S. Truman High School, and quickly the deadly villain flies on the winds of the city as a whipping sandstorm. Nova wakes up to the shadowed mastermind of the plan, who explains the death trap set for the Human Rocket. Clamped by tentacles, Nova’s been sealed in a chamber with liquid nitrogen set to freeze him from above and intense gas jets poised to burn him from below. All it takes is a tiny movement to trip the photo-electric cell to freeze and incinerate him instantly. A trap of another kind closes on Rich’s father Charles Rider: fired and black balled, the ex-high school principle is denied a loan. A security guard whispers to the angry patron: a secret organization know...

Aunt Clara lounges in a frilly something in the living room of the home beside the amusement park she once co-ran with her husband, Caps’ uncle Nat. She offers him some hot chocolate---“that IS what kids your age drink still, right?”---as well as her surprise to see a member of the family. “Don’t tell me your father’s decided to finally forgive his wanton sister!” she says. What a pistol, this woman. Roger/ Caps only wants to tell her Uncle Nat is alive, which causes Clara to panic. Meanwhile, her boyfriend, familiar to the hidden Mega Man, comes back from the store with booze to share. He slaps Caps for frightening Clara, but Caps insists it’s true, and Mega Man comes into the room to prove it. He gives the a-hole boyfriend a taste of his own medicine before begging Clara to take him back. Caps wisely decides to call the police as Mega Man blasts the house. The call sparks an emergency police broadcast, “intercepted by the alien circuits located in a certain human rocket’s helme...

THE MAN CALLED NOVA #5 Writer/ Editor: Marv Wolfman Penciler: Sal Buscema Inker: Tom Palmer Letter: John Costanza Colorist: Michele Wolfman “Evil is the ...Earth-Shaker!” What are Richard and Ginger doing in the front seat of Mike Burley’s car, anyway? Drive-in theaters are mostly gone now, but youth and dating communities congregated in them for about half the twentieth century here in America. So the double date intentions here seem a little divided: if Rich is “uncomfortable” it’s because, as our rear-view mirror tells us and he finds upon turning around from the driver’s seat, there’s industrial strength tonsil hockey going on in absence of any attention to “King Kong.” Well, i don’t know what Rich is doing in the car of this guy, and I don’t know how much it may have changed their relationship the one time Rich walloped him a good one back, how that may have made Mike aware of how he treats others, however much he rationalizes his need to act out the intimidation he feels at ...

According to Nova's creator, Marv Wolfman, the story of Nova begins around 1966. As the publisher of a superhero fanzine called SUPER ADVENTURES, Wolfman created a character known as "The Star" in issue #3. The Star was a doctor named Denteen who found a spaceship containing alien pills which gave him a different super-power every five minutes. A MAN CALLED NOVA #4 “Nova Against the Mighty Thor!” Writer/ Editor : Marv Wolfman Sal Buscema and Tom Palmer, “artists supreme” Watanabe & Wohl, letters Colorist: Michele Wolfman Who amongst us hasn’t imagined zooming into high school from the skies? Another dreaded math test awaits our patrol-happy hero, who shakes off his grogginess to see girlfriend Ginger crossing the street in front of a huge truck. (Feel free to insert your “daydream of saving cute girl in the row beside you during alien/ villain attack at school” here.) He discovers that bringing a speeding Mack to a standstill is just a bit beyond him (but hey, las...

Spider-Man! Iron Man! Thor! Nova! All shatter before our eyes---smashed by the angry fists of Diamondhead! Yet this is no mere symbolic montage: in fact, much like the opening splash that first brought us the Punisher, Diamondhead trains against these robots, a rockets, bullets of titanium. Nothing can stop him! He nearly forgets the Destructoid Super Robot remaining, yet he readily demonstrates the prowess that he thinks will make him a great new crime lord. All of his life, from the playground to the boxing ring to now, Archie Dyker identifies with the villain. His attempted theft one night led him to exposure to the diamond-based ray that played catalyst to his skin’s new surface, resembling a roughneck in diamond, like a jewel given life shaped by human greed and form. Though their paths have yet to cross, Diamondhead shares an ultimate foe with Condor and Powerhouse, in the guise of the unrevealed Dreaded One. Who is this colossal menace, whose battles already begin to en...

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 ...