{"id":22029,"date":"2024-07-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=22029"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:44:31","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T20:44:31","slug":"nova-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2024\/07\/15\/nova-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Nova 5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Well, look who it is. Erik Larsen does a lot of odds and ends for Marvel at the turn of the century. Maybe Savage Dragon wasn\u2019t quite paying the bills, maybe he just missed it, who knows? A Defenders book with Kurt Busiek, this, and more to come. A bit premature to call Spidey a soon-to-be Hollywood hero in 1999, but for once, they weren\u2019t wrong. Apparently Joe Bennett was the regular artist on this, but this month, guest penciler Coy Turnbull steps in, and he\u2019s inked by Larsen and Al Milgrom, with colors by Steve Oliff. Larsen\u2019s inks are so heavy handed at times you\u2019d swear he just drew the book. We open on Richard Rider, our hero, waking up in a confused panic in this lady\u2019s bed, and her saying she\u2019s pregnant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A lot can happen in 5 issues, I guess! Rich calls some roommates to bring him some normal clothes, and we cut to\u2026 some\u2026 weird business. In short, it seems like someone was trying to do Atlantis, but with bird people instead of fish people. They live in a flying city and complain about the land dwellers, and Nova\u2019s enemy the Condor is apparently a rogue one of them. Another one called Red Raven declares they should go to war with humanity, and then there\u2019s this baffling page: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What\u2019s happening? If they\u2019re going to war, why do they seem to be going home instead? I\u2019m so confused. Look at this next page. One would guess Larsen didn\u2019t just draw it without credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I mean, jeez. It\u2019s really hard to tell what this Coy Turnbull\u2019s art looks like. Maybe once Milgrom starts inking. Well, Nova goes to his brother, who can\u2019t help him, and then we cut to The Sphinx, last seen around here in The Hero-Killers in the Spider-Man Annuals of 1993, apparently returning after a long absence. But then we\u2019re off again. Sphinx shows up in a later issue, seems like. Rich apparently plays baseball and goes to college now, and Robbie Baldwin, aka Speedball, randomly shows up at his game to ask if they can get the New Warriors back together, which Richard declines. Worth noting Justice and Firestar have been Avengers since the relaunch, and Nova thinks of that, and how rejoining the Warriors would be a step backward. Then our guy finally puts in an appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boy, does that NOT look like Erik Larsen at all! That kinda looks like Jim Craig, actually. Meanwhile, Rich is being a baseball hero when he gets the news that it\u2019s his parents\u2019 place on fire, and \u201csome guys are having a big brawl,\u201d so he runs out on the game to help. And now we can get this guest appearance started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boy, these are\u2026 some\u2026 guys.  Badd Axe is a deeply Erik Larsen name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Weirdly, other people start to look like Larsen again on the next page, but not Spider-Man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The fighting continues, with Spidey learning Nova\u2019s costume is alive (Uh, it is?) and Nova\u2019s Mom inevitably being taken hostage by bad guys. Spidey saves Nova\u2019s Mom while he saves the day, this being his book and all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That\u2019s embarrassing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well, that was a chaotic issue. Larsen was obviously a fan of Nova, given that he kept popping up in Larsen\u2019s Spider-Man books, and he says in the letters (Which he answers, unusually for Marvel) that he\u2019s been wanting to do this for years. A shame, then, that this book only makes it to issue 7! The numbers must\u2019ve been BAD if it got canceled that quickly. Marvel probably wasn\u2019t in a place to make Nova work again just yet. Still recovering from their bankruptcy and all. And Venom is the villain of #7, despite Larsen saying he hated him. Maybe he was hoping that would jolt sales, but I guess it came too late. Ah, well. Strange little detour. But I like poking my nose into other corners of the Marvel U just to see what was going on for a sec.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, look who it is. Erik Larsen does a lot of odds and ends for Marvel at the turn of the century. Maybe Savage Dragon wasn\u2019t quite paying the bills, maybe he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[153,1900,880,780,2,1692],"class_list":["post-22029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1990s","tag-al-milgrom","tag-coy-turnbull","tag-erik-larsen","tag-nova","tag-spider-man","tag-steve-oliff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22030,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22029\/revisions\/22030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}