Warning: Salty Language and Massive Amounts of Venomous Vitriol.
It's official, Brian Bendis can kiss my ass. And probably Disney too while we're at it.
One of my favorite Marvel events of the last decade or so was the stellar 'Annihilation' story. It re-ignited interest in the cosmic/galactic portion of the Marvel Universe. It had been kinda/seemingly largely forgotten after the 90's. Until Annihilation, all the cosmic areas of the Marvel universe at that point were good for was temporary plot inconveniences. Skrulls... Kree... maybe Galactus for the 10,000th time... generally weaker stuff like that. Nothing that encompassing, nothing space opera-esque. Annihilation made that stuff important again. SERIOUS.
And for me, at the forefront was Nova. Richard Rider. A guy who really hadn't amounted to much in his long history before then. I mean besides occasional membership into whatever temporary roster of New Warriors Marvel was trying to push at various given times. We had last seen him during ANOTHER attempt to revive the New Warriors, as a dorky commentary on Reality TV where they went around picking fights with Supervillains who were hiding out in the parts of Marvel's USA that WEREN'T New York or California. Luckily for him, he left before the group screwed up and accidentally left Stamford a crater.
Well thanks to this event he was suddenly cool, suddenly badass, and most of all... made into a very interesting character over the course of the epic story. He was one of the reasons I bought comics again for about four-to-five years afterwards. Seeing his transformation from C-List Scrub to A-List Awesome was a joy to behold. And it seemed as though it wouldn't stop, almost every story was very damn cool and interesting as he tried to find his place in a now drastically different Marvel Cosmos.
Then came the Thanos Imperative, another cool story dealing with the THEN return of Thanos to aid (against his will) the galactic heroes of Marvel in combating an alternate dimension that was taken over by fiendish Eldritch Abominations. Sadly things didn't go quite as planned for the heroes in the course of saving reality. This left Nova and Star-Lord having to make a difficult choice to protect their home dimension from a freshly-scorned and incredibly PISSED Thanos with a serious mad-on for another cosmic rampage. They sacrificed themselves to buy their friends time to escape back home. While I didn't like it, this felt kinda fitting for such a hero.
Then suddenly Marvel NOW! happened and not only was Star-Lord and Thanos BACK in their home dimension... but Richard Rider wasn't anywhere to be seen. Oh but FEAR NOT, for we had a NEW Nova in the form of Sam Alexander! The character created for Disney's 'Ultimate Spiderman' show was now officially apart of the Marvel U! It'd be cool if one could forget that all of the Nova Corps were virtually wiped out during Annihilation. Let's also forget that the only person who HAD the entirety of the powerful Nova Force was Richard Rider. Thus any and all Novas whom Richard had tried to bring into his own short-lived Corps were basically DE-POWERED when they were cut off from the Nova Force.
But wait! This was a Nova from an entirely seperate 'Secret Branch' of the Nova Corps that just NOW chose to come forward. Again... let's ignore the fact that this premise is like 90% of peoples' early Fan Fiction ideas ('apart of a super secret thing/group/land that nobody knew about till now' makes up for alotta middle schooler's fan character backgrounds), this basically means that while the original Nova Corps was being mercilessly exterminated during Annihilation, while Richard Rider was left alone to shoulder an incredible BURDEN that he was barely able to handle, and while the galaxy as a whole was falling into irreparable chaos... these chumps were apparently sitting on their asses. WHY?!
And suddenly everyone was not only aware of this fact, but totally cool with this 'Black Ops' Nova Corps... in the tried and true tradition of many an elementary schooler's Fan Fiction plot. Not only that, but Rocket Raccoon and Gamora (who was in a relationship with Richard Rider BTW) personally appeared to give Sam his Nova helmet because he's just THAT cool apparently. Seriously, this IS someone's fan fiction story. Try to think of one that doesn't at least START out like this same premise.
Except without self-insertion author persona.
Like many Nova fans, I wondered what had happened to the original Nova. Where was he? Was he even still alive? While I didn't collect comic issues anymore (opting instead for trade paperback collections), I kept watch for the return of Rider.
In many ways... I'm still waiting.
Because now, thanks to Brian Michael Bendis, we've learned the final fate (as it stands now) of Richard Rider... a story that was HEAVILY promoted for like a frikkin' year. They were pimpin' this story like it was gonna be so damn awesome. I had a gut feeling then that this wasn't going to end well for one of my favorite characters. But for some strange reason held out hope that it wasn't going to come true.
Sometimes I'm a frikkin' yutz.
Trapped in this Eldritch 'Cancerverse', where Death used to be meaningless (till the end of Thanos Imperative, which was also apparently ignored during this), Nova and Star-Lord and DRAX (because why the hell not? Keep ignoring continuity there Bendis! You bald idiot) are fighting to keep Thanos from returning to the main Marvel Universe. It's a VERY steep situation, as this is frikkin' THANOS we're talkin' about, a guy who goes toe-to-toe with the likes of Galactus like it's just Sunday Brunch.
And apparently DEATH still doesn't matter in this 'Cancerverse'... again totally making all the craziness shown during "Thanos Imperative" look completely utterly pointless as "Big Purple and Surly" grievously/fatally wounds both Drax and Star-Lord during the course of this fight... yet they 'get better' shortly thereafter ('even death may die' and all that bollocks). Oh and despite the fact that ALL of the Cancerverse was seemingly imploding and collapsing in on itself last time we saw it (again, due to the concept of DEATH being freshly brought back and all thanks to Thanos and his perennial friend-zoned obsession Death), the evil Eldritch-subservient Avengers show up too. Because apparently continuity can go take a flying leap.
During all this madness, somehow a Cosmic Cube gets brought in... (all blurring together at this point, and I really don't care anymore. If Bendis clearly doesn't care about this, why should I?) and it THEN becomes a game of 'Keep the Reality-Warping McGuffin Out of the Genocidal Space Madman's Hands'. And then Nova decides to use the Nova Force in conjunction with the Cosmic Cube to open a portal... and apparently send EVERYONE but himself back... even the dickbag they had sacrificed themselves to keep from returning in the first place. Continuity? Character Drama? Development?! Eh heh... Bendis clearly doesn't care for these things!
And why didn't Nova return? He got his arm cut off during the battle with the evil Cthulhu-vengers and despite the fact that his comrades came back WITHIN THIS SAME UNIVERSE from worse injuries (Thanos had punched Star-Lord's guts out... and he came back from that.) he doesn't want to risk coming back to his home dimension and maybe... possibly... bleed out? I'm sure the Nova Force/Worldmind would have ya covered there Ricky mah boy. But okay... suddenly everyone's taken a step backwards in intelligence. Including the author.
So if you were hoping that this would be a satisfactory ending to this particular mystery... then us older Nova fans can apparently just go pound sand! Richard Rider's probably dead... or due to meddling with a cosmic cube in such a way... becoming some NEW cosmic entity so plucky young Sam Alexander can keep to his own little plot-hole inducing, Disney-certified Status Quo alive.
THE HELL WITH THAT.
I feel god-damned insulted. And ripped off. But mostly insulted. Kept having this feeling that Bendis was having a laugh at my expense. Like he was reverting back to his old tired 'kill off characters i have no interest in/writing for' cliche. Like he was just trolling, pissed that people probably kept asking a question he clearly had ZERO interest in answering. Well mission accomplished, asshat. To hell with him! And add to that any interest I might've had in future Guardians stories! Screw Disney's stupid little cartoon too while we're at it! And screw Sam Alexander too! He's NOT Nova, and will NEVER be Nova to me. He's not even Kyle Rayner-light. He was mainly brought into this world to help promote the cartoon he was created for, regardless of the continuity headaches it'd create.
Like Neal Adams said of Hal Jordan before him... RICHARD RIDER IS NOVA!
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