So I’ve been following Tom’s tumblr for months now, and it seems like at least once a week, some trolls come along (in the guise of Richard Rider fans) to get all up in his face about how “horrible” Sam Alexander is and how bad they want their old Nova back, even going so far as to name the current Nova NINO, Nova In Name Only.
And I guess I just don’t get it? Like, doing some cursory reading (okay, so I read a friggin’ Wikipedia article - what do you want, PhD level research? Gotta save that for once the semester starts again, thank you very much), it seems like what people like about the original Nova is that he was like a blend of Spider-Man and Green Lantern.
WELL YOU OLD DOUCHEBAGS, HARD TO FIND A MORE SPIDER-MAN-ESQUE BOOK ON THE SHELVES RIGHT NOW THAN NOVA. A young kid with a hard life gets powers and is trying to figure out how to use them? It’s everything Spidey is not right now, because of the bodyswap.
I get it; you want your old Nova back. Maybe some day you’ll get him back. I bet Jessica Drew fans were annoyed when the two other Spider-Woman series came along, sans Jessica. But I’d like to think they were a little classier than trolling all day long.
You don’t want Sam Alexander’s Nova to succeed? Don’t buy the book. Guess what, though? It’s selling fine without you buying it. November 2013 sales according to Comichron? Over 32,000 copies. More than Fantastic Four. More than Young Avengers (and everybody loves that friggin’ book).
I can hear them now. “Oh, but November was issue #10, when they also did the scurrilous thing of christening it #100, because it was the 100th issue named Nova to come out, even if our Big White Jesus Richard Rider isn’t in it!”
Well, October sales? Only 300 copies less.
Nova is doing just fine, and will probably be around for the foreseeable future. So get over yourselves, Richard Rider fans. Hope your character will come back, sure - but stop being a dick to Tom.
Yes. I’m old enough that Spider-Woman/Jessica Drew and Nova/Richard Rider are some of the first Marvel comics I started reading from #1. I loved these series when I was a kid, I enjoy rereading my old comics and reliving some precious childhood memories, I’m always happy to see them appearing in new stories, especially when they’re written well (really loving Avengers Assemble these days), but I never took it as a personal offense when these characters were benched or replaced by new ones.
And all this “the new Nova is for children” nonsense?bComics publishers could do worse than aiming some of their comics at kids. Really, it’s not the ‘80s anymore. We don’t have to prove that “comics aren’t just for kids anymore”. Quite the opposite, in fact.
