Gerry Duggan will go from writing Marvel’s most violent bad guy to its freshest face. Duggan co-writes Deadpool with Brian Posehn but aims for the stars when he takes over Nova. Duggan’s first issue will be Nova #100 to commemorate 100 total issues over all the volumes of Nova books.
Sam Alexander has met the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Watcher and the Chitauri. What will Duggan throw as the teen?
“First issue and first arc, you’re going to see some big adventure in space and then a little bit of a mystery. We won’t be rebooting the Nova Corps, but Sam will be learning about the Corps through old Nova helmets that he’ll be recovering. He’ll be learning about how the wearer was killed. It’s not quite a black box, but he’ll gleam new ways to use his powers and how to really get a head’s up on some threats. That’ll be a fun little “Indiana Jones” type adventure for him to check out. In that, we’re going to experience a lot of the corners of the cosmic Marvel Universe. I’m not sure if this all approved so I’ll put it like this: Look for some big and fun guest stars. If you like big and scary looking heroes that look like horses, you might be thrilled at one of the guest stars in the first arc,” Duggan tells Marvel.com.
“I think one of the first times you see Sam, he’s in orbit with a ball bat whacking at space junk. He’s stationary and all the trash is moving at 17,000 miles an hour. Those are the sorts of things where I try to remember what kind of kid I was. I broke some windows. Sam will break some windows too, but when he breaks a window it’s usually of some sort of galactic importance.”
Nova is part of Marvel’s big push to expand and enrich the cosmic and space-faring characters. Duggan didn’t commit but here’s some cosmic name-dropping to get some fans excited.
“There are definitely going to be some new characters. I went through the list of old space aliens and there are guys, who maybe aren’t that old, but I’d love to get Terrax in there. I’d like to get Starfox in there. I don’t think anyone is going to ask to have Quasar in the book for now, but I’d love to have Sam bump into him. The people that Sam helps in the early issues that turn out to not be great end up going on sort of a rampage as they end up a little more powerful after Sam’s assistance. Basically there’s a posse that’s chasing these pirates and slavers through space. Sam joins up and then sort of fesses up that a lot of this could have been avoided had he done a little bit more due diligence. That’s fun. That’s a fun situation to put a kid in. It’s not fun if you’re the kid, but even the adults in the situations will yell and hem and haw, but at the end of the day I think they look back on and enjoy.”
Nova #10 by Duggan and artist Paco Medina arrives this November.
By Editor