Review: NINO Nova #23 & 24

In this cliché-filled arc, Duggan has NINO take on Hulk’s Hulk – also known as “Kluh,” and NINO un-believably manages to defeat him with the overdone “shoot the Hulk into space trick.”  How many times have you seen that one?  Too many.  At least Duggan freely admits that he “shamelessly” copies the story ideas of others.  And what does that matter?  The zombies will still buy this book and will take to Facebook and CBR Forums to defend it no matter the poor quality, implausibility, and lack of originality.

At least the annoying little jerk gets the beat-down he deserves and his “magic helmet” gets damaged in the process.  I was rooting for Kluh to put him out of our misery – but, alas and unsurprisingly, Marvel keeps him alive to shoehorn into the next event in their ongoing desperate attempt to force feed NINO to the comic-reading audience at large.  This – despite the fact that all but the zombies have soundly rejected NINO, and the book is well out of the top 100 in sales.

Once again, NINO’s mom won’t be winning any “Mother of the Year” awards as she continues to endanger his life by actually encouraging him to go fight Kluh.  Apparently Duggan doesn’t have a problem with the morality of ongoing child endangerment – or like Brevoort – doesn’t have the courage to actually address the issue even when directly asked.

Then again – Spiderman and (the real) Captain America should know better, too.  They are also complicit in endangering the life of a minor child.  But why should anything in this ongoing travesty of a book make any sense?

The coloring for this arc is overall well done – but the art has been sub-par.  I’ve always hated the manga-inspired uniform, but Baldeon over-emphasizes all the worst qualities of it – making NINO look even more ridiculous than usual in it – more than ever looking like a kid wearing his father’s old military uniform.  The ranking star on the helmet looks like a large glob just plopped onto the front.  Awful.  But the zombies will take to Facebook and CBR Forums to insist that the art is wonderful, too.

But mostly, this book is just an ongoing insult to and diminution of the Nova legacy and concepts.  Perhaps the best way to demonstrate that is in pictorial form:

We’ve gone from this:

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To this:

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:18041:]]

To now this:

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Sad.  Pathetic.  Way to go, Marvel.  Keep dishing up this warmed-over gruel and tripe for the zombies – and don’t dare question your bad decision to let Loeb hi-jack the concepts and water them down to the level of My Little Pony.

Thanks, A-Holes.

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:18044:]]

Now – cue the zombies to take to Facebook and CBR Forums to defend this garbage and hurl insults at me and anyone who agrees with me.