Nova #8-#9: "Knowhere"

*** (three of five stars)

Summary

As a result of traveling through the "hyper-gravimetric wormhole" at the end of issue #7, Nova is lost at the end of the Universe, called the Rip.  He gets caught in some sort of vortex and finds himself inside Knowhere, a community built inside a Celestial's severed head on the edge of the Rip, which seeks to understand better the nature of the Universe.  He is attacked by a possessed member of the Luminals, Xarth Three's version of the Avengers.  He defeats her, though she unexpectedly disintegrates, leaving him accused of murder by the other Luminals when they happen upon the scene.  He escapes and meets Cosmo, a talking Russian dog who serves as chief of security for Knowhere.  Cosmo informs him that the Luminals brought a black box into Knowhere and asserts his belief that it was this box that resulted in a haunting event that forced the rest of Knowhere's population into hiding.  Meanwhile, the Luminals are possessed by the entity in the box, called the Abyss, who they had intended to send into the Rip to end his threat.  Instead, they attack Nova and Cosmo, who flee and find the box.  They discover that the box has begun to malfunction, likely due to Abyss' skill to escape from anything, anywhere.  Nova drops his fight against the transmode virus long enough to infect Abyss and fix the box.  The crisis averted, Cosmo makes Knowhere's advanced teleportation system available to Nova and sends him to Kvch, the homeworld of the Technarchy and the birthplace of the Phalanx, figuring he could find answers to the transmode virus there.  Later, Drax and Gamora invade Knowhere and use the teleporter to follow Nova.

The Review

In my review of "Annihilation:  Conquest," I was confused how Nova suddenly appeared with Drax, Gamora, and Warlock in tow.  I didn't realize that issues #8-#12 are also part of "Annihilation:  Conquest," at least indirectly.  So, I'm glad, at least retroactively, that I did actually miss something and DnA didn't just sort of insert Nova into the last issue of "Annihilation:  Conquest" without explaining, at least somewhere, how he got there.

That said, I really dug these issues.  DnA give me everything I expected from a "Nova" series by giving us an intergalactic murder mystery.  I mean, seriously, it took a heck of an imagination to have Richard not only be stranded at the end of the Universe but, as if that weren't bad enough, have him trapped inside a Celestial's severed head with a talking Russian dog and a murderous intangible villain.  It was like reading "'The Shining' in Space!"

The Good

1) The Nova/Worldmind conversations continue to really be one of the greatest parts of this series.  DnA understand the importance of injecting fun in their stories, and Nova implying that Worldmind is essentially a bad software program -- and Worldmind correspondingly getting all defensive and offended -- did just that.

2) I hearted Cosmo.  I mean, yeah, was he a little campy?  Sure.  But, could it just have been some boring fill-in-the-blank alien species dude serving as the head of security?  Yes.  I'll take talking Russian dog over boring alien dude any day!

3) DnA could've gone a lot of places in a Nova-at-the-end-of-the-universe story.  I liked not only that they chose to give us a somewhat quirky one that wasn't all intergalactic war, but also that still kept Nova's ongoing troubles -- the transmode virus and Drax and Gamora in hot pursuit -- on the front burner.  It can't all be Annihilus and Ultron!

The Bad

1) Pet Peeve #2:  Although we learn in this issue that Cosmo was the head of security for Knowhere, we didn't know that in issue #8, despite the introduction page of issue #9 so telling us.

2) I'm not 100 percent certain how Nova fixed the box.  He seemed to affect Abyss, not the box, so why could he suddenly fix the box, too?  Was the Abyss physically connected to the box?