Realm of Kings #1 and Nova #32-#35

*** (three of five stars)

Summary

Quasar volunteers to enter the Fault on behalf of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova Corps, and Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. to gather more information about the event.  Upon arriving in the Fault, he finds himself corporal again in an alternate -- and devastated -- version of Manhattan.  He is attacked by an enormous creature emitting gamma radiation (guess who it is?), only to be saved by a demonic version of the Avengers.  They defeat the creature, who's revealed to be Bruce Banner (shocking, I know).  Captain America then orders Iron Man to kill him, which Iron Man does by ripping out Banner's heart.  Quasar is imprisoned, after the Scarlet Witch deduces he's not their Earth's Quasar, who was also dispatched into the Fault to gather information.  Quasar learns that this Earth's heroes serve the Many-Angled Ones, a group of gods who imbued the heroes with power in return for their adoration.  The gods want to expand into new Universes, and both sides realize that their Earths exist at opposite ends of the Fault.  Quasar refuses to divulge information about how to get to his Earth, but the Scarlet Witch reveals that she can track his "quantum-phasic energy."  After the other Avengers depart to plan their attack, Quasar speaks with the Scarlet Witch, who reveals that she fears the Many-Angled Ones and has been housing Vision within her.  He decides to reveal himself and free Quasar because he cannot allow another Earth to suffer the same fate as his and fends off Ms. Marvel as Quasar escapes.  Quasar rockets past Iron Man and Thor to the outskirts of this Universe, only to realize the entire Universe is a giant, twisted beast trying to metastasize in our reality.  Meanwhile, the other reality's Quasar arrives at Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.

In "Nova," Darkhawk and Nova survive the destruction of the Outworld Shard and awaken to find themselves seemingly in the Egypt of the 1920s and at the mercy of the Sphinx.  Darkhawk tells Nova they should attack, but the Sphinx appears to ignore him, telling Nova he brought him "here" and asking if he's ready to play his part.  Before Nova can get an answer from the Sphinx about playing his "part," the trio are attacked by a sandstorm full of djinn.  During the battle, the Sphinx disappears, telling Nova he had expected more of him, and Nova destroys the djinn with the Nova Force.  Darkhawk and Nova journey through the land, only to stumble across an archeological dig led by Reed Richards, who has apparently also been brought "here" but from several years earlier.  Richards informs the pair that he's been investigating a "chronal accelerator" he found "here," designed to rewrite the time stream, and hypothesizes that the Sphinx is attempting to undo the damage to himself that he caused by constantly re-writing his own history.  Darkhawk and Nova realize that the Fault also exists "here" and attempt to investigate it, with Darkhawk passing an invisible barrier that Nova can't.  Nova awakens a little later in time to see the arrival of a much younger Black Bolt carrying a mummy.  Darkhawk returns, showing the results of a scan he initiated of "here," revealing that it's not Egypt of the 1920s but a magical construct.  The mummy is later revealed to be a younger -- and alive -- Namorita.  A younger Sphinx then attacks the group and the group takes refuge in the pyramid (a.k.a. "chronal accelerator").  They're then zapped by some energy, and all of them -- save Darkhawk -- enter dream states where they see the world as they wish it were.  Darkhawk wakes up the group and they realize they're on one of two floating Sphinx platforms engaged in battle with one another.  They find an old Sphinx, who reveals he's fighting his younger self after his younger self refused to allow him to take advantage of the Fault and avoid the mistakes that left him in such a decrepit state.  He tells the heroes he recruited them because they had defeated him in the past and he wants them to defeat his younger self.  However, his younger self appears, announcing he refused the older Sphinx's offer so he could take advantage of the properties of the Fault and secure two Ka stones, becoming a God.  He also brought with him his own set of champions, a group of villains who engage in person-to-person combat with the heroes.  Basilisk kills Black Bolt, but Darkhawk, Mr. Fantastic, and Nova all defeat their counterparts.  (Meanwhile, it was revealed that the Sphinx ignored Darkhawk because he hadn't expected him to be there; he had only summoned Nova, but Darkhawk had been caught in his spell because of their proximity.)  The older Sphinx gains power from his champions' victories and takes control of Darkhawk, who disables the younger Sphinx and steals his Ka stone, giving it to the older Sphinx, who begins ascending to godhood.  The heroes -- and the younger Sphinx's champions, who are confused about where they are -- attempt to combat him, but they soon begin to fall beneath his notice.  The older Sphinx winds up eating the younger Sphinx (yup), which Richards announces is impossible.  But, Nova notes all sorts of impossible events are happening, like the younger Black Bolt dying, since he's alive for the Kree/Shi'Ar War.  Richards begins to scold Nova for telling him that, but then realizes that, if Richard remembers it, it didn't happen in the outside reality.  They realize that the Sphinx was in the process of gathering his power to alter the outside reality so that it could house two Ka stones, but he had yet to reach that level of power.  As such, Nova opens a stargate (based on Reed's back-of-the-envelope calculations) and sends the Sphinx into our reality, which can't accept him yet and destroys him.  The pocket reality disintegrates and everyone returns to his or her respective realities...except Namorita, who Richard grabs before leaving and brings into our reality with him.  Darkhawk warns him of the repercussions of his actions, but Nova tells him he doesn't care.

The Review

To start, I have no idea what the "Nova" issues have to do with "Realm of Kings."  I'm assuming the whole "cancer Universe" story is addressed in one of the three "Realm of Kings" mini-series or in "Guardians of the Galaxy," because the "Nova" issues have absolutely nothing to do with anything we saw depicted in the "Realm of Kings" one-shot.  I may take a look to see if Marvel has any of the mini-series or "Guardian of the Galaxy" issues on-line, because I thought the concept was interesting.  In fact, I found myself a little disappointed the "Nova" issues, again, had nothing to do with anything we saw in the "Realm of Kings" one-shot.

That being said, I thought DnA used the Fault to full effect in the "Nova" issues.  In fact, this arc seemed more like an epilogue to "War of Kings," and I feel like I would've been a happier camper if it had just been billed that way.  I enjoyed most of this arc, even though it dealt with a time-travel story (something I generally hate).  However, I did come close to giving this story a two because of the confusion related to some of the time-traveling aspects of the story, particularly the "resurrection" of Namorita.  But, DnA still gave us a mighty enjoyable tale so I'm giving it a three.

The Good

1) [Sigh.]  The Knowhere arc of "Nova" was one of my favorite arcs of all time.  I can't believe that the Guardians of the Galaxy had their HQ there.  [Sigh.]  I cannot buy that entire series, I cannot buy that entire series...

2) Wow, "Realm of Kings" is a dark issue.  It was actually nice to read a Quasar tale again, but, damn, I almost felt as suffocated as Wendell did here.  DnA do a great job of just really delivering us a horrifying place, giving us every reason to believe that Wendell was willing to do whatever he needed to do to make sure that he protected our reality from this reality.

3) Despite my reservations about the time-travel aspect of the "Nova" story (see below), I loved the revelation in issue #33 that the Sphinx had brought Black Bolt, Mr. Fantastic, Namorita, and Nova to the Fault because they had beaten him in the past and he needed them to beat his younger self.  Even given my dislike of time-travel stories,  I have to admit it's a great twist for the Sphinx to have to rely on his enemies to defeat his younger self because they (he and his younger self) are too evenly matched.  It also made sense that he was doing it because the Fault had given him the opportunity to escape the doom he faced as a result of his years of manipulating his own person history.  I also love that the Sphinx is so crazy that his younger self decides to screw his older self just for the possibility of possessing two Ka stones.

4) Along similar lines, the denouement in issue #35 was really well done.  I actually followed everything DnA scripted.  The Sphinx needed time to re-write reality in the outside Universe to accommodate two Ka stones and, by Nova forcing him into it before he was able to do so, he ceased to exist as a result of the "interdimensional equivalent of explosive decompression."  It sounds complicated, but DnA really sell it.

5) I loved the person-on-person combat in issue #34.  It reminded me of the great "Quest for the Shield" story from the old "Guardian of the Galaxy" series.

6) I liked how Rich's dream was basically to prevent everything bad that's happened in the Marvel Universe over the last five years or so:  the Civil War, the Skrull Invasion, the Annihilation Wave, etc.  It shows just how heavily his responsibilities weigh on him, another reminder of how different of a character he is now under DnA than he was at the hands of other authors.

The Meh 

It took me a while to figure out the Darkhawk part of this story.  The Sphinx says to Nova in issue #32 that the events on the Shard "were just a means to bring" Nova to the Sphinx.  He didn't expect Darkhawk to be on it, which meant he wasn't "looking" for Darkhawk in his pocket reality (which is why he couldn't see him at first).  But, Nova was only on the Outworld Shard because of Darkhawk.  It seems weird that the Sphinx could know that Nova was there but not be aware that Darkhawk was as well.

The Bad

1) OK, as you know if you've ready this blog for a while, I generally hate time-travel stories.  I find that they're often impossible to do well, no matter how talented the authors are or how much attention to detail they pay to the plot.  Inevitably, you just wind up having some sort of overarching, "Wait, if it happened in the past, how did they not know the results in the present?" type of question.

DnA wind up not giving us a time-travel story exactly, but I still found it confusing following all the "Mr. Fantastic of 2005" or "Black Bolt of 2000" minutiae.  For one thing, I at first thought that Rich was referring to some incident, possibly related to his captivity during "Secret Invasion," that made Black Bolt look different and older in 2010 than he did in the pocket reality; it wasn't until I got to the end of issue #35 that I realized it was just because the pocket reality's Black Bolt was from 2000.

But, DnA really go a step further into confusion when they raise the dreaded continuity question, since it's implied here that "Mr. Fantastic of 2005" just met Nova, because Rich had just started his superhero career around then.  It raises all those questions inherent when you're dealing with a guy who's been in his early to mid-20s since 1976.  I feel like trying to address this sort of issue is like trying to pull a loose thread from a sweater -- eventually it all unravels.  As such, I think it's better when authors avoid this sort of trap.  (See, for example, the current problem in the Bat-books, where we're supposed to believe that Bruce has trained four, if not five, Robins over only a five-year period.)  Giving us various versions of current characters was bad enough.  Doing it in a way that raises the 35-years-as-five-years issue just makes it all maddening and, ultimately, distracting.

2) To be honest, I'm not entirely sure who the creatures were that were constantly attacking the gang in issue #32.  I assume they're the forces of the two different Sphinxes attacking one another, but I don't know if DnA really ever made that clear.

3) I'm SO over the Fraternity of Raptors.  Talon is still alive?  Really?  DnA at least acknowledge here that Chris doesn't know the origin of the Fraternity, but, OMG, could at some point they actually tell us it?  Given that Darkhawk doesn't have his own series and that Nova's series ends next issue, I'm guessing we still don't know.

4) Although I liked the denouement to the Sphinx dilemma -- pushing him into the real Unvierse before he had suitably altered it -- I'm less thrilled with Namorita being resurrected, because it seems to be inconsistent with what happened to the Sphinx.  The Sphinx exploded because he didn't have time to re-write reality to accommodate for the changes that happened in his pocket reality, namely his possession of two Ka stones.  So, wouldn't Namorita also have suffered "explosive decompression," because reality hadn't been re-written to accommodate her being alive?  Richard says that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so Namorita survived because she was with him.  But, Richard wasn't Vegas; the pocket dimension was.  To give DnA credit, Darkhawk does portend that this decision is going to bite Rich in the ass, but I have to wonder, just like with the Darkhawk conundrum, if DnA are going to be able to really address that story.