Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Call Tech Support! Or An Exorcist!

My comic store won't be open until Friday, so I've got to muddle through for another two days. What? Take a break? Horsefeathers! It's a perfectly fine day for blogging! So, in that spirit, I'll chat about Nova and the Worldmind a bit.

So the Xandarian Worldmind is on a bit of a recruitment kick, signing people up from Project Pegasus for the Nova Corps left and right. This is a tad curious, since the first new recruits were from various species scattered across the universe, so it would seem clear Worldmind could cast the net a little wider. It's even more curious given what Abnett and Lanning posited as the recruiting standard for the Nova Corps in the Nova Annual #1*. At that point, we learned that the Nova Corps selects average representatives of a species, for various reasons, related to lack of ego, trustworthiness, and several other positive character traits. Well, I'm sure the folks at the Project are just swell, but I can't imagine they're all average, you know?

So what to conclude from this? Worldmind was nearly lost, and is attacking with self-preservation first in mind, rather than assembling an effective interstellar police force. Second idea: these Novas on a trial basis, and if they don't pan out, Worldmind takes the power back, no harm, no foul. Three: Something is actually wrong with the Worldmind. I don't mean Worldmind is actually an evil world-conqueror, more than its programming was damaged when it was nearly destroyed in Richard's unorthodox escape from Obrucen. Or that it's been infected by something.

And that's where I think that flask of Quantum energy comes in. It had Wendell Vaughn's mind (or soul?) in it, and Worldmind was somehow able to awaken it, to the point Wendell could bring himself together. But the last time we saw Wendell prior to that he was helping Phyla fight Annihilus, whose essence had corrupted the Quantum bands. At the end, Wendell drags Annihilus off with him. . . somewhere. Now Wendell shows up as Quantum energy that was collected in the Negative Zone. Can we be sure he managed to dump the Evil Bug King before then? Could Annihilus have infiltrated Worldmind when it rebooted it's systems, and was interacting with the Quantum energy?

* Looking back through the Annual, I see that in the hallucination that took place well in the future, Wendell is present, in the same form he appeared in during the Secret Invasion arc. Interesting.

2 comments:

Jason said...

Oh man, my comic shop was open today, wait until you see Worldmind's newest recruit on the last page. I said out-loud, "No f---ing way!"

Also, Iron Fist was pretty darn good, and yes, Robo Fat Cobra was in evidence. The best part is that the art was by Timothy Green, the same artist that did the AC: Starlord mini. Marvel really needs to get him on a sci-fi series full-time. Also, it proves that Iron Fist is 40% better when Travel Foreman is NOT the artist.

CalvinPitt said...

jason: I think I know who you mean for Worldmind's new recruit. Oh, I really hope it's a nightmare sequence.

Re: Iron Fist, when I was rereading the older issues, I noticed Foreman drew flashback sequences in #2-5, and his work seemed stronger. Not David Aja, but stronger anatomy-wise, and he wasn't leaving as much blank space on the pages. Not sure what happened in the interim, perhaps a difference in scripting stryles between the Fraction/Brubaker combo and Swierczynski?