CSBG Archive
John Seavey’s Storytelling Engines: Nova
Here’s the latest Storytelling Engine from John Seavey. Click here to read John’s description of what a Storytelling Engine IS, anyways. Check out more of them at his blog, Fraggmented.
Storytelling Engines: Nova
(or “An Idea Ahead Of Its Time”)
One of the fundamental points I introduced right at the beginning of the ‘Storytelling Engines’ series, now eleven months ago (wow, time flies, huh?) is that not every status quo is created equal. Some settings lend themselves to more stories than others, some characters act better to generate stories than others, some concepts just work better than others. Whether a writer thinks consciously about the potential in their status quo or not, and whether the reader notices the way the storytelling engine works or doesn’t work, they still react better to a good engine than to a bad one, and a good storytelling engine sticks around better than a bad one does…even if it doesn’t quite seem that way at first.
Richard Ryder, “the man called Nova”, is a good example of a storytelling engine that had some thought put into it. Marv Wolfman, one of the industry’s great craftsmen, took some time to actually design the status quo of Nova’s comic for the long term. He worked out Nova’s personality, as a self-deprecating, somewhat under-confident teen who received powers from the Nova Corps; he came up with a family, friends, a social life that supported (and occasionally antagonized) our hero; he worked out a rogue’s gallery (with somewhat mixed results–Diamondhead and Condor never really caught on, but the Sphinx and the Corruptor have continued to make appearances in the Marvel Universe.) He did, in short, everything to make sure there was a lot of potential in Nova’s storytelling engine…
And after twenty-five issues, the title was canceled anyway. Nothing to do with the character or the status quo, really. Marvel was just going through some tough times in the 1970s, a new series is always a bit of a gamble, and the comic just didn’t build up enough of a following to justify keeping it going. Wolfman tied up the loose ends in other comics, depowered the character (but didn’t kill him, significantly) and let Richard Ryder be forgotten.
Except that he wasn’t. Because, as I said before, while a reader might not consciously appreciate the effort that goes into designing a good storytelling engine, they notice that some titles seem to have a lot of good stories, while others don’t. Nova might not have had a ton of readers, but those that did read the series remembered it fondly, and when the 80s rolled around and comics hit a boom, the New Warriors combined Nova with a few other “cult” heroes from the last decade, and made a solid 75 issue run over the course of the 1990s. They, in turn, had fond memories and fans of their own, leading up to revivals of the series that continue through the present day. Not to mention, Nova’s back in a series of his own.
The key point here is that the character had time to develop and build a fan following due to its strong central concept, an average guy trying to do his best with amazing abilities. (Sometimes these aren’t rocket science, but it’s still a solid concept for a series.) The character was out of the spotlight, but the idea wasn’t forgotten, and when Nova got relaunched, the audience was there waiting for him. It’s a good argument for not throwing away minor characters simply to pad out the bodycount in a big crossover; sometimes, all that’s needed for a character to become a hit is a chance to build up a little nostalgia with the fans.
- Posted on November 20, 2007 @ 02:50 PM
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14 Comments
jazzbo
November 20, 2007 at 3:14 pm
But if they don’t kill off those minor characters, how are they supposed to show us that this crossover is “serious”?
TF_loki
November 20, 2007 at 3:27 pm
By killing all their wives and girlfriends, of course!
sean
November 20, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Nova + Quasar = Green Lantern.
Stephane Savoie
November 20, 2007 at 4:57 pm
I’d go so far as Nova = Green Lantern.
I don’t know if I agree with this installment of storytelling engines, though. I mean, the concept of the character was strong enough to support two revivals. But his storytelling engine… his concept combined with his supporting cast… where’s that? Surely you can’t mean to combine concept and storytelling engine?
John Seavey
November 20, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Concept has always been a part of the storytelling engine. I usually define it as (concept + main character(s) + supporting cast + setting + antagonists + tone). The current Nova revival has kept most of the elements of the original series, although it’s emphasized some more than others (his parents, for example, were a big part of the original series, but have only had a couple of appearances in the new series.) The only thing we haven’t seen from the original Nova is appearances by his old enemies, and to be fair, the series is only seven issues old, and has been dealing with ‘Civil War’ and ‘Annihilation: Conquest’.
Bat2supe
November 20, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Hey, guys!!
Nova=Green Lantern: sure especially in Annihilation.
I agree with Stephane, the Nova concept is good & makes all the revival possible but all the supporting cast etc from the 1rst serie isn’t prominent neither in the New Warriors nor his own serie.
Marv Wolfman did a good job introducing the Character & core concept, telling good Nova stories at the time. But, like you mentioned, not a lot of his supporting cast did it ’til today.
So, his concept was/is great but I don’t agree with u about storytelling engine.
GarBut
November 20, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Organizing plot and characters does not define a storytelling engine. It defines storytelling. NOVA’s engine, as the other comments have pointed out, is the GL engine, in Marvel garb.
Matthew E
November 20, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I can see Jaime Reyes following basically the same career path as Richard Ryder.
Nova the Storytelling Engine « New Warriors Continuity Conundrum
November 20, 2007 at 9:46 pm
[...] Read the full blog post. [...]
HellRazor
November 21, 2007 at 5:44 am
The only things Nova has in common with Green Lantern is that they both do stuff in space, and are part of a galactic police force. And with the Nova Corp now gone, it’s pretty much just “they both do stuff in space”.
Personality and power-wise they are nothing alike.
Quasar was actually designed (at least in his later incarnations) to be a Marvel version of Green Lantern, hence the way the Quantum bands make solid light objects. (Just like that guy in the Squadron Supreme, Power Prism I think, who was another Marvel GL replica).
googum
November 21, 2007 at 8:33 am
I don’t know…I got the Essential a couple weeks ago, and Nova’s supporting cast was just terrible. Also, Richard started out as a very Peter Parker character, yet by the time he got to the New Warriors, he was more a Flash Thompson type. What’s up with that?
BDillon
November 21, 2007 at 9:34 am
I definitely agree that Quasar is more GL than Nova. He seems to have gotten back to his roots more in the new series, and away from the cocky, annoying character he played in New Warriors. In the new series he was back to being the Peter Parker/under-confident character, and was forced into taking charge due to the Annihilation Wave and the WorldMind pretty much demanding it. I think the growth they’ve given him has been done well, and made the series one of the better ‘cosmic scale’ comics currently out there.
chroom
November 22, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I got the ESSENTIAL NOVA a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. Yes, the supporting characters are a bit crap, particularly the uber-Yiddish friend (”Bernie”, if I recall correctly), but as I understand it, Nova was supposed to be the Spider-Man for a new generation of readers. Secret identity, girl and school troubles, great power/responsibility … it was pretty much according to the Spider-Man template, with a little of GL’s origin thrown in.
Of course, things changed significantly over the course of the series. But it was still good superhero fun for the most part: silly and melodramatic at times, but fun. If only they hadn’t ended the series (and the ESSENTIAL) volume on a cliffhanger, it would have been even better. Still, it’s one of my favorites, just for the fun factor.
MarkAndrew
November 23, 2007 at 1:10 pm
That’s true.
Is this supposed to be an argument that they don’t have the same basic concept?
‘Cause it’s really not working.