Something from Axel Alonso’s last CBR piece stuck in my head all weekend:
For “cosmic” to matter, it has to be relatable. For Nova to compete with Spider-Man, Captain America and Wolverine — and we’d love him to — his story has to touch your heart and it has to be grounded in things you can recognize and understand. If the stakes of a Nova story only matter “out there” in space or on some far-flung planet, then no amount of good craft is going to help us reach an audience larger the hardcore cosmic fans.
I think what’s so odd about the statement for me is the idea that things can only be relatable if they’re happening on Earth. Surely a Nova story – or a Green Lantern story or whatever – can be perfectly relatable no matter where it takes place because the reader empathizes with the emotional journey/choices/situation of the characters, whether or not they’re human and living in a location that you can find on Google Earth? I can’t help but think that complaining that the stakes of a story only mattering “‘out there’ in space or on some far-flung planet” is kind of missing the appeal of a lot of sci-fi, not to mention storytelling-as-metaphor, which just seems odd considering Alonso’s history, as well as Marvel’s bread-and-butter of telling stories about people who can do fantastic things far outside the ability of its readers.
That said, it may explain why we’ve not really seen much of the Cosmic books over at Marvel in recent months…
January 16th, 2012 at 10:11 am
Ask Alonso about Star Wars and see what he thinks. Or all of Lanning/Abbetts marvel space saga…that sold buckets. What an idiot – and notice how this new Nova has yet to receive any media since that .1 issue came out. New Nova should be named ‘lame duck’.
Until we find out what happened to Nova in the Cancer-verse – no one is gonna give two craps about new Loeb-Nova.
January 16th, 2012 at 10:21 am
it’s a garbage statement–nova’s character progression from annihilation through the thanos imperative was eminently relatable because it was about him growing up. he’s wrong.
January 16th, 2012 at 10:31 am
Yeah, DnA’s Nova was all about someone who readers could relate to. He was this kid from Long Island. That never changed. His ability to be a hero came from that, and not from the circumstances in which he found himself.
January 16th, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Green Lantern is one of DC’s top selling books – and it stars an alien Villian!
Alonso – i dare you to respond.
January 16th, 2012 at 3:47 pm
Yeah, Marvel has some weird takes on relatability. See some of their defenses of OMD for further examples.
January 16th, 2012 at 4:02 pm
“I think what’s so odd about the statement for me is the idea that things can only be relatable if they’re happening on Earth.”
This has also been the attitude with the new Doctor Who series, where it took them forever to get around to exploring other worlds because if it isn’t Earth, well, apparently then nobody can figure it out. Or some nonsense.
January 18th, 2012 at 12:56 am
Well this explains why we’ve hardly seen any cosmic stuff not connected to the FF,X or Avengers in awhile.
Odd thing to say since the cosmic stuff youst to do better than the rest of the junk they normally throw at us.
January 18th, 2012 at 9:30 am
I think the subtext is that Nova needs to connect to Marvel’s established and popular characters. If what Nova is doing doesn’t connect with Spider-Man, Wolverine, etc. then it’s not going to “matter” and not going to sell beyond the niche market.
January 18th, 2012 at 9:30 pm
@Dandy
Lol, “character progression?” Annihilation and its follow-ups were nothing but mindless, poorly written slugfests.