ITEM! Paul Pelletier’s new job as Marvel’s Nova penciller (with inks by Rick Magyar) is enough to make me give the series another try. Although I’ve enjoyed the Annihilation books, Nova’s own series never quite took off for me. Pelletier’s art, however, is huge draw. His work on CrossGen’s Negation was outstanding, his quirkily-imagined alien races a feast for the eyes. I was sorry to hear that he and McDuffie were ending their great run on Fantastic Four to make way for the “blockbuster” team of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. I’ll be buying Nova instead.
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ITEM! My wish is granted, sort of. The good news is that I get my Titans team; the bad news… But, you know, I’ve really been enjoying Winick’s Green Arrow/Black Canary, so I won’t prejudge. Not thrilled about Ian Churchill on pencils, but maybe… Wah!* * *
ITEM! And speaking of Judd Winick, I read the Outsiders/Checkmate: Checkout trade this weekend, co-scripted by Winick and Greg Rucka. I buy Checkmate regularly (one of DC’s best) but I’d skipped the Outsiders crossover issues because I was sulking about that title, having dropped it earlier in the year. It was my loss, because it turns out to be a great adventure yarn with a cracking good script that provides a nice coda to one aspect of 52 and neatly sets up the relaunch of Batman and the Outsiders (more on that in a future post). 
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ITEM! Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction sure know how to give the fanboys what they want, don’t they? Just reread The Immortal Iron Fist: The Last Iron Fist Story trade. Wow. This is fun comics. Danny Rand is the distillation of fanboy fantasy—a perfect point of view character. A King Fu master, sure. But, beneath all those burning dove chops and drunken wasp stings, white boy is still a bit of a dork. “Sorry. He always acts stupid when he has a head injury,” says Luke Cage, apologizing to Night Nurse for his old partner’s goofball antics. If the character has a refrain, it would have to be, “Danny, don’t be an idiot…”—a phrase that echoes across the first story arc of this superior superhero adventure series that explores Danny’s relationship to the Iron Fist legacy as he battles the Hordes of Hydra and the Champion of the sinister Crane Mother. A word about the art: dazzling. David Aja adds a touch of classic New Mutants-era Bill Sienkiewicz to a style that resembles Michael Lark. I hate to wait until June for the second trade to be released!
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