Nova Vol. 5 No. 11

This volume is issue #11 of the fifth volume of Nova, launched by Marvel in 2013, and the first full single issue after writer Gerry Duggan officially took over the title, belonging to the Sam Alexander era. At the end of the previous issue, the protagonist Sam suddenly goes blind; this issue opens with his mother taking him to a doctor, who determines it is only a visual migraine caused by repeated blows to the head and that his sight will return on its own. Back at school, Sam gets into a fight after being unable to tolerate a classmate's insults about his father, and the principal punishes him by sending him to chess club; there, the teacher's explanation of how the pieces move makes him suddenly realize that the flickering points of light before his eyes are not symptoms but a star map. Sam matches the points of light one by one against star charts, flies to one of the coordinates, and on a desolate planet finds a dead Nova Corps member in a golden helmet, having driven off the giant spider-like creature that killed him. From the helmet left behind by the deceased, he hears a dying message and deduces that the points of light mark the places where Nova Corps members have successively fallen, so he decides to follow the star map to find the remaining comrades and the truth. What he does not know is that the signal he emitted while playing the message has been picked up by a bounty hunter who takes pleasure in hunting Novas, and who now intends to begin expanding his collection with Sam's helmet. This issue alternates between family and school life on Earth and ruins and combat in deep space, laying the groundwork for the later extended arc involving the mystery of the Nova Corps' disappearance and the debut of Beta Ray Bill.