Sometimes we pull a potential Stupid Comic out of the stack and we ask ourselves, have we done this one already? And sometimes the answer is "yes." But there are some eras of comics that were so derivative, so infested with samey-same imitation ripoffs, that looking at one comic from that period is like looking at EVERY comic from that period, and it's hard to tell where one ends and another one begins, just one eternal loop of bad anatomy, incomprehensible storytelling, and cheesy sales gimmicks stinking up the place for all eternity.


YES, you guessed correctly, that era is the 1990s, here represented by the third issue of a comic book titled "Nova Hunter," which I believe is the story of an astronomer constantly on the lookout for stars about to collapse upon themselves and explode, who also has a severe hair style and murders a lot of people.


This is the third issue, we're mercifully spared the eight or nine pages of world-building exposition, and instead we get eight or nine hundred words of expository world-building. Can we boil this down a little further? Red guy is space cop framed for murder, bald lady is mystery warrior, they team up to fight bald lady's evil sister. In space, with zap guns and spaceships. How hard was that? Not very.


What the Araina Damn Khor Jakyl Belts Teeth Squint Gun Tiny Pen Line 1990s is going on here, asks Mohawk Gun Robot Arm Guy.


I don't know or care who these cretins are either, lady. What I DO know is that Araina (the good twin) and Trinity (the evil twin) can be distinguished primarily due to their alternating pant legs - one has a left pant leg, the other has a right pant leg. I bet that seemed like a really cute idea when they were 8. Now it's just weird.


I think most people in the 90s went through a brief half-robot phase. It was really stylish there for a while!


He's the best there is at what he does, which is quoting Wolverine, he's the winner of the Wolverine Quoting Contest six years running.


So this guy, the red guy, the disgraced ex-cop, turns out he's the titular Nova Hunter. Glad to have some clarity on this matter, five pages in.


Meanwhile the sisters are fighting, and by "fighting" we mean "talking about how much they talk."


"Cross cutting" is a cinematic technique used to create tension or drama, usually utilized to quickly edit together disparate scenes of fistfights between people who can barely shut up long enough to throw a punch.


"I can always do what I've wanted to do!" "Bring it on!" "Aaaaahh!" Sometimes fight dialogue and porn dialogue are almost identical.


Trinity escapes through a door, Tyros is about to atomic piledriver Jakyl, and Omega Leader radios Alpha 7, all happening in panels that shouldn't be next to each other, yet somehow are. In the 1990s, narrative flow was strictly for losers!


For an extra confusing comic book reading experience, simply fill your backgrounds with random lines and patterns. Readers won't know which way is up until a spaceship zooms across and rips someone in half.


Trinity is on her way to meet a virtual armada, well, that's fine, it's not like she's going to meet a REAL armada. Unless whoever wrote this comic wasn't really sure what the word "virtual" means, and that's always a possibility!


Oh no, this character who died in a comic book might not actually be dead? Wow, really breaking some rules here 1990s.


Well, these guys are really the pits! See what I did there? If these warriors concentrate hard enough, they turn into real ghosts, instead of merely looking as pale as ghosts. Also, they can do kung-fu.


There is no time for that now you fools, we have dire concerns that demand immediate action, so let's... talk about it at length.


Great Value Red Skull here regrets even opening the mouth he doesn't have.


Meanwhile on another planet somewhere in the galaxy, a guy with a giant gun and a giant fin thinks about how Tyros might not have murdered Khor. Thinks a LOT about it.


Panels That Don't Ever Work: 1. close-ups of hands fondling vaguely gun-shaped objects, 2. close-ups of gray lumps and green rectangles.


I'd scowl a lot too if I had mathematically perfect hemispheres permanently attached to my chest.


It's like being confronted by street mimes, only not quite as frightening.


If you scowl, not just the normal angry scowl you have on your face in every panel of this comic, but scowl REALLY hard, then you can receive a vision from mysterious cosmic forces. Also, you will get a headache.


This is no time for levity, and why have you recruited the Kiss Army?


the Shae Do masters meet the Kun Do master for an intense discussion about the fate of the entire planet, and also about how to spell "wields."


Meanwhile in another galaxy, we're left to ponder how the hard limit of the speed of light pretty much eliminates the very idea of events occuring simultaneously across the immense distances separating galaxies. Also a little green Steve Ditko alien man fixes a droid.

"Droid," by the way, is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm, Inc. Nobody tell Ryal Comics.


Remember Jackl, who got ripped in half by a spaceship in another galaxy? Glowing Pink Thing is going to have him rebuilt into Six Million Dollar Jackl. It'll be great.


We must be mad, flying head on into a virtual armada, without so much as a Virtual Boy console to guide us. Is anybody actually flying the spaceship they're on? So far all we see these people do is stand around and scowl in different rooms. Maybe these spaceships are controlled by scowls and squints.


If all your friends jumped out of your spaceship so it could crash into another spaceship, would you do it too?


Indeed, that's no missle. In fact nothing is a missle, that's a thing that doesn't exist, kind of like how editorial oversight of this comic also doesn't exist.


Word balloons are a vital element of the comic book reading experience, delivering speech and thought, expressing the words and emotions of characters, and also helpfully obscuring things that are "hard to draw". Word balloons! They're here to help. Brought to you by the Word Balloon Association.


If the fusion core melts down, a chain reaction of "molecular breakdown" is inevitable. And that isn't just an accident in chemistry class, but a planet-destroying event. Which is bad. Maybe they should not fly around in spaceships that could, in the event of a crash, wipe out a planet?


"Well, we caused this whole planetary explosion thing that we were trying to prevent. So, I guess you should see what else you can ruin around here in the next five minutes."


What can she do in the face of annhilation? Pose! She can pose like she's never posed before!


He's the best there is at what he does, which is to fail to use his fake Wolverine claws properly. Oh well.


Here's another one of these pages where panels are thrown down at random and the reader is tasked with figuring out who these people are and what they're doing to each other. Is there an escape capsule to get us out of this comic?


The spaceship is about to crash into the planet and destroy everyone and everything we've spent the last 27 pages trying to comprehend, and wouldn't you know it, this is the last page of the story, so we're ending on a cliffhanger... and you guessed it, this is the last issue of Nova Hunter. We'll never know if they survive this crisis, if they ever corner Trinity, or if they ever find those novas they're hunting for.

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