Return to Project PEGASUS. (SPOILERS)
*SPOILERS*
Word came down "the vine" (not this vine, another vine...) several weeks in advance... Nova would be retunring to Project: PEGASUS to protect his brother (and the rest of the Project) from the Skrull invasion. I was greatly excited to see what had become of PEGASUS in Earth - 616 since the days of the "Project: PEGASUS Saga" back in 1980. Back then the Chief of Security of a little known hero by the name of Wendell Vaughn. He is only slightly better known as Quasar. I had followed his adventures since he got his own series in 1989 and had gone to the trouble of looking up back issues he appeared in... such as Marvel Two-in-One #53 - 58 where he, the Thing, Thundra, Dr. Bill Foster, and the newly introduced Aquarian saved the world and possibly the entire universe from the Nth Man. For those that don't know, Quasar was my favorite character... but he was murdered during Annihilation.
So, I was a little excited to see what had happened to the Project. i was interested in seeing if the current chief of security was still Blue Shield and if not if the current chief held a candle to Quasar. The day it came out a friend emailed me that he had read it and that I HAD to get to my LCS ASAP and buy it!!! He hinted that the last page would stun me. I pretty much called the comicshop right then and there and had a copy put on hold for me.
So, as soon as I got off work, I went immediately to my local comic shop and picked up the issue off the shelf and paged through it. I'm not a big believer in immediate gratification so I paged through each page and skimmed the story, getting the jist. I was impressed that Darkhawk had graduated to being the security chief, but I wondered what had happened to Blue Shield. I enjoyed the introduction of Director Gruenwald (named for Mark Gruenwald who was one of marvel's better writers during the 80's and 90's, having one of the longest runs on Captain America and writing his own kind of hero when he developed Quasar for his own series and wrote it for 59 out of 60 issues; not only that, but he was the editor of the Marvel handbooks, he himself having an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Marvel), and Dr. Necker who is probably better known to people who read Marvel's UK line as she was the developer of the Minion project in 2020 which ended up becoming the Death's Head II cyborg. So bringing her into current Marvel continuity was fun to see.
And there on the last page was the return of my favorite character. Quasar. Since Annihilation I (and several others) communicated with Annihilation editor Andy Schmidt about who Wendell Vaughn was and why he was our favorite character. And for the first time I realized I wasn't the only one who gave a damn about this character who was pretty much a pacifist surrounded by "heroes" and rolemodels in the 90's who would kill without compunction and every last one of them seemed to be cloned from Wolverine. So we watched Annihilation with a vested interest that since Marvel was bringing its Cosmic legacy back, there would be a place for Quasar... or so we thought. Late into #4 of Annihilation: Nova, we watched in horror as Quasar was murdered by Annihilus. And then later in Annihilaton #6 watched in horror as he was replaced!!! Our fave hero dead we built a forum in which to plant the seeds for his possible return. The group of us started a letter writing campain. We sent a "Quasar cake" to Bill Rosemann at Marvel. One of us sent a 'Bring back Wendell' petition sheet to collect signatures to the Marvel offices.
Yes, we were that small but vocal group of Wendell Vaughn fans you may have read about.
As of Nova $17, it seems we have suceeded. Wendell Vaughn is back!
This issue made my entire month!
Word came down "the vine" (not this vine, another vine...) several weeks in advance... Nova would be retunring to Project: PEGASUS to protect his brother (and the rest of the Project) from the Skrull invasion. I was greatly excited to see what had become of PEGASUS in Earth - 616 since the days of the "Project: PEGASUS Saga" back in 1980. Back then the Chief of Security of a little known hero by the name of Wendell Vaughn. He is only slightly better known as Quasar. I had followed his adventures since he got his own series in 1989 and had gone to the trouble of looking up back issues he appeared in... such as Marvel Two-in-One #53 - 58 where he, the Thing, Thundra, Dr. Bill Foster, and the newly introduced Aquarian saved the world and possibly the entire universe from the Nth Man. For those that don't know, Quasar was my favorite character... but he was murdered during Annihilation.
So, I was a little excited to see what had happened to the Project. i was interested in seeing if the current chief of security was still Blue Shield and if not if the current chief held a candle to Quasar. The day it came out a friend emailed me that he had read it and that I HAD to get to my LCS ASAP and buy it!!! He hinted that the last page would stun me. I pretty much called the comicshop right then and there and had a copy put on hold for me.
So, as soon as I got off work, I went immediately to my local comic shop and picked up the issue off the shelf and paged through it. I'm not a big believer in immediate gratification so I paged through each page and skimmed the story, getting the jist. I was impressed that Darkhawk had graduated to being the security chief, but I wondered what had happened to Blue Shield. I enjoyed the introduction of Director Gruenwald (named for Mark Gruenwald who was one of marvel's better writers during the 80's and 90's, having one of the longest runs on Captain America and writing his own kind of hero when he developed Quasar for his own series and wrote it for 59 out of 60 issues; not only that, but he was the editor of the Marvel handbooks, he himself having an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Marvel), and Dr. Necker who is probably better known to people who read Marvel's UK line as she was the developer of the Minion project in 2020 which ended up becoming the Death's Head II cyborg. So bringing her into current Marvel continuity was fun to see.
And there on the last page was the return of my favorite character. Quasar. Since Annihilation I (and several others) communicated with Annihilation editor Andy Schmidt about who Wendell Vaughn was and why he was our favorite character. And for the first time I realized I wasn't the only one who gave a damn about this character who was pretty much a pacifist surrounded by "heroes" and rolemodels in the 90's who would kill without compunction and every last one of them seemed to be cloned from Wolverine. So we watched Annihilation with a vested interest that since Marvel was bringing its Cosmic legacy back, there would be a place for Quasar... or so we thought. Late into #4 of Annihilation: Nova, we watched in horror as Quasar was murdered by Annihilus. And then later in Annihilaton #6 watched in horror as he was replaced!!! Our fave hero dead we built a forum in which to plant the seeds for his possible return. The group of us started a letter writing campain. We sent a "Quasar cake" to Bill Rosemann at Marvel. One of us sent a 'Bring back Wendell' petition sheet to collect signatures to the Marvel offices.
Yes, we were that small but vocal group of Wendell Vaughn fans you may have read about.
As of Nova $17, it seems we have suceeded. Wendell Vaughn is back!
This issue made my entire month!