One of the Deadliest MCU Villains Finally Returns With The Perfect Team-Up

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Cassandra Nova, a villain who played a major role in the X-Men comics of the early ’00s was a big part of the antagonistic force behind Deadpool & Wolverine. And since her silver screen turn, Cassandra Nova has made a few new comic appearances, with the latest reuniting her with her creator, Scottish comic writer Grant Morrison.

Batman/Deadpool #1 is the latest DC/Marvel crossover, and its plot sees Deadpool and Batman come together. It’s a book that, in small ways, traces its way back through Morrison’s past as a comic creator, as the MacGuffin of the book is related to the fictional version of Morrison known as the Writer, who first appeared in their amazing Animal Man run before being killed in Suicide Squad. The reunion of Cassandra Nova and Morrison is great, a return to form for the villain with a great little ending.

Morrison Created Nova as Part of Their Short Time at Marvel

Morrison got their start in American comics at DC, working on books like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, and many more for the publisher. They became one of the cornerstones of Vertigo, where they created numerous series, including The Invisibles, which Morrison owned. When Warner Bros., DC’s parent company, was making The Matrix, the Wachowskis took a lot of inspiration from the book, even pulling visual ideas directly from it. This angered Morrison, as they felt they should get some credit for it, and they left DC. They, of course, ended up at Marvel.

After two miniseries for the Marvel Knights imprint, Morrison got the nod to take over the X-Men. New X-Men is the best X-Men book of the 21st century, with Morrison unleashing their gonzo imagination on the team. Nova was the first new character they created for the new book. She wanted to destroy the mutant race, unleashing the Mega-Sentinels on Genosha, and became the big bad of the first phase of Morrison’s run. It was revealed that she was Xavier’s evil twin whom he “killed” in the womb, using her psionic powers to survive as a clump of cells and building a new body for herself.

Nova played perfectly into the kind of story that Morrison was telling with the X-Men. Their run on Marvel’s merry mutants was all about love and hate, a common theme in their work. The X-Men were a force for love in the world, and their three main enemies in the book all embodied different kinds of hate. Nova was jealous hatred; she hated that her brother had destroyed her, forcing her into a harder life, and wanted to make him pay by taking away everything he loved, including the mutant race. She was hate personified, and it made her the perfect villain for the run’s initial stories.

Morrison defined the character, and since then, there’s been very little actually done with her beyond their work. Nova returned in post-New X-Men mutant flagship book Astonishing X-Men, in a story that was about her trying to escape her prison. She’d later appear again, trying to get humanity to destroy mutants by playing on their racism and fear in X-Men Red. She returned in the Krakoa Era in Marauders (Vol. 2), being left billions of years in the past, before becoming a part of the group 3K in the present volume of X-Men, a group of mutants trying to create a virus to use against humanity.

No One Writes Nova Like Morrison

Morrison’s New X-Men is the type of comic that you don’t get twice. The scribe had a plan, and used the various ideas of the team to tell a story about love and hate. It’s brilliant, and there hasn’t been an X-Men story since that has matched it. Morrison’s time at Marvel is a huge missed opportunity, as they revealed in their book SuperGods that they left the publisher because of weekly shouting matches with irate editors, but it can’t be denied that they were doing the best work possible at the House of Ideas. Their Cassandra Nova was brilliant, a force of hatred that made herself into one of the best X-Men villains ever after only three story arcs.

Nova in Batman/Deadpool #1 is more the MCU version of the character than the original — on their Substack post about the issue, Morrison talks about wanting to pay homage to the movie, which they enjoyed — but it’s still great to see them writing her again. They get her voice like no other creator has since. All also ends perfectly, as Nova tries to take control of the Writer, trying to force him to write terrible, horrific things. However, the creation can’t puppet the creator, and we get an awesome little scene out of the whole thing. Morrison is an all-time great, and seeing them write one of their best Marvel creations in what is one of the best crossover comics ever was a treat.

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