This becomes the most stunning new world in Weaver and Duggans hands, that it goes beyond the Secret Wars to another plane. It takes us out of the Marvel Story in SW and puts us in a story that looks like was always there but hadn't been visited yet. This must have been an alternate reality where the Novas started differently, and Thanos' story went a different way, too. I can't applaud this enough.
If the Nova Corp had the time gem before Thanos got it, then the Novas were elsewhere until they just turned up last issue. Remember, the Novas were on a quest to get the gems, so there was a reason that was important, because it goes against their credo never to own the gems.
To be fair to Gerry Duggan and Dustin Weaver to have been able to seize the rules of Secret Wars to give us a fresh series, quickly affordable and universal.
If only one has only approximate knowledge of the Nova Corps (or even no real knowledge), the Infinity Gauntlet works immediately. First, Dustin Weaver drawings are an essential element of immersion. And then there was a new approach to Duggan on the myth of Nova. Generally the owners of Nova helmets are quickly cut off from their family unit when they adopt this identity. Here it is very different since a whole family becomes Nova and, so, the problem is new. For example, is that one must truly transform girls in war? There is debate among parents ... A family and even a "dog nova". Exercise may be especially dicey. I want to say that many other creative teams explode in flight at the time of execution. But what drives such, it is the "sense of wonder". For example, the characters are not bored when they try for the first time to fly.
Infinity Gauntlet, it's a bit like having something between a comic-book Nova and Power Pack, even if there are other peripheral characters (Thanos, Star-Lord ...). This is in a sense too good to be true and I wonder if the upcoming episodes we do not reserve a revelation linked to the stone of eternity, if there is not an element of illusion. On the end of the second issue, the authors seem to take a new direction associated with Thanos (which seems not to be the same as in Secret Wars but the concept lends itself) and temporal paradoxes.
The family aspect is needed so that this other dimension is struggling to take off, at least on this episode. But the rest is perfect.
"my feminism will be intersectional, or will it be bullshit." Kelly Sue Deconnick
"All this magic stuff needs new terminology because it's not what people are being told it is at all." Grant Morrison