I do enjoy these “Girls’ Night Out” stories. They pop up from time to time and they’re almost always fun. In fact, I’d recommend this series to anyone–you don’t have to know a bunch of Marvel lore to enjoy it (but if you do, it’s that much better). It’s well written and fun, and that’s a nice surprise since a lot of cosmic stories are kinda dumb.
Scott Summers gets a group of women together in Vegas to surprise Emma Frost for her birthday. It’s an odd group, though, because none of them have any real ties to Emma and they barely have ties to each other as well. It’s Hellcat, She-Hulk, Monica Rambeau, Valkyrie, and Abigail Brand–in case you can’t tell because they’re wearing mustaches in the picture above.
While at the party, there’s a mysterious cosmic event that causes an explosion at a SWORD containment facility. A clone of Dr. Phineas Horton (who created the original Human Torch) escapes, and has a strange connection to a local red-headed waitress named “Frances.” So it’s becoming clear to fans of John Byrne’s epic run on Fantastic Four that Johnny Storm’s ex-GF and Galactus’ ex-Herald is back. Yes, Frankie Raye–the Herald known as Nova–is still alive. Or at least some portion of her consciousness is.
Looking for a host, it tries Johnny Storm first and then settles on Frankie. It also makes out with Johnny on the cover to issue #3.
Nice.
The force eventually kidnaps Valeria Richards and wraps her in a molten cocoon.
Valeria may be a hostage, but she’s still got the dad-joke energy. The heroes get her out of there, and the ball of flame flies out into space. Abigail Brand uses her SWORD surveillance tech to confirm that she has disappeared–seemingly forever.
The heroes get her out and at the very end we see that Frances is still alive and still on Earth.
Oddly, though, Marvel barely used her after this appearance.