Captain America's sidekick Rikki Barnes is transported to another dimension where Captain America is dead and she has never existed, and she must reconnect with her brother and return to crimefighting as the superhero Nomad. McKeever takes the YA know-how he established on Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane and applies it to Nomad, late of Captain America, a teen refugee from an alternate reality. Her isolation is used to good effect for readers who may be familiar with a sense of exclusion, as a secret empire tests its new method of mind control on Nomad’s high school, turning normal students into a group of rabble-rousers who exact a heavy price from those who don’t fall into line. The suggestion that outcasts are being created by a shadowy conspiracy is a small stroke of genius that many teens will embrace as a paranoid amplification of their own social world. Baldeon’s art is strong on action if slightly less so on faces and expressions, but Nomad’s doomed attempts to establish connections deepen the emotional investment, and guest stars the Young Avengers offer a little something extra. Though it uses characters and ideas from some obscure corners of Marvel’s history, no prior knowledge is needed to enjoy this only slightly didactic whiz-bang adventure. Grades 8-12. --Jesse Karp