NOVA: HIS EARLY STORIES

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero blog post will look at some of the earliest stories of Marvel’s character Nova.

NOVA Vol 1 #1 (September 1976)

Title: Nova

Villain: Zorr

NOTE: This was the very first appearance of Nova and by extension, the Nova Corps of Xandar, the space force that became reasonably popular in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

Synopsis: We meet Rhomann-Dey, a member of the intergalactic Nova Corps of superpowered police/ military forces from the far-off planet Xandar. In his spaceship, Rhomann-Dey pursued the villainous alien Zorr into Earth’s proximity but was mortally wounded in battle with that criminal.

Rhomann settled his Xandarian vessel into orbit around the Earth and summoned test pilot Hal Jordan to become his successor as a Green Lantern hurriedly selected an Earthling to pass his incredible Nova powers on to.

Hempstead, Long Island teenager Richard Rider is Rhomann’s selection and he transfers his uniform and powers to him as he is dying. While Richard learns to cope with his new abilities his Nova uniform makes him a target for Zorr. In the end, Zorr is destroyed and Rhomann-Dey’s ship remains in orbit.

NOTE: Richard Rider was a poor man’s Peter Parker, plus his circle of friends and a bully were pale imitations of Spider-Man’s supporting cast during his high school years. For a change of pace, Richard has a mother and father and a VERY brainy younger brother.

NOVA Vol 1 #2 (October 1976)

Title: The First Night of the Condor

Villains: Condor and Powerhouse

Synopsis: Days later, Richard Rider has slipped into a routine of patrolling for crime by flying around Long Island at the incredible speed his Nova powers make possible. After thwarting a bank robbery, Nova flies home, gets back into his Richard Rider clothing and interacts with younger brother Robert.

Over the next several hours, Nova winds up balancing his school activities with stripping down to his Nova costume and tangling with two supervillains called Condor and Powerhouse. Our hero has two separate battles with them, once by day and again that night when Condor and Powerhouse try to steal ancient Egyptian parchments from a museum.

During the battle, the parchments get destroyed inadvertently, infuriating Condor, who needed them to craft weaponry to use against an even deadlier menace. Surely, it’s no spoiler this many decades later to point out that the deadlier menace is the Sphinx, who went on to become a prominent Marvel villain.

Condor abandons his partner Powerhouse in disgust, and Nova manages to defeat Powerhouse.

NOVA Vol 1 #3 (November 1976)

Title: Diamondhead is Ready to Strike

Villain: Diamondhead

Synopsis: At some point after the previous issue, we readers are shown another brand-new supervillain, this one called Diamondhead. (Obviously, not the same Diamondhead who was a Captain America villain.)

The villain destroys his training robots, designed to simulate assorted superheroes, while reminiscing about the industrial accident which transformed him into his current diamond-hard, superstrong body.

After dealing with trouble from his father due to a situation he can’t explain in order to preserve his secret identity from his family, Richard Rider becomes Nova and catches criminals in the nearby park. The next day Diamondhead uses his powers to rob a gold reserve, a bank and an armored car.

Nova becomes involved and battles Diamondhead after the villain steals the fragments of the parchments that Condor and Powerhouse were after last issue. He, too, is endangered by whatever the mysterious Sphinx is planning.

After a destructive battle all around Hempstead, Diamondhead escapes from Nova and is then approached by Condor, offering him an alliance against Nova AND the Sphinx. 

NOVA Vol 1 #4 (December 1976)

Title: Nova Against the Mighty Thor

Villain: The Corruptor

Synopsis: As usual, readers get treated (?) to more high school drama among Richard Rider, his friends and his enemies. Meanwhile, Thor, flying by Hempstead, lands to put out a laboratory fire. It turns out the lab accident transformed one of the laboratory workers into the supervillain called the Corruptor.

The Corruptor learns that his touch is able to turn his victims bad but when he touches Thor the thunder god doesn’t become his corrupted thrall, but instead goes berserk and flies around in uncontrollable fury.

Richard Rider sees Thor flying around so he turns into Nova and tries reasoning with him, resulting in a battle between the pair. Eventually, Thor’s mind is back to normal and he explains to Nova about the Corruptor.

The two heroes team up to track down the villain and defeat him while taking out his gathered army of temporary thralls without injuring them since they were being controlled by the Corruptor.

NOVA Vol 1 #5 (January 1977)

Title: Evil is the Earth-Shaker

Villain: Tyrannus  

Synopsis: Amid family issues, an argument with his girlfriend, and trying to adjust to Nova’s surging popularity, our hero winds up on hand when the Marvel supervillain Tyrannus once again invades the surface world with his army of Tyrannoids and a kaiju-sized robot called the Earth-Shaker.

NOTE: Tyrannus previously fought the Hulk, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four on separate occasions.

        He was a human from ancient Rome who became immortal and ruled over a subterranean race called the Tyrannoids, a sub-species of the Mole Man’s Moloids.

Nova takes action against the invaders. In the end he succeeds in destroying the Earth-Shaker, defeats the army of Tyrannoids and captures Tyrannus himself to win the day.

NOVA Vol 1 #6 (February 1977)

Title: And so … the Sphinx

Villains: The Sphinx, Condor, Powerhouse and Diamondhead

Synopsis: After Nova thwarts a robbery, he turns back into Richard Rider for more of his family and high school drama. Elsewhere, we readers learn that the mysterious Dreaded One is really a villain called the Sphinx. Through the Ka Stone he wears in his helmet the Sphinx is powerful enough to take on entire superteams.

The Sphinx has recognized our hero’s costume in the news reports about him as a Nova Corps uniform and knows that where a Nova Corps operative is, their Xandarian starship must be somewhere near. (Yes, we’re finally getting back to the still-orbiting space vessel of the late Rhomann-Dey.)

Elsewhere, Condor and Diamondhead at last come back out into the open, raiding the high-tech supervillain prison where Powerhouse has been imprisoned. Nova’s helmet once again picks up police radio reports, this time about the ongoing battle between the guards at the souped-up prison and the three supervillains.

Our hero arrives at the facility and finds himself taking on all three villains at once. They defeat him and take him with them back to the Condor’s hideout. It turns out that, like the Sphinx, they know a Nova operative should have a nearby starship and plan to force Nova to take them to it so they can use its weaponry against the Sphinx.

NOVA Vol 1 #7 (March 1977)

Title: War in Space

Villains: The Sphinx, Condor, Powerhouse and Diamondhead

Synopsis: The threesome of villains subdue Nova again when he fights them upon regaining consciousness. To further his recruitment of Nova to enable entrance to the Nova Corps vessel in orbit around the Earth, the Condor explains the origin and nature of the Sphinx. That supervillain is over 5,000 years old and was a sorcerer back in ancient Egypt.

The Sphinx attained immortality and gained immense power when he discovered the Ka Stone, one of the jewels from the Lifestone Tree, other gems from which have powered other Marvel supervillains like the Basilisk, Moonstone, Dr. Spectrum, Man-Wolf and others.

The Condor and his colleagues explain to Nova that their mere criminal ambitions are nothing compared to the plans of the Sphinx, who intends to rule or destroy the entire Earth. The weaponry on the Xandarian starship that Nova’s uniform will grant him entrance to might provide enough power to stop the Sphinx once and for all.

With Nova at their side, the quartet reach the orbiting Nova Corps spaceship unaware that the Sphinx is still observing them from a distance via his viewscreens. Nova, Condor, Powerhouse and Diamondhead enter the Xandarian vessel since the computer systems detect a Nova Corps member, but Nova doesn’t know the codes to disable security androids which attack them when they try entering the armory.

The four of them destroy all the androids, and while the villains are rounding up all the Xandarian weaponry and looting the ship’s databanks, tensions between Nova and the others arise again. Another fight breaks out among them all, but Condor and the others use the battle to finish looting everything they need from the Nova Corps ship.

When Nova is reeling from the fight, Condor sets the vessel’s controls to whisk Nova away into deep space and leads his comrades in fleeing.

NOVA Vol 1 #8 (April 1977)

Title: Megaman Comes Calling

Villain: Megaman 

Synopsis: Nova makes his way to the bridge of the Xandarian craft as it races away from the Earth. Once on the bridge, his Nova uniform activates the ship’s computer, P.R.I.M.E. (Planetary Recorder for Information Maintenance and Education).

Conversing with P.R.I.M.E. our hero gets it to go back and resume orbiting the Earth while also educating him on the workings of the Nova Corps and other things that Rhomann-Dey did not have time to explain to him. With the vessel once more circling the Earth and cloaked, Nova returns to Richard Rider’s home to resume his civilian life.

Before long, as Nova, our hero gets caught up in protecting one of his friends from their villainous uncle, who was abducted by what the friend thought was a UFO during a vacation in the forest years ago. Instead it was a female entity from the far future which was the last living thing on Earth.

The Protector Entity altered the uncle’s body and gave him superpowers to let him survive in the dangerous future because she wanted him to keep her company for the rest of time. The uncle, now going by Megaman, managed to escape eventually and returned to the 20th Century and used his powers to start a life of crime. 

During a late-night clash between Nova and Megaman, the villain at one point abducts Richard’s friend Roger and sets a house on fire to force Nova to stay behind to save the lives of the inhabitants.

NOVA Vol 1 #9 (May 1977)

Title: Fear in the Funhouse

Villain: Megaman 

Synopsis: While Nova ensures that no lives are lost in the fire, Megaman and Richard’s friend Roger vanish into the night. Megaman explains to Roger that he wants him to come home with him and explain to his wife why he was gone so long and why his body has been mutated like it is.

It turns out the wife has remarried while her husband was missing and declared dead. Megaman does not take this well and attacks. Nova shows up and fights the villain from his ex-wife’s house to Coney Island amusement park.

After a time, the female Protector Entity from the far future shows up, loving Megaman so much that she doesn’t want to be parted from him. Nova is unable to stop it from taking him, and Nova & Roger wind up disgusted with how callous the wife Clara was about her husband’s misfortune. 

They tell her off and leave, hoping that Roger’s uncle will be happy in the future with the Protector since she loves him, unlike his horrible ex-wife.

NOVA Vol 1 #10 (June 1977)

Title: And the Sphinx Shall Inherit the Earth

Villains: Firefly, the Sphinx, Condor, Powerhouse and Diamondhead

Synopsis: Nova trails a new supervillain called Firefly to Westhaven Nuclear Generating Station along the Hudson River in upstate New York. The villain has been sabotaging a series of power stations, but Nova defeats him and turns him over to the cops.

After more high school and family drama, Richard Rider learns from P.R.I.M.E. that Condor, Powerhouse and Diamondhead have attacked the Sphinx’s cloaked headquarters the Pyramid of Knowledge, which he currently has stationed in northern New York. P.R.I.M.E. gives Nova the coordinates of the pyramid and he flies off to it.

Nova enters the chaotic battle. The Sphinx emerges victorious over all of them, even though Condor, Powerhouse and Diamondhead have been using the weaponry stolen from the Xandarian starship. He punishes the villains’ leader Condor by trapping him in the form of an actual condor for the rest of his life. The Sphinx embeds Diamondhead in a granite cliff, unable to move, and then prepares to deal with the fallen Nova and Powerhouse.

NOVA Vol 1 #11 (July 1977)

Title: Nova No More

Villain: The Sphinx

Synopsis: With Nova and Powerhouse strapped to some of his machines, the Sphinx probes Powerhouse’s mind first but learns that the villain does not possess the knowledge the Sphinx desires more than anything … the knowledge of how to destroy himself, ending the life he has grown so weary of over the millennia.

NOTE: Yes, that contradicts almost everything we were told about the Sphinx up to this point. You know how slipshod a lot of comic book writing can be.

The rest of this issue continues to fall to pieces. The Sphinx next probes Nova’s mind and learns that, thanks to P.R.I.M.E., Nova’s mind does possess the knowledge of how the Sphinx can end his life. However, the Nova powers that Richard now possesses permit his mind to hide that particular information from the Sphinx. (Go ahead and roll your eyes.)

Frustrated, the Sphinx strips Powerhouse of his memories of his powers and his life as that villain. He teleports Powerhouse in civilian clothing to London. Next, the Sphinx says he needs to keep Nova alive but unable to oppose him until he can someday devise a way of extracting the knowledge he seeks from Nova’s mind.

The villain then teleports Nova back to Richard Rider’s home in civilian clothing stripped of the memory of his powers and his activities as a superhero. As Richard then resumes his life as a teenager, his memories gradually start to return to him for some reason.

One day while on a tour of the Hempstead television station with his classmates, Richard’s memories get jogged and return to him in their entirety. The Sphinx has been keeping an eye on him via his viewscreens and now teleports himself to the tv station to once again capture our hero.

Richard slips away and becomes Nova, then takes on the Sphinx by himself. The villain uses his powers to deliver punishing smackdowns to the hero over and over again in front of the terrified tv station employees.

At length, readers are denied any real closure this issue as the Sphinx, in one of the tropes common to almost all pulp fiction, comes to respect Nova’s valiant efforts, even against a foe much more powerful than he is. Our villain teleports away rather than take the battered and barely conscious Richard with him, but states he will be watching him and will return when he least expects it. 

FOR MY LOOK AT GRIPS, A COMBINATION OF WOLVERINE AND THE PUNISHER CLICK HERE.

FOR MY LOOK AT DOC SAMSON’S EARLY ADVENTURES CLICK HERE.

FOR MY LOOK AT NEGLECTED MARVEL HERO ULYSSES BLOODSTONE CLICK HERE.