Finally, Marvel Studios is getting around to a Nova movie or TV show
The Human Rocket is coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe... one way or another
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Years before the Marvel Cinematic Universe got obscure characters mainstream attention, Marvel’s “cosmic” heroes and villains in the comics developed a cult following beyond what The X-Men or Spider-Man were up to. So, when some of these cosmic heroes got called up to the big leagues of the MCU and James Gunn started developing his Guardians Of The Galaxy movie, it seemed like just a matter of time before their colleague Richard Rider, a.k.a. Nova, a.k.a. The Human Rocket, a.k.a. Nova Prime got a chance in the spotlight as well.
And here we are, just eight breezy years later (they flew right by!), and Marvel Studios is finally doing something with Nova. That’s the good news! The bad news is that we have no idea what that something is, just that Deadline has revealed that Moon Knight writer Sabir Pirzada is involved. It could be a movie, it could be a TV show, it could be an… animated series or something. We don’t even know which Nova it might be about, since there are two equally viable options that would both make sense, given the direction the MCU is currently going in.
The first, and arguably best, option is the aforementioned Richard Rider. In the comics, Rider was originally a member of the young super-team The New Warriors, but his star-making turn was in the first Annihilation event when he fought extra-dimensional bug monsters alongside some other space-themed characters you might have heard of like Gamora, Drax, and Peter Quill. Later, he and Peter Quill fought Thanos in a place called the Canververse where nothing could ever die, and it was very cool.
The other option is a kid named Sam Alexander, who got Nova’s powers while Richard Rider was in the Cancerverse. Like the other Nova, he has a helmet that puts him in contact with a super-intelligent computer called Worldmind and gives him the ability to fly really fast and shoot lasers from his fists. Unlike Richard Rider, he’s a kid who is still feeling his way through how to become a superhero, and perhaps most importantly, he joins a super-team called The Champions with Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan.
Considering that Kamala is now getting her own solo show and Disney+’s MCU projects have been steadily introducing various younger heroes, the Sam Alexander version of Nova might be the more obvious choice—plus, introducing him would make it easy to also introduce Richard Rider and come up with some explanation for why Richard Rider wasn’t around during the Thanos snap or any of the other big MCU events that have happened.
But whatever happens: Nova is coming! Finally!
61 Comments
Maybe they’ve been fighting over what diversity demographic they’re going to change Nova to?
I don’t care if John C. Reilly’s character in GotG was neither of these people you mentioned, they should cast him in the lead.
I would hope his character is involved in this story, at the very least. He could be some sort of a mentor to the kid Nova
His character does have a kid, so they could use that as an entry into this new adventure.
“Nova Prime! Galactus is about to devour the planet and—”“You’ll have to wait a minute, son. Nova Prime has to think about his whole life before he saves the world.”
Gonna be hard to save the universe without a sense of smell, and he will NEVER pay for the drugs.
Rocket Racoon: [Holding helmet] You don’t want no part of this shit.Sam Alexander: You know what, I don’t want some bulky helmet slowing me down.
Rocket: You’ll be faster, and you can fly.Sam: It seems like it’ll make it hard to hear.Rocket: You’d be able to hear the super-intelligent World Mind.Sam: Oh, okay… well, I don’t know… it might make it harder to learn to shoot lasers.
Rocket: You’ll shoot lasers from your fists!Sam : Sounds kind of expensive.
Rocket: We just give it to you for free. You don’t want it!Sam: I think I kinda want it.
Okay, but I demand they recycle the Jerry Buss hair.
He’ll be dead in the MCU, since Thanos went there to get the Power Stone pre-snap. He killed every Nova Corps member then half the population of Xandar, then fucked along, but the key word was “pre-snap” since Banner only undid the snap.Chances are the offscreen devastation of Xandar will feature into this, and we’ll see a whole “Nova Corps redirects all their space power or whatever into the last surviving Corpsman who was off planet at the time” thing as the origin for the character.
That’s easily hand waved away by saying he was off planet, especially since we didn’t see ANYONE on Xandar actually die.
Sadly, this is probably right, unless he’s the surviving Corpsman you speculate about.
“Well, I don’t know if I believe anyone is 100% a dick.”
Ralph Wrecks the Universe
But who will they get to play Commander Adsit?
The role practically casts itself
Man, this writing would’ve stuck out so badly on the old AV Club
Are you trying to say that it doesn’t stick out now? Because it does, and not in a good way
“Man, this writing would’ve stuck out so badly on the old AV Club”
I’d love to play a Where’s Waldo with the above type of comment because I’m certain a variation of this statement exists on every article comments section.
Or even just drink everytime someone says “the old A.V. Club”, idk, have at it.
Dick Rider.
Is he Honey Rider’s distant relative?
Heh , my first thought on reading this article.
Sounds like a gay porn star.
I was waiting for it in the list of aka’s.
Rocket’s gonna have a field day with that one..
It’s none of my business how many richards a man rides, or where he may park his peter.
Since the Nova Corps seemed underpowered compared to the comics I think they may have already built in the situation for a superpowered Nova to show up in Infinity War. We never saw how Xandar was destroyed and that is the event in the comics that really boosts his power.
It just seems like that would tie in and explain how the space cop becomes a one man army.
Just say that he got caught in a Power Stone-driven explosion just like Carol Danvers had in a Space Stone-driven explosion and there you have it.
His origin story should be tied in to the as of yet unseen Thanos attack on …uuh…fuck I forget the name of the planet but the nova one. Like they give him the stone and tell him to fly off with it but he’s shot down and crashes and the stone reacts or whatever.
Xandar
I can’t read the phrase “Power Stone” without hearing “WELCOME TO THE POWER STONE WORLD!” in my head.
Me trying to understand a single sentence of this article:
“In the comics, Rider was originally a member of the young super-team The New Warriors…”In the comics, Richard Rider was created 13 years before the New Warriors.
Oh, so we’re expecting research from AV Club now?
Now we just need Wendall Vaughn
They’re gonna have to change the name if they want this to play in Spanish-speaking countries.
You think it’s a no-go otherwise?
If this is a reference to the car, that story is an urban legend and not true.
Eh.
Cuando una estrella explota, todavía es una “super-nova”.
I dunno Soy Milk seems to do fine.
FINALLY. Give us space war stuff, Marvel. We’ve been wanting it. Annilihus would be a fine villain to introduce in a Nova movie.If it’s Richard, maybe we’ll have him, Gamora, and Star-Lord get into a throuple situation. (Bring back Ewing’s GotG roster, Marvel, you cowards!)
“In the comics, Rider was originally a member of the young super-team The New Warriors, but his star-making turn was in the first Annihilation event”Tell us you were to young to read Nova’s earliest adventures without telling us directly.
Out of all the sideshow celebrity showings. John C Riley and Glenn Close seemed like they would add a hip yet odd presence to more than cameos. Otherwise, they feel wasted.
Seriously?Nova is like a C-class Marvel character, even for the diehards, so I am not really sure about this. Eternals was a huge misstep for the MCU, not because of the shitty characters, but having a Celestial hatch in the middle of the planet, and another just chillin’ in orbit means every f’ing human on the planet knows this crap happened. You can no longer tell story on Earth that does not include that bullshit. You might try that in the comics, but my 77 year old mom asked me why Thor was not there helping. People take this shit seriously, and Nova/Kid Nova, whatever, does not rank.
I get Nova confused with Captain Marvel. Er, the male version? Wasn’t there a blond guy in a red and blue union suit who was affiliated with the Kree? Was that Nova? Or Captain Marvel?
There was the first Captain Mar-Vell, who eventually got the red and blue costume that became the defacto color scheme for Captain Marvel related named characters. A version of him was played by Annette Benning. The comics version was traditionally blonde. He is of Kree origin.Quasar succeeded Captain Mar-Vell as the Protector of the Universe. Quasar’s first costume was modeled on the original Marvel Boy, but he eventually changed his costume to match the color scheme of Captain Mar-Vell. He used Quantum Bands. When he died for a bit, Mar-Vell’s alternate universe daughter took up the mantle of Quasar and usage of the Quantum Bands.Nova is unrelated. He’s a member of the Nova Corps, originating on the planet Xandar. His costume is usually just blue and gold (no red except for a flourish on his gold bucket helmet). Mar-Vell related characters usually have a star insignia, but Nova Corps suits have three yellow circles/sparks joined together by lines.
The MCU was built on c rank characters. The Guardians are among Marvel’s lowedt selling properties in the comics and their movies are a hit. The people who will see this movie will judge it on its own merits, not its arbitrary rank among comic fans.
But why was it a huge misstep? Are your only two criticisms that you didn’t like the characters and that you felt like other Avengers should have helped, because the later has been a recurring criticism of the MCU for years now. I have to ask… is the reason you didn’t like the characters due to their race and or sexual orientation. Saying “I just didn’t like them” also defaults into the racism column. Give it a think.
My pitch: we open with John C. Reilly crashing on Earth and giving a prototype Nova helmet to Richard Rider or Sam Alexander or whoever, and telling them they need to stop Thanos… and then Reilly watches them get dusted right after, taking the helmet with them.
Nova had one of the laziest origin stories ever as I recall. Be interesting to see how they do that today.
… “finally?”
Avengers Infinity War establishes that Thanos decimated Xandar when he retrieved the Power Stone. That’s a thread that needs exploring.The Nova Corps that we’ve seen so far in the first GotG flew spaceships instead of having helmets and innate superpowers.In Annihilation in the comics, Annihilus destroyed Xandar leaving Richard Rider as the last remaing Nova Corps member, and his arc in his solo series was rebuilding the Corps.So I would venture that the MCU version will be that Richard Rider or Sam Alexander are tasked with rebuilding the Nova Corps after their destruction by Thanos, and part of that process is reconfiguring the Nova Corps so they have powers more similar to the comics version.
I forgot how much I love the fact that the line “Thanos already has the Power Stone because he stole it last week when he decimated Xandar.” effectively undoes the entire journey / adventure that happens in the first Guardians of the Galaxy film. Don’t they even rejoice that they’ve saved Xandar at the end? I can’t recall. I love it.
Well, Thanos basically undoes much of the victories that the heroes had achieved in the earlier movies, so it fits. I read somewhere they had planned to feature the attack but cut it out for time in the scripting process.
If we get a Penance series, I’m out.
So if Marvel does the Nova thing, will we then get Marvel zombies?
Marvel Zombies is confirmed as a cartoon coming in the sometime future at Disney +
Will will get blood is a better question. The answer is probably no.
Wonder how they’re going to get around [W]GBH’s trademark for their documentary program.