The Moon Knight scribe is turning his attention to another Marvel hero: Nova.
Thanks to news broken by Deadline, we’ve learned about another of the projects brewing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While it’s not yet confirmed as a film or a Disney+ streaming show, Nova is bound for our screens.
The project is being developed by Moon Knight writer Sabir Pirzada; as well working on that show, Pirzada has writing credits on Roswell, New Mexico, The Crossing and Person of Interest. As ever, Marvel head honcho (or, to give him his proper title, Marvel Studios President) Kevin Feige will produce.
It appears Nova has been on Feige’s hit list for a while. We spotted an article on ComicBook.com from the run up to Avengers: Infinity War where he talked about the character’s potential:
“Nova is… if we have a big board with a bunch of characters that have more immediate potential, Nova is on that board. Because of the connection to the Guardians universe, because there are more than one examples to pull from in the comics that are interesting.”
Feige goes on to confirm that the character appeared in the earliest drafts of The Guardians of the Galaxy.
Nova
For those without an encyclopaedic knowledge of Marvel comics history, we’ve done a little digging. The character may well be Richard Rider, a.k.a. Nova, a.k.a. The Human Rocket, a.k.a. Nova Prime.
Nova first appeared in ‘The Man Called Nova’ #1 in 1976 as a space-faring superhero drawing his powers from a cosmic energy source called the Nova Force. Those powers include flight, super-strength, endurance and speed, and the ability to absorb and release energy as pulses and beams.
If you cast your mind back to the 2014’s The Guardians of the Galaxy, we met the Nova Corps as the action descended onto Xandar. Rider is one of their number but he also boasts multiple comic connections to the likes of Gamora, Drax and Peter Quill. They’ve all fought extra-dimensional bug monsters together. Rider was originally a member of the super-team called “The New Warriors” too.
However, we read that there’s another option in Sam Alexander. Like Richard Rider, he too has cosmic powers – in this case thanks to a helmet which connects him with a super-intelligent computer called Worldmind. However, he’s much younger and learning how to be a hero, joining a super-team, “The Champions”, alongside Ms. Marvel.
It will be interesting to see which way they choose to go. ScreenRant ran a piece last year, based on Kevin Feige’s comments, suggesting the answer might be both!
As ever, we’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, Moon Knight lands at Disney+ on Wednesday, the 30th of March.