The Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-man Board Game from Milton Bradley greatly expanded my love of Ditko (a name I didn’t know), and the Fantastic Four, and the Spider-man rogues in general. Along with Cap, Iron Man, Thor, and of course Hulk, as mentioned in my previous post, they were my first Marvel Super Heroes. Her cartoon assures Spider-Woman the tenth spot in my quest to discover Marvel Heroes. I saw Matt Murdock and a color-separated image of him thinking about, but not Being, Daredevil. It had to be within a few weeks of that when I saw the macabre cover of Amazing Spider-Man #220, with Moon Knight. I didn't get to read much of it, but I did read the Aunt May back-up story! That cover creeped me out good. I saw it a couple of times and felt like someone had walked across my grave, seeing Spider-Man in a coffin like that. And then, the number of super-heroes I could identify would double in one month. The two issues I schemed to buy for myself each featured a sup...

Mmm...this one looks like it’s got Spider-Man! Art: Andru / Giacoia Story: Marv Wolfman What If? #15, part two In particular, it’s got Peter Parker. He’s attending a science exhibition of the crazy controlled radioactive ray variety, and from the glasses, he must be in high school. Once again, a spider has an unexpected role, and ”accidentally absorbs a fantastic amount of radioactivity...It bites the nearest living thing at the split second before live ebbs from its radioactive body... Why this time does overwhelming pain grip Peter Parker? Why did his hand glow? On this world, the bite contains too much radioactivity. This time, the visit ends in an ambulance ride. Only a radioactive control unit from Stark Industries can give Peter a chance. His Uncle Ben rushes with Aunt May, who responds to the awful news with a heart attack. Her weak-hearted, unconscious body is wheeled into the emergency award, in the presence of the best doctors on call. Ben Parker, old, weary, pra...

Dawn presents: What if? 15 July, 1979 A STUNNING SAGA OF AN ALTERNATIVE REALITY! What if...Someone else had become Nova? A man exists on different worlds...the same man...yet very different men! I really like the alternative worlds concept: the different layers of existence, the twists that would make one probability the onset of different consequences... Let’s see: first we have some nice John Buscema art. We start out with a bullied character, Rich Ryder, receiving the Prime Centurion powers from a dying hero orbiting the Earth. You automatically hope the bullying doesn’t make him a bully, himself (no offense Bully). Another world, perhaps the bully gets the “Nova Zap!” Now it’s time to explore one of those twists... (art: Simonson/ Wiacek) First, we have a grief-stricken woman, her husband felled, a man’s first murder...all she wants is for the man to pay. Helen Taylor’s haunted over the next three months: there’s no breakthrough. Just as she prays for a m...

“Song of Nova” The caption sings the song of Nova; his bard Mantlo asks, “How long ago was it that a dying alien ship sought out Richard Rider and passed on to him the powers of a Xandarian Centurion? Not long, as the universe tells time, but long enough for the astonished Earth youth to understand that with great power comes great responsibility...and come to grips with his mission as a Nova Prime!” (I can hardly express how mysterious and important these words seemed to me as I learned to read them all, sending me to the dictionary and Mom many times. The little adult in me found the idyll of the Human Rocket an intriguing drama, even when it puzzled me.) Here Rider uses the Nova Prime power to rip a gash all the way down the side of this mile long ship; the vacuum of space replaces the environment, as the Skrulls desperately try to change to some form of life that wouldn’t need to breath. “As for the traitorous Diamondhead,” Manto inveigles, “the accident that made...

http://i25.tinypic.com/1t6fr8.gif[/ HE’S GONE! The HUMAN ROCKET! NOVA One novice hero, one recovering amnesiac, a father/ son crime fighting team, one hard-boiled thug and two masterminds at opposite ends of the mystical and the mechanical now comprise the New Champions, flying now towards the original Nova Prime Centurian home, Xandar. Powerhouse pilots the space-phasing Nova Prime Star Ship, warping space to cross the galaxies. His memory recovered, he surprises Nova greatly---as do the inversions of color in space. Meanwhile, Doctor Sun’s interrogation of the Sphinx intimidates the Pharonic Sorcerer not one speck. He holds his silence as a counter to Sun’s power trip, but answers Nova: why IS he aboard this ship? In fact, Nova thought he was sent spinning off into space by the Fantastic Four! (See Fantastic Four for that story; I forget the number---175?.) He replies that Black Bolt, in fact, was the power that cast him adrift in space, tumbling on with his ruby Ka Ston...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPKmipuK74 Doctor Sun Ace of Base http://i27.tinypic.com/s6orp5.gif THE MAN CALLED NOVA #24 “Worlds’ War I Prologue: The New Champions!” Doctor Sun’s surprised to find Nova’s invisible space craft is not deserted after all! While Nova lies unconscious, Sun turns to find a figure he’s heard of but never before seen, skulking in the alien metal corridors: the Sphinx, who orders his silence. He scans the robot, notes his self-restoring part, and aloud, pities him that he should live a life so long as his own has been. Doctor Sun and the Sphinx, on two sides of the possession of immortality, each crave what they do not have. But why is Sun aboard the Nova Prime spaceship? They both seek knowledge within its vast, living computers, the “world’s only human computer” and the ancient sorcerer, wishing to prolong and end their existences, respectively...if that is in fact what the Sphinx truly wants. Nova’s awakening is no surprise to the Sphinx; h...

China, 1966. The Cultural Revolution. A scientist, as brilliant as any, is wheeled to an operation room. The doctor tells him “the general” feels he’s stalled too many tests, and will now make him test “Project: Mind!” The heart’s stopped; his brain is removed, to an anti-matter receptacle! The link with computers will give this brain greater knowledge than a man has ever known. But with it, comes power, including some bizarre blast that totals the surgeons! Sun needs blood to survive...and no greater scavenger ever there was, than cunning, powerful Dracula. Sun chose another vampire to be the receptacle of Dracula’s mind, but Brand was destroyed, and the man-machine chose to work behind the scenes (including a part in the plot for the Chimera; this is all courtesy Tomb of Dracula #18-25, and then a reprise around 41-44---lyrical Lue). His assassin Juno engaged Dracula very physically; temporarily taking his accursed life---only to have the kidnapped vampire hunters under Van H...

“Is the world ready for the secret of Nova?” \ Wolfman/ Buscema / Bob McLeod / Joe Rubinstein / Costanza/ Sharen Robbie doesn’t know it, but he’s just accused his brother of murdering their father. Thing is, Rich Rider, a.k.a. Nova, has yet to reveal his secret i.d. Charles Rider seems all right enough for Nova to pursue the Inner Circle leader, so he tells Robbie call ahead to the hospital. One bashed door later, Nova stands before the throne of the Corruptor, looking like nothing so much as an indigo Andrew Jackson, complete with eye beams capable of repulsing the Human Rocket. The Inner Circle acolytes gather with their special rifles, prepared to atomize the super hero. He follows the megalomaniacal villain into his “Computech” lab, one of many he suggests he has throughout the city. He points to a hologram intended to track his controlling influence (remember from #4? He can control people through chemicals secreted and spread skin to skin). He exclaims the change to more...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sed8IjdXdGk&feature=related Watchin’ the Detectives THE MAN CALLED NOVA #20 “At Last---The Inner Circle!” Wolfman/ Infantino / Hunt/ Rosen / Roussos Nova finishes his morning “super exercise” on “D-Day” for his make-up test. He and Robbie banter sarcastically; the postman, Hank,tells Mom his wife’s gone back to school, to graduate now that Hank Jr. is older. Rich’s Brazilian pen pal, to his disappointment, hasn’t written back. Mom’s gone from full-time to part-time work! Everyone’s on their busy way, when Robbie sneaks downstairs to unveil “Factor X---my robotic Sherlock Holmes!” He takes the robot, dressed like Basil Rathbone and smoking a pipe, snooping in Rich’s room. Rich turns in his double-checked paper; Ginger greets him, and Bernie jokes with Caps. His teacher’s grim look gives way to a 71 paper and smile: Rich will pass! Mazeltov! Hugs. Uncle Fudge’s! But over cream sodas they hear Donna Lee crying about the days-absent Mike Burley...

I’ve got to mention the back-up story in #18, where the court frees Dad on bail and Rich apologizes, in a scene heading into the house and one in at Uncle Fudge’s Shoppe, to his supporting cast for seemingly not caring. Meanwhile Robbie decides to turn his inventive quickness towards discovering the secret of Richard Rider. “Blackout means Business, and His Business is Murder!” Wolfman/ Infantino/ Palmer /Rosen/ Michele Wolfman Flying free above the harbor in NYC doesn’t mean Nova’s not flunking science and math hard enough to become the first kid left back a grade at Truman Capote High. Smiles drop with the black wave of absolute darkness, that not even Nova’s special lenses can penetrate. A zap from within the unknown sends Nova plunging backwards out of control into a building. He’s been mistaken for a spy by BlackOut, who approaches with another dark-matter-like thrust aboard black circles beneath his feet. They levitate him close enough to choke Nova with his powers and expla...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGgfHZ02I2k&p=80C2E5D8C76C19AE&playnext=1&index=19 Sheena is a Punk Rocker “Death is the Yellow Claw!” Wolfman/ Infantino / Palmer / Rosen / Vartanoff Richard’s sweating the essay portion of a Spanish test, and as we see, letting his worries isolate and distract him helps him not a whit. Ginger’s really had it with this trend; rather than enable it, when she runs into him in the hall, she asks why he’s avoiding their friends---what’s happened to the easy going guy “I once cherished”? Deciding to nix talking about Nova problems, and his dad’s guarded troubles, Rich’s attempt to slough it off, but she makes a point of HIS reticence. Ginger Jaye switches from firm confrontation to asking him to share, open up, as she reads his eyes. He keeps the burden of his splitting family, as well as his life as a lone and secret star, to himself. “If we’ve ever meant anything you can tell me what’s wrong” she says, but he runs out, nearly kayo’ing Caps...

First I wanna say Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen, who wrote a later revival of NOVA, has been reading along! Pretty cool. [i]Not ready for Nova Prime Time Players[/i] When this issue hit the stands, the general American public’s ideas of super heroes most likely came from campy sources, as BATMAN and WONDER WOMAN were the two most successful adaptation of super heroes in a decade. The popular culture has seen THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN since 1974, and other than WONDER WOMAN, that’s about it when you think about it. Saturday morning cartoons and comic books were seen as about on the same level by most of the public, despite the deeper characterizations and more mature themes that had crept in since the Silver Age. STAR WARS is coming, bringing less costumed-seeming super-heroes, or rather, bringing a super villain and mostly a motley crew playing hero in super circumstances, with powers, yes, which they're only beginning to grasp. SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE is still a year away, ...

1976. Jack Kirby’s highly-anticipated ETERNALS brings the Chariots of the Gods style to Marvel; issue #2 has a bullpen announcement about the excitement over the new hero, the Man Called Nova. Though most new heroes are launched in try-out books in these times, Stan Lee’s enthusiasm for the new hero gets him a first issue of an ongoing monthly title. “Now if only Wolfman, John Buscema and co. will hurry up and finish it!” That’s the way it was, in 1976: rock’s getting a new shot in the arm through punk, why not super hero comics with a punk of their own? Meanwhile, a bizarre flipside take on super heroes and high school coalesces in Nova’s contemporary, OMEGA THE UNKNOWN, as different from super heroics of the day as Nova was their embodiment. HOWARD THE DUCK and RED SONJA are the other two big debuts that come to mind, taking off by ’76 as smash hits embodying passing trends...though HOWARD seems built around its creator’s idiosyncratic persona, the sword by which the concept l...

“Photon is Another Name For...?” Writer/ Editor: Ocean Doot Penciler: Ross Andru Inks: Mike Esposito Colors: Glynis Wein Letterer: Joe Rosen Spider-Man looks over the crime photos of the wall melted out and Doctor Rider’s body lying before the ripped out calendar pages of the last half of the year. We get our six suspect ovals again, as Inspector Steel reminds him it’s a matter of police jurisdiction, and he has no plans to deputize Spider-Man and Nova. Spider-man insists there’s a good man, dead, and they will find the killer one way or another! The warning stands. Then he recaps the entire murder scenario written up above. All suspects but Michael Lincoln have fled, and the butler, who nearly revealed Photon’s i.d., is a cold body removed now by the police---one of whom announces a train left unchecked, excluded from their roadblocks. They stand near the wall melted outward by Photon. Nova’s on the case; he speeds past a hydrofoil on the water and overtakes the train, zoo...

Oh, No Va No more! Magic man Heart [IMG]http://i36.tinypic.com/jfu9o2.gif[/IMG] British cover, 1977 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd254scA8XU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKibjh1XYME&feature=related Welcome to Machine “Nova no more!” //">http://i30.tinypic.com/egodcn.gif Wolfman/ Buscema/ Giacoia/ Gaspar (Saladino)/ Marie Severin Inside his Pyramid of Knowledge, the Sphinx lays low all invaders. We resume just before the end of last month’s battle between Nova and Powerhouse, essentially replaying the incident, leaving all unconscious at the feet of the Sphinx. Nova’s sympathetic thoughts about P-H’s motivations end with P-H’s drain attack and confession that he cannot betray the Condor, feeling trapped by fate. Sphinx renews his search for “the one dark question I still must solve!” but first, exiles his lackey Kur with the Ka Stone, to a month in a Hell-like dimension. Faceless Sayge warns him he exalts himself too much as a god, which he defends; Sayge remind...