Over the past decade plus, between television and film, we have seen most of the main heroes of the Marvel Comics universe come to life in live-action. There are, of course, a few notable exceptions, and prominent among those exceptions is the space-faring hero called Nova.

The Nova Corps, Marvel’s interstellar police force (and answer to DC’s Green Lantern Corps) have already been introduced in the very first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, however the Nova I’m referring to is Richard Rider, who had his own solo series in the late ‘70s, The Man Called Nova. Richard Rider was your average American teenager who became Earth’s representative in the Nova Corps. While his original series was somewhat short-lived, he remained a mainstay of the Marvel universe for decades. But of course, we haven’t seen him yet in the MCU.

That may change soon, however, as we’ve learned (via Comic Book) from director James Gunn, while talking to fans during a Facebook  Q&A, that Nova may be coming to the big screen. The director was asked by a fan if Marvel Studios had plans in store for the character of Nova, and Gunn said Marvel Studios is considering introducing the “real” Nova to the Marvel Cinematic Universe soon. So it’s possible, with the upcoming Captain Marvel film expanding the cosmic portion of the MCU, we may be seeing the character get his own film in Phase IV.

So just who is Nova, and what makes him worthy of his own film?

The character was first introduced in his own series The Man Called Nova #1 in 1976, written by future New Teen Titans creator Marv Wolfman and drawn by legendary Marvel artist John Buscema. Wolfman created Nova with the intention of making him a cosmically powered version of Spider-Man, with a dash of DC’s Green Lantern. The original series lasted 25 issues from September 1976 to May 1979.

Much like Green Lantern, Richard Rider is given powers when a dying member of the planet Xandar’s elite Nova Corps bestows upon him the uniform and powers of a Nova Centurion, deeming Richard a suitable recipient of the torch. Among those powers are strength, flight, telekinesis, energy manipulation, and even the ability to open wormholes in space.

The character was a main cast member of Marvel’s super team series The New Warriors, and also had a couple of attempts at his own series again, a second volume which lasted 18 issues in 1994-95, and an even shorter lived series called Nova, The Human Rocket in 1999. In recent years, the character of Richard Rider was killed off and replaced by another human teenager named Sam Alexander, who had a Nova series of his own. Eventually, though, the Richard Rider version came back to the land of the living, and now there are two human Nova Corps members flying about the spaceways.

The fact that the character isn’t among those in the upcoming New Warriors television series also suggests that Marvel Studios has solo plans for the character. It’s possible he could show up in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and then spin off into his own film. One way or another, it seems, Nova will join the MCU eventually. It’s just a matter of when.

What would you like to see in a big screen adaptation of Nova? Be sure to let us now down below in the comments.

Images: Marvel Comics

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