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Marvel tried to expand their line in the 1970s, spinning characters off from existing titles, as with Ms. Marvel, or introducing new characters, such as Omega and Nova. Nova is one of what I call a "good idea for a character", by which I mean there's a good concept, but it is, in my opinion, poorly or inconsistently executed. Often times it takes a later creative team to make a character shine.
This was true with Nova, who I consider badly protrayed in his own title, but who later became an excellent character in the New Warriors title. One of the things that made Nova different from most other young super-heroes was his normality. Rich Rider wasn't the top student in class, he wasn't a genius inventor and he didn't have a convenient invisible mentor in his head, like Firestorm.
Another thing that set Nova apart from most other characters like him was that he had a really powerful recurring villain. Of course, he had a few lame villains in his time, but in Nova #6, a true world-class super-villain was introduced, The Sphinx.
As the court mage to Rameses II of Egypt, he'd been humbled by Moses and had been banished by the Pharaoh. When he found the Ka stone, it became grafted to his forehead and granted him immortality and power. Over his long life, he became bored with his purposeless existence and began searching for a means to free himself from the Ka stone. He was tormented, from time to time by the being known as Sayge, who taunted the Sphinx with predictions of his unalterable destiny.
The Ka stone gave him the power to read minds, among other things, and by the middle of the 20th century, he'd probed thousands of minda in his search for some way to end his own life. (He could give me the freakin' stone and be done with it, both of us would be tickled rosy!)
The Sphinx thought he found his answer in the mind of Rich Rider ( I know, ironic, ain't it?), in his implanted memories of the Xandarian world computer. He used Nova's Xandarian starship to travel to Xandar, and absorbed the knowledge of the giant computer. Finally achieving his goal, he abandoned his pursuit of oblivion, deciding to return to Earth to destroy it.
The Fantastic Four summoned Galactus to battle the Sphinx. Galactus plucked the Ka stone from his forehead and crushed it, then used his vast powers to banish the Sphinx back in time to the point of his discovery of the Ka stone. Now there were two of him, in the past. Galactus may know the far reaches of space, but with time, he's a bit clumsy.
It gets a little complicated, after that, the important thing is, the Sphinx is a good villain. His motives are a little nuttier than some, but they're unique and interesting. Even if you remove his deathwish, he's still interesting, since he has so much life experience, that could be tapped for stories. With his power, he belongs amid the ranks of Marvel's great villains.
Now, I don't necessarily believe that clothes make the man, but seriously, if you walked around in purple and green pajamas, with Batman (movie) style headgear, I'm thinking it's not too hard to understand his suicidal tendencies. Something super-villainish, sure, but a bit more dignified. At first, I thought I'd go with something pseudo-Egyptian, but thought better of it. Let him live in the now, as a super-villain.
I like purple and I liked the ankh on the belt, so I kept those. I thought a golden helmet worked better than the horn-like headgear, partly because, as with the movie Batman costumes, I don't like a costume where you can't turn your head. I lost the green altogether, because he's a villain, not a clown.
There are too few really major villains, the kind of villains who can drive a major story arc, so it's always bad when they write one out of existence. This leads to the overuse of a small cadre of characters, the Darkseid/Magneto Syndrome, I call it. My one complaint about the Sphinx is, a guy this old and, presumably, intelligent (by osmosis, if nothing else) should be more of a schemer, and a bit less of a brawler. However, sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty, scrape your own knuckles, because lackeys can be soooo unreliable!
Sorry this is so late, my girlfriend had to have surgery last week and it threw me off. She's doing well and I'm getting back on schedule.
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