Current music:	eternity - ian gillan
Entry tags:	char: nova/richard rider, char: sphinx/anath-na mut, creator: andy lanning, creator: dan abnett, in-joke: tl;dr, publisher: marvel comics, title: nova

Two opposite figures (younger and older versions of the Sphinx), battling each other in a place where time has no meaning and space has no contiguous sense...

... summoning heroes and villains from across time to serve as their pawns in this battle, pitting one against the other on different battlefields...

... and the winner gets the other's Ka Stone, and all the near-godhood that that entails.

(Okay, that also makes it like every Marvel " giant spaceman proxy fight " story ever, but a Keith David!Sphinx would be kinda neat if it ever happened, so it all evens out.)

Anyhow, the battles concluded last issue- the older's pawns, represented by everyone who ever beat him (Nova, Darkhawk, Mister Fantastic, Black Bolt, and Namorita) triumphed over the younger's (a bunch of guys whose powers come from " the ancient crystals ", ranging from Moonstone to Man-Wolf.)





... Sphinx!control. I suppose this explains some of the discrepancies folks noticed with the younger's pawns.



And so we cut to Nova 35, released after a two-week delay.

Sphinx is high on his power now; the heroes and villains (Darkhawk no longer under Sphinx's control, and both sides having suffered temporary losses), realizing this god doesn't have a use for them anymore, strike at him:



(Ulysses Bloodstone, master of understatement! Also, I love Reed trying to, uh.. stretch at him.)

They try to seek the powerless younger Sphinx's help; all they get out of him is stuff about paradox magic, how brilliant he.. will be?, and that he.. will be.. quite mad...

But then Sphinx eliminates that avenue:



The heroes and villains have no hope now, it seems.

Until Reed's giant science brain realizes something: basically, real space is anathema to the Sphinx right now.

If he enters real space before he's used his new powers on the universe to accept him, well... he go boom.

So Nova works up a quick plan involving a stargate and Reed making science calculations, and goes to it (realizing that " holy crap, i'm holding off a GOD "):



And so Sphinx and the magic world go boom; everyone snaps back to their points of origin.

Nova, however, grabs at Namorita-who-will-be-dead, saying " I won't lose you again! "

And he bamfs back to the Nova Corps starship from the Starstalker bit, but someone else came along with him:



Later, Darkhawk and Nova talk about how the fuck that just happened.

Darkhawk says: " This isn't right. "

Nova says: " I don't care. "

Next ish: Nova, Darkhawk, and 616!Quasar vs. the sentient cancer universe's Quasar!

(and then, after that, it's apparently going on some kind of hiatus...)