Nova Prime


 * Nova Prime is an Autobot in the IDW Publishing portion of the Generation 1 continuity family. He is also known as Nemesis Prime.



Nova Prime was the predecessor to Sentinel Prime. An expansionist and a supremacist, Nova Prime believed that Transformers were the greatest among all life forms and that they should bring their glory to the myriad of lesser races throughout the universe.

Sounds familiar.

IDW comics continuity
Long ago in Cybertron's past, before the Great War, Nova Prime made efforts to evolve the Cybertronians. At his behest, Jhiaxus, his chief technical adviser, altered six Transformers to be able to combine into a being of higher intellect and strength. However they were driven mad by the merging, and they devolved into a monster. After this, he ordered the construction of the first Ark. Despite Omega Supreme's objections, Nova deceived the Cybertronian populace into believing that the Ark was intended for exploration, rather than its true mission of conquest. Nova Prime disappeared along with the rest of the Ark ' s crew into an anomaly in the Benzuli Expanse and was presumed dead. Despite his aggressive intentions, these never came to light, and the Transformers honored Nova Prime's memory with a statue.

However, countless years later, when Optimus Prime downloaded himself into infraspace to survive an attack from Megatron, he sensed the presence of Nova Prime... and was filled with an incredible sense of dread. These feelings led Optimus Prime to seek information from Omega Supreme, who told Optimus of Nova's story.



It was later learned that Nova Prime was still alive (though now undead) in the Dead Universe and now calling himself Nemesis Prime. After observing the Reapers about to destroy Earth, he ordered Galvatron there to stop them, since the Earth was part of their expansion plan. Galvatron performed his task well, but Prime remarked to Jhiaxus that he was aware that Galvatron had his own agendas and secrets.

Trivia



 * Nova Prime was actually an Optimus Prime design that artist Don Figueroa had made for Hasbro, but it was never made as a toy. In fact, part of the combined super robot mode concept art was first seen on the BotCon 2005-exclusive cover for Infiltration issue 0.


 * It's unclear of when the Autobots evolved as a faction in the IDW-verse. Clearly, by Megatron: Origin, they were a police force working for the Senate.  However, it's not known for sure if they existed during Nova Prime's era; therefore, Nova may not be an Autobot.


 * According to Nova Prime's design sketches by Don, seen in the back of Spotlight: Optimus Prime, the form seen in the story is Nova Prime's winged cab/trailer super robot. He also has a smaller robot mode consisting of only the cab. The transformation of the cab is pretty similar to that of Energon Rodimus.


 * Nova Prime is the only Prime to be called Nemesis Prime. Even then, he's still the only evil Prime that doesn't work for Unicron.


 * This wiki used to give him credit for not being named Nemesis Prime. Then he had to go and ruin the joke...