Who Opposes Someone With That Much Power?

The Sphinx is back in Nova's life, except he's actually demanding Nova's help this time. Whatever it is the Sphinx wants to do, someone is trying to stop him, and they're powerful enough (or have sufficient resources) to force him to call in help.

Who is it?

The Sphinx described what was going on as a contest of the gods, which as Reed Richards noted, might suggest he's battling Egyptian deities. That could be interesting, since that's not a realm of theology I can recall Marvel including much. There's Khonshu, of course, acting through Moon Knight*, and being otherwise mysterious in what it wants. Then there's Seth, the Serpent God of Death, who's the polar opposite, running around actively killing people, either with his own hands, or through his huge armies. Beyond that, I don't know of many of them being particularly active, though it won't surprise me if you tell me that Pak and van Lente used some others in Incredible Hercules**. Abnett and Lanning taking the opportunity to get a few more of them involved would be appropriate as well, if they really are setting things up for the Marvel Universe to be threatened by a universe on the other side of the Fault that's been conquered by honest to mind-shattering evilness Lovecraftian horrors.

However, I'm not sure it truly is a contest of gods. The Sphinx has a strong technological base for his power, another thing Richards noted when he mentioned the chronal accelerator. He further described the Sphinx as a would-be time architect on par with Kang or Immortus***. If the Sphinx wanted to alter things in his favor, it might stand to reason that Kang would intervene, right? He might do it as Rama-Tut, since that would fit with the Egyptian motif, and dueling with a time traveler would perhaps explain drawing people from different times to settle it. Or it's Adam Magus, since solicitations suggest he isn't dead (or there are 2 of them and the other one is in that damn cocoon thats been driving me nuts for the last year). That would satisfy my desire for a Kang/Magus/Sphinx mega-war, with all manner of related heroes caught in the middle.

Or maybe it's Dr. Doom. He's fed up with all this stupid bullcrap with Osborn, the Hood, Loki, Osborn's myserious attack dog. He sees the writing on the wall, that the "heroes" will triumph again, so why not take a trip into space, mop the floor with that Ka Stone wielding fool that might attempt to rewrite reality. Only Doom gets to do that, thank you very much! The nice part about that would be that it means the Sphinx picked Reed Richards solely just to tweak Doom a bit. Get the good Doctor focusing on Richards rather than vanquishing the Sphinx.

Yeah, long shot, I know. It was fun to consider, though.

* Or maybe Hawkeye, if you think Khonshu manipulated events in that West Coast Avengers story so Hawkeye would make the weapons Moon Knight would eventually use.

** Which doesn't mean you shouldn't tell me, 'cause I don't know for sure, just that it's something I would expect.

*** Why mention them separately? Doesn't Kang become Immortus eventually? Don't tell me they changed that, it was the one thing I was actually sure of about Kang's timeline, with all the Rama Tuts, and Iron Lads and such.