User blog comment:M(G)P/New Nova/@comment-1895174-20130117221539

I'm not sure what the context is for all this, but I can tell you this - Sam Alexander, like Ava Ayala, was created for the Ultimate Spider-Man animated series. Unlike DC, Marvel never really got around to giving their superheroes teenaged sidekicks. Then again, when you've got teenaged and/or young adult superheroes like Spider-Man and far too many of the X-Men, what did they need them for? So while DC had a multitude of sidekicks to just slap together at random for Teen Titans and Young Justice, Marvel needed to be a bit more creative to make their team of young superheroes for Ultimate Spider-Man. It probably worked out for the best, anyway, since the whole point of the team is to train a new generation of Avengers, not to be a club for sidekicks. This is where Sam Alexander and Ava Ayala come in. While the normally adult characters Luke Cage and Iron Fist were transformed into teenagers, the people behind the show decided to make two new characters in White Tiger and Nova to add some more diversity to the team. Otherwise, it probably would have been Spider-Man, some X-Men, and...I don't know, Rick Jones. So, as is usually the case, blame Jeph Loeb for everything.