THE ULTIMATE SUPER-VILLAINS Part One - August 1996

To the Victor
Written by Richard Lee Byers

Summary:  Kang uses his fortieth century technology to kill New York’s heroes and rule the Earth.  Baron Mordo, Cobra, and the Abomination volunteer to act as his governors and help Kang defeat the other villains that challenge his rule.  Years later, Baron Mordo double-crosses the weary Kang and allows Dormammu to invade the Earth.  Kang travels back to the day he detonated a bomb in New York, and with the aid of his reluctant adviser Bruce Banner, stops his younger self.  Having averted that reality from existing, Kang fades away.

Continuity Notes:  Kang invades during the early days of the Marvel Universe, when Namor is still considered a villain and before Galactus visited Earth.

I Love the '90s:  Kang’s rule in the present day is referred to repeatedly as “the 20th century.”  I don’t know how Byers could’ve avoided this, but surely someone noticed that this reference would’ve been outdated in just a few years.

Review:  Years before Kurt Busiek will pen an extensive “Kang rules the world” storyline in Avengers, horror and fantasy writer Richard Lee Byers opens this anthology with a similar theme.  The story also predates Mark Waid’s treatise on a supervillain actually conquering the world in Empire, so he was clearly on to something.  The story’s hook is that Kang is simply unqualified to rule the world, as if any one person could dictate everything from flood relief in Central America to food distribution in the Sahara to a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  Kang’s also at a disadvantage because the only people willing to serve him as lieutenants are scum like Cobra and the Abomination.  Byers creates an interesting dynamic between Bruce Banner and Kang at the end of the story, and manages to keep a nice balance between drama and humor up until the end.  Kang’s realization that he’d rather be the aggressor over the defender sums up his character pretty well, and as a character study for a villain I’ve never cared about very much, this actually works as a decent opener for the anthology.



Connect the Dots
Written by Adam-Troy Castro

Summary:  Magneto and Xavier independently travel to Sunset Falls to recruit a young mutant named Joshua.  Joshua, a boy with mental problems obsessed with “connections,” possesses the ability to merge humans and objects together, creating gestalt creatures.  After Joshua merges Magneto and Xavier together, they’re forced to defend themselves from the massive monster of merged townspeople, and Joshua, who’s absorbed a portion of their powers.  With Xavier’s help, Magneto focuses on his childhood memory of being buried underneath his dead family and uses it to inspire the townspeople to free themselves.  The psychic backlash leaves Joshua comatose.  Later, Xavier and Magneto part as enemies, but with a new understanding of each other.

Continuity Notes:  Magneto’s memory of Nazis killing his family, leaving Magneto fighting to free himself at the bottom of the pile, was dramatized in Uncanny X-Men #274.

I Love the '90s:  More references to the story taking place in the twentieth century, this time the “closing half” and “final days.”

Review:  While not as weighty as the Chris Claremont material that inspired it, this is still a worthy addition to the pantheon of Xavier/Magneto stories.  Knowing that this was published simultaneously with Marvel’s sad efforts to make Magneto a genocidal maniac, followed by an amnesiac teenager, just irritates me.  There’s so much that could be done with Magneto following Claremont’s framework, but instead he was squandered for over a decade as fodder for holographic event comics and inane mysteries with no real resolution.  Castro is able to cut right to the core of the character, drawing upon his life of sadness and guilt, while also acknowledging his transparent efforts to justify his cruel acts as necessary for the defense of mutantkind.  The only person Joshua can find that Magneto shares any connection with is Xavier, who has his own issues, but they’re not as inherently interesting as the damaged goods Magneto’s been saddled with.  It's likely the best Xavier and Magneto story from this era, even if an inordinate amount of time is spent on the rather absurd villain of the piece. 



Firetrap
Written by Michael Jan Friedman

Summary:  Loki secretly follows Thor as he rescues people from a tenement fire.  He watches as Thor falls for the trap set by Hrok of the Surtursons, who boasts that he will torture Thor for all eternity.  Loki uses his magics to defeat Hrok, without Thor’s knowledge.  As Thor flies away, Loki reflects that only he will have the privilege of defeating his stepbrother.

Review:  This is a decent character story on Loki, the twist being that after an extensive monologue about his hatred for his brother, he ends up saving him from the story’s true villain.  Personally, I think Loki’s more entertaining when he has some level of affection for Thor (the initial Thor movie handled this well, I thought), as opposed to Friedman’s premise that he’s saving Thor because he doesn’t want anyone else to have the bragging rights.  Regardless, it’s a solid read that’s easily accessible for anyone scared away by the faux-Shakespeare interpretation of the characters from the comics of this era.

THE ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN Part Five - December 1994

Thunder on the Mountain

Written by Richard Lee Byers

The Plot: Spider-Man tracks the Rhino and a group of mercenaries into the wilderness, where an alien weapon is allegedly buried. A boy named Davy stumbles upon the fight, and after an injured Spider-Man saves his life, takes Spider-Man home to treat his wounds. Davy’s father, who’s determined to remove himself and Davy from society after the death of his wife, is livid that Spider-Man’s brought his family into the conflict. After Spider-Man leaves, Davy sneaks after him. Davy’s father soon tracks them down, and creates a distraction that enables Spider-Man to defeat the Rhino. The father begins to realize that it was a mistake to seclude Davy.

I Love the ‘90s: Spider-Man tells Davy that he’s a member of the “I Hate Barney Support League.”

Review: The premise of this story is fairly generic, but Byers adds a layer of mystery by opening the story with Davy’s point of view; the perspective of a child who’s lived in a cave with his father for most of his life and has never even heard of Spider-Man. Giving Spider-Man a kid to bounce off of, and a setting he isn’t accustomed to, also helps to make this seem a little less boilerplate. Davy’s unnamed father’s conversion is awfully convenient though. As the story points out, his fears about the outside world are essentially confirmed by the incident -- six outsiders have invaded his home and only one was a decent person. Instead of driving him further into seclusion, he abruptly decides that he’s been wrong all along. It could be argued that the father has learned that it’s impossible to keep his child totally safe regardless of where they live, but the story’s a little vague on why exactly Davy’s father has come around.

Cold Blood

Written by Greg Cox

The Plot: On a cold winter night, Morbius succumbs to his bloodlust and attacks a homeless man. Spider-Man arrives to stop him, leading to a battle in the snow that nearly kills Spider-Man. When he has an opportunity to kill Morbius with an icicle, he can’t bring himself to do it. After Morbius recovers from the fight, he thanks Spider-Man for giving him another chance and leaves, vowing to take only the blood of the guilty. Spider-Man does his final good deed for the night when he uses his webbing to create a temporary shelter for the homeless man.

Review: This is another story you might recognize from the 1994 flipbooks. I remember thinking that the Spider-Man/Morbius fight drags on for quite a while when I first read the abridged version in Web of Spider-Man, and time hasn’t changed my opinion. If you’re interested in an extended fight between Spider-Man and Morbius, told in the prose format, this is for you. Personally, I don’t find it a concept worthy of eighteen pages. Not that the story is totally lacking in depth, I suppose. Cox creates some symmetry with Spider-Man saving the homeless man from an icicle at the start of the story and nearly killing Morbius with one at the end, and he has Spider-Man ponder if he could’ve easily become the monster that Morbius is today as he debates stabbing Morbius in the heart (remember that Spider-Man had mutated into a six-armed freak when they first met). Cox is also able to use the frozen setting to the fight scene’s advantage, as Spider-Man must contend with a horrid environment that doesn’t seem to bother Morbius at all. And yet, the conflicts aren’t overly interesting and the fight scene does feel needlessly protracted. Compared to the other stories in the book, the concept just feels too thin.

UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN - Part Five

Deadly Force

Written by Richard Lee Byers

The Plot: Inspired by the death of Gwen Stacy, the Rooftop Ripper targets young blonde women and leaves their bodies on rooftops. During their first encounter, Spider-Man learns that the killer has super-strength. The Ripper knocks him unconscious and leaves him next to another victim. The next day, Spider-Man ponders using lethal force against the Ripper. He’s certain of the idea, until he mistakes a teenage purse-snatcher for the Ripper and accidentally breaks his arm. With a stronger resolve to protect human life, Spider-Man locates Ripper’s next hostage, saves her, and defeats Ripper by staying calm and focusing on the battle.

Web of Continuity: The Continuity Guide specifically sets this story three weeks after Amazing Spider-Man #122.

Review: One of the weaker installments in the book, largely because the Rooftop Ripper is such a lame villain. No motivation outside of general evilness, unexplained super-strength, dull visual (ski mask and jacket…not that an exciting visual would’ve properly translated in a prose story anyway), and dialogue on the level of a made-for-Lifetime villain all add up to a huge dud. And even though Richard Lee Byers does come up with a plausible rationalization for Peter to at least briefly contemplate lethal force, the concept still seems out of place in a Spider-Man story. Finally, attaching a serial killer to Gwen’s death is playing a little too loose with the “untold tales” premise for my tastes. Kurt Busiek came close to this line with the death of Sally/Bluebird in the Untold comic, but this seems like far too gruesome an event to have stayed buried in the past during all of these years. At least Byers doesn’t have Spider-Man save the final blonde on the Brooklyn Bridge, though.

The Ballad of Fancy Dan

Written by Ken Grobe & Steven A. Roman

The Plot: Spider-Man discovers that Fancy Dan’s son, teenage piano virtuoso Rudolph Loyola, has been kidnapped. While investigating, he discovers that Rudolph’s stepfather is suspected mobster Joseph Loyola, who’s feuding with rival Martin Severino. The Kingpin feeds information to both Spider-Man and Dan, which leads them into a confrontation with Severino and the Enforcers (who didn’t know Rudolph was their former partner’s son). After Severino is arrested and Rudolph is rescued, Dan realizes his son doesn’t recognize him. Loyola retires from crime and moves his family to Florida, while Dan contemplates an Enforcers reunion.

Web of Continuity: This story takes place right after Amazing Spider-Man#146. Although ASM #146 was published back in 1975, numerous references in this story place it more comfortably in the mid-‘80s. Not only does a bar owner call Damage Control after Fancy Dan wrecks the place, but there are several allusions to Daredevil having a similar interrogation technique; that’s really the Frank Miller Daredevil, which didn’t exist yet. Also, considering that Kingpin had been in retirement for a while before Miller revived him in the early ‘80s in Daredevil, his role in this story might be hard to fit into continuity.

Review: There’s a decent idea behind this story -- humanize joke character Fancy Dan and team him up with Spider-Man in a mob adventure -- and for the most part it works. I do think that a thirty-one page prose story focusing on Fancy Dan is going to pushing the audience’s patience under the best of circumstances, though. The best moments of the story happen towards the end, as Fancy Dan realizes that his estranged son doesn’t even recognize him, and Spider-Man calls out Kingpin for manipulating all of these events, but is forced to acknowledge that Kingpin’s selfish desires actually created the best possible outcome. Grobe and Roman also manage to work a flawless series of “illusion of change” into the story, as Fancy Dan is so disheartened by the loss of his son that he abandons any plans he had for reforming and just goes back to plotting Enforcer schemes. The reader has to feel for Fancy Dan, but by the end of the story, he’s still in the position he needs to be to serve as a throwaway villain.