Marvel Flipside

Re-Villaining: Flashback

Time for some Re-Villaining 'round here!

FLASHBACK!
What He WAS: he WAS a super-villain, member of Omega Flight, the arch-nemeses of Alpha Flight. Before that, he WAS an actor, trying to make ends meet before being recruited by Omega's leader-robot. Before THAT, he WAS a member of Beta Flight, the heroes-in-training for Alpha. Before THAT, ... well, no one knows, except he was a mutant before being recruited the Betans.

Not many other opportunities for mutant with the ability to "flashback," or cause temporal counterparts of himself from the future to appear in the present. The problem with pulling future-selves into the present? One of them might die. And when one of them did, Flashback was convinced that HE would die. And no one heard from him again. Until the re-villaining!

What he WILL BE: the answer to the question-- what would you do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?

When Flashback didn't cease to exist when he caught up with his dead-future self right away, he slowly opened his eyes and looked around. Yes, he still lives in constant fear of his imminent death, but as long as it wasn't happening Right This Minute, he might as well swipe that cool jacket, or enter that restricted area, or dine-and-ditch that fancy restaurant.

Of course, this would allow him to be the villain behind a classic "locked door" mystery, solve-able only by the fine folks at X-Factor. After all, a Multiple Man versus Flashback match up would only be the most amazing thing ever, draw-able only by the massive talents of splash-page masters like Perez, Davis, or Pacheco!

Multiply your story potential-- exponentially!

Were I to Write: Ms. Marvel

Thinking about Thanos, and my mind ends up with... Ms. Marvel?

But why not? Let's name a couple of ways this actually makes a ton of sense. First, Ms. Marvel is certainly a legacy hero of sorts... to none less than Captain Marvel himself. And the Big-T is so linked to Captain Marvel as his nemesis, it's a no-brainer that these two should end up as bitter archenemies as well.

Second, Thanos has managed to make his way into the top tier of Marvel's villainy. And Ms. Marvel deserves to be the top tier of Marvel's herodom. And thirdly (actually kinda second-and-a-halfly), Ms. Marvel's title has been flagging for direction and sales (hmm, wonder if THOSE facts are linked) and putting Thanos in it might actually help raise the book to more flagship status.

The problem is that Thanos has been given so many power upgrades over the years that he's most likely able to whip Ms. Marvel in a straight fight on the face of it, so we have to give some reason for T-Money to both get Marvel in his sights and allow Marvel to trounce the heck out of him.

That's where the creepiness factor comes in, if you remember my previous post.

I say that, while Thanos hasn't really dedicated his love to Death in some time, he's still intrigued by Her. Namely, he wonders what it is about Earth that keeps Death so fickle (after all, dead doesn't really mean dead around there.) So Thanos, ever the scientist, wants to take someone who 'died-but-didn't-really' recently and... experiment. The fact that it's an experiment in the legacy of Mar-Vell is all the better. Maybe he can find the answer as to why the long-lost Captain Marvel remains among the dead after all . . .

and like Carol Danvers is going to put up with any of this! Sure, she may seem unmatched, but you know who also isn't going to put up with any of this? Death's protective "brother," Eternity, who might allow Ms. Marvel to tap into the power she needs to thoroughly trump the purple-puss in a glorious knock-down battle!

What do you think?

From the Message Boards: Villain Revamps

Lurking on the message boards at comicbookresources, I came across this poll/thread: Which villain needs a revamp?

At the time of my post here, Thanos is at the top spot, although it's just 12 out of 29 votes. Nefaria and the Serpent Society trail just behind with 11 and 10, respectively.

Thanos certainly was a great villain, back in the day, wasn't he? Here was a guy who worshiped Death, literally. But because it was the cosmic skeleton-lady version, Thanos was equal parts serial murderer and philosohper, meaning you could have some pretty big hero-villain beatdowns PLUS a heady dose of trippiness. But the problem with Thanos is that... well, he became "cool." Or, in more English-class speak, he became an anti-hero, and you can't spell anti-hero without "hero." Instead of worshipping Death, he seemed more interested in "cosmic balance" or somesuch-- whatever vague abstract thing that could allow Thanos to put weird machinations in motion but still seem to be working for the double big "g:" Greater Good.

Plus, let's face it, one of the most satisfying things a villain brings to the story is the fact that the villain will eventually be taken down by the hero, the harder the better. Every once in a while, a villain might reveal that it was "his plan all along," or the hero might learn it was a Pyrrhic victory, or insert-cool-twist-ending here where the villain escapes said Take Down. This has been happening with Thanos for far too long.

Thus, Thanos needs two things: he needs to once again be big, bad, and Downright Creepy, and he needs no other recourse but to be Taken Down Hard.

Those are my suggestions, as vague as they are. I'll try to come up with some answers for the Thanos Question (and others in the poll) throughout the week.

Re-Villaining: Zarrko the Tomorrow Man

First: Imagine if you could take all your modern conveniences back in time with you to the 18th Century. Not only could you write a new book called A Fill-in-the-Blank in King George's Court, you'd also be viewed as some kind of wizard. Sure, you're not THAT far removed from those two hundred years ago, but everything we take for granted in our digital, wifi world would be downright miraculous to our forefathers. 

Second: Remember Zarrko the Tomorrow Man? He first showed up in the pages of Thor because his future time period of the 23rd Century had no nuclear weapons, and he wanted to just steal them from the past so that he could rule the future.

So... what if Zarrko realized that the everyday technology around him in the 23rd Century were actually weapons and superhuman gadgets in our time? He might look something like this:

Which brings us into conflict with the Fantastic Four. Because you see, the Fantastic Four is all about progress (remember my last post?), and Zarrko becomes a villain that lets us introduce those themes and see 'em play out. What's more, all that future-tech is based on the taking conceits from the FF and progressing them to the nth degree. There's Thing-like rocky material for construction as well as cloth, an Invisible-ray to help you find loose change under the sofa as well as aid doctors in surgery, virtually everything is flame-proof but cookware relies on "nova-thermal" induction technology. All of it is possible because of the prevalence of unstable molecules in virtually every aspect of people's lives.

And Zarrko isn't that interested in conquering his world directly anymore. Instead, he'll use time-travel to help establish his power in the future by setting it up in the past. It may seem random from our perspective-- he arrives to plant a tree at one point, re-appears to stop traffic at another, and even helps a couple of strangers meet for the first time. Things start to take a turn for the worse, however, when these random things start to turn violent-- when a random person must be killed, when a building must be collapsed, when foreign aid must be destroyed before it reaches the war-torn refugees.

Is Reed Richard's mind capable enough to defeat a villain whose power is that of hindsight? He may look goofy, and he may be armed only with the equivalent of an Ikea showroom, but Zarrko the Tomorrow Man may prove the FF's greatest challenge ever!

Re-Villaining: Drom the Backwards Man

So let's see... we did Armadillo, Barracuda, Commanda... you can see what's next, can't you? That's right, it's a villain whose name ends in a vowel! Uh, actually, whose name begins with a D!

Scrolling through a list of Marvel villains, there didn't seem to be any that I wanted to sketch, until I got right to the end of the list... Drom the Backwards Man? Like, a literal backwards man? Turns out-- not so much. Until the revillaining!

Here's Drom...
Apparently, he's some future scientist who got trapped going backwards in time, including his very speech. So does that mean his real name is Mord? Anyway, he's always on the lookout to absorb energy from disintegrating people, making him a time-traveling backwards-talking vampire. Kinda. Spider-Man mistakes Iron Fist for Drom, kinda, and they fight until Drom has to take matters into his own backwards hands and kill one of them. The heroes team-up, naturally, and a mirror is broken, thus ending Drom's reign of terror. You see, Drom's existence was tied to the mirror for some reason, so when it was shattered, Drom was swept away, reverting instantly to infancy and "beyond..."

Re-Villaining is simple-- someone repairs the mirror, or otherwise sweeps it up enough to allow Drom to return! But because the mirror is so fractured, so is Drom's own body! His very physiology is "refracted." Believing no one can help him now, Drom takes it upon himself to try to survive and hopefully someday return to normal-- by whatever means necessary!

Dun, dun, duuun!

 

Re-Villaining: Commanda

Quick, name a female Spider-Man villain from his early days! Trick question, maybe. There aren't a whole lot. If you can remember my Sister Six post, I had to really stretch some ideas to make the femme Spider-fatales work. But there IS one, even if it is a retcon. Her name... COMMANDA!

Kurt Busiek's Untold Tales of Spider-Man was a neat little series tucked away under the shadow of its brash and bold 90s comics-cousins. But it, ultimately, told the tales of Spidey during his high school days. Case in point: a French jewel thief who took it upon herself to find some New York action and wound up defeated by Spider-Man. Her gimmick was a malleable suit of armor and a bunch of interchangeable mechanical "drones" that would fly around to create new contraptions, controlled by way of  her tiara. (More here.)

But being a bored jewel thief looking for some excitement? How very Black Cat. Or Joystick. Or (from the Other Company) very Catwoman. In other words, if Commanda is to return, there should be some role or niche for her to fill. As of right now, she's just too generic to be remembered. 

Basically, I re-villain her as if the Green Lantern used Legos.

Make the drones powerful electro-magnetic manipulators that are even more powerful when configured together. She can make flying platforms, sheilds, hammers, cages, drills, signs-- or even more complex machines and weapons-- electro-blast guns, cameras, EMP disrupters. Let the artist go wild with new fanciful constructions with bits of drones flying around. We can even re-design her costume with prongs so she can outfit herself with drones as necessary-- jet boots, armor, sensors or communications array. Imagine all the models of Iron Man being able to reconfigure into each other in the space of the same comic book...

And that bit about being a disaffected jewel theif? All of it a lie. Commanda was playing a part in a story she constructed just like she would with her mechanical toys. Piece by piece, it all fit together just the way she wanted it to. Even her defeat? Yes. Because that's what villains do-- they get defeated. And yes. She is quite, quite mad.

Commanda (real name unknown) was a brilliant engineer driven slightly insane by her work with the drones. She began to see how people's "stories" fit together like the drone-pieces, and that it was as inevitable as it was cliché that her story was driving her to a life of villainy. So she took it upon herself to try to make it the most exciting one possible-- exotic locations, fancy costumes, foreign accents, love and lust.

She's been planning her next story to be even bigger-- perhaps even the DEATH of Spider-Man, for REVENGE! And if it shouldn't go as planned, if her true story gets revealed, it will simply driver her deeper into her delusion, as she tries to "fix" the broken story by any means possible...

Very "meta."

Re-Villaining: Barracuda

The early summer of 2009 reminded us of the fact that piracy is alive and well in the current millennium. Yes, piracy. On the high seas, no less. Although in this case it was more a case of kidnapping-slash-extortion than stealing treasure chests and burying them. But it reinforces the fact that it's long overdue to re-villain one of the only pirates remaining in the Marvel oceans-- Captain Barracuda. (He's got an entry at the Marvel Appendix, but there's not that much more to him than "he's a pirate.")

Since it's been a while, however, we're probably due for a makeover. Something a bit more costume-y as well as 2009-y. In this case, shiny pants, a touch of asymmetry, and lots and lots of black. Also, ditch the bushy hair in favor of something more ... streamlined, but the beard can stay if you trim it up a bit, perhaps stylize it. I've drawn him in a more animated style to emphasize such stylization. And if we're going with streamlined, better shorten the name to just 'Barracuda.' 

And he doesn't need re-villaining as much as just re-upping the ante. He should be a pirate in the true villainous sense of the word. Mean, mercenary, cutthroat, violent-- and definitely The Man In Charge. Think Tony Soprano of a band of brigands. Too many times comics will try to re-cast pirates in a "new" way-- as pirates of space, as cyborg-pirates, as transdimensional time-bandits. Sometimes you just need a major badass meanie.

Which isn't to say that Barracuda can't keep up with the Big Leagues. He's a pirate in the Marvel Universe, after all, which means the technology he can outfit himself with comes stolen from Atlanteans, SHIELD, Bird People, and more. He's interested in blackmail, extortion, and the black market, making him run with the likes of Attuma, Deviants, and Monster Isle.

The problem is that he's off the radar for most heroes landlocked in New York. He's some exotic threat "out there" which makes him all that more mysterious. It makes for a change of pace for heroes like the New Avengers but might be right up the alley for the Fantastic Four. Namor the Sub-Mariner is obviously the likely antagonist, and he'll have to draw in the likes of Avengers or the FF (or, if he works fast enough at the time of this posting, the Dark X-Men.) It would be great to send him up against some unlikely heroes, too, like the Runaways or the Young X-Men. Let's see how quickly such heroes get their "sea legs" against such a villain!

Re-Villaining: Armadillo

He's big, he's strong, he's monstrous. No, I'm not talking about the Hulk, I'm talking about the latest villain to be re-villained, the Armadillo.

If you don't know the story, the Armadillo has one of those tragical-type stories. In order to find a cure for his death-stricken wife, Antonio Rodriguez volunteered to be a human guinea pig for a mad scientist-- and ended up a human armadillo. Not only that, but he was forced to break into the Avengers' West Coast compound and fought Captain America. But Cap has always been able to tell the truly bad guys from the not-so bad guys, and ended up helping the Armadillo instead. Truly repentant, the Armadillo went on to become a super-costumed masked wrestler instead. That is, until his wife ultimately left him, preferring the company of more non-armadilloish men, and he had to go on a rampage.

Still, the Armadillo never *really* was all that villainous, you see. Yet, every time he tries to do his time or go legit, something always happens to pull him back into crime.

And there's the hook. The Armadillo is the poster boy for the "anti-Midas touch." Whenever he tries to pick up some groceries, he ends up robbing the place. Getting frustrated with his noisy upstairs neighbors leads to a building collapse. Rescuing a kitten from a tree? Gas main explosion. Now, there's a fine line between this being comical and it being tragic. What keeps the Armadillo a villain is his temper and frustration with the world. Almost a metaphor for the fate-whipped common man, a la Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

This pairs him nicely against several heroes. Obviously, those tried-and-true heroes who haven't let fate/injustice get the better of them, like Spider-Man and Captain America, make the best candidates. He'd make a great Daredevil villain, too, especially if Matt Murdock or Foggy Nelson have to argue over whose fault the Armadillo's rage really is. But the Armadillo makes a great foil for another man-monster mentioned earlier-- the Hulk. Whereas we the readers see Bruce Banner lash in the form of the Hulk and still consider him a quote-hero-unquote, why do we not see the Armadillo in the same way? There would be some great commentary on what exactly makes a monster by re-villaining the Armadillo as a part of Hulk's recurring rogues' gallery.

Or just keep the guy a hero for a while. Maybe the writers just keep forgetting that he was once convinced to do so by none less than Captain America himself. Although so was Batroc the Leaper, and we see how far THAT went... (hint: not that far.)

Re-villaining: Ms. Minerva

Men call her ... MINERVA!
Okay, stay with me, because this might get complicated at first....

Minerva (or, technically, Min-Erva) was a proud scientist of the alien Kree, but one renowned for her unorthodox and hasty experiments. She went after the Kree hero Captain Marvel (or, technically, Mar-Vell) but was thwarted by her own people and wound up trapped on earth.

No problem right? She eventually gives herself superpowers and hooks up with Captain Atlas, freeing herself and becoming a villain for the hero Quasar-- the same Quasar who himself was a kind of heir to Captain Marvel's mantle "protector of the universe."

Oh, and those powers? She got them by experimenting with the Psyche-Magnetron-- the same device that gave Marvel's love interest, Carol Danvers, the powers of Ms. Marvel. So Minerva's costume-- the same pattern as Ms. Marvel's original duds. All of this was, of course, when Ms. Marvel was touring the galaxy calling herself Binary in a completely different costume, powerset, and, well, everything.

Still with me? Good! Because despite all this, Ms. Marvel's been back and trying to be a capital-H HERO. Which makes her a prime target for when returns--- Minvera!

Sorry for the B&W-- in this case, it really matters! Minerva's the
blue-skinned girl on the left, as if you couldn't tell.

Minerva has often wanted to use her science for the betterment of the Kree Empire, and, hey, if she could better herself along the way, that's bonus! Ms. Marvel has gone a long way from being merely exposed to the Psyche-Magnetron. Minerva is going to need a new subject on how to keep the Kree strong-- and Ms. Marvel is the perfect Guinea pig! This will require:

• Observation: Setting Ms. Marvel up with a variety of traps and enemies and psychological subplots
• Control Groups: Kidnapping and experimenting on normal humans, preferably Ms. Marvel's supporting cast.
• Field Study: Mimicking Ms. Marvel as a blue-skinned alter ego, further deepening the psychological subplots
• Experimenting: Finally uncovering Ms. Marvel's "Kryptonite," the two Misses of Might battle over Manhattan!

Minerva-- the worst evil twin Ms. Marvel's never had!

Re-Villaining: High Evolutionary

How can it be that the High Evolutionary, of all people, has been without a single-minded purpose? Yes, he has dedicated his life in the pursuit of understanding the evolutionary process, and this has led him to experiments and then even manipulation of such forces-- he has enhanced other lifeforms, given rise to whole Counter-Earths, and evolved like unto godhood.

Or has he?

The High Evolutionary should consider all his past experiments as mere trifles, as petty experiments more akin to a child playing with his first chemistry set. He has long realized that humanity doesn't care about the science he has learned, and so now, finally, he rejects humanity in turn. He will pursue the pure expression of Evolutionary Process for its own sake, wholly giving himself over to it, even if he disfigures himself by heightening his own evolution-- into an Elder of the Universe. This, then, will be his purpose!

The problem with being an Elder of the Universe? Your devotion must carry you on past the extinction of your own race. No problem for the High Evolutionary-- he will help the process along. To become the last, he will help humanity evolve so much that it burns itself out, leaving him with the vast cosmic power necessary to bring his Evolutionary study to planet throughout the cosmos, throughout time.

And his hopes lies with the X-Men and Earth's mutants. Instead of simply ignoring them (or using them for a brief experiment or two,) he will profess to help them gain their rightful superiority. After all, isn't beneficial mutation the defining evolutionary idea? The X-Men are torn, however. The number of mutants have been pushed the bring of extinction by the Scarlet Witch, so the High Ev's 'help' might be needed. But what happens if this help would mean the extinction of humans, instead? What happens when lines will be drawn, mutant brother against mutant brother, and, what happens, in the end, if the High Evolutionary will simply discard them all anyway for his own selfish cosmic ambition?  

Additional thoughts:
It's not that I necessarily *like* the High Evolutionary, you know. He's shown up in my Swarm Attack #4 pitch, and "she" showed up in my Flipside fanfic as a Brotherhood enemy (explaining that whole Zaladane mess, to boot.) It's just that there something that's so thematic about the guy that any use of him automatically kicks up a story to a metaphorical level, which I'm a sucker for.

Apropos to this villain is his "evolution" of his design. I wanted to redesign him to emphasize what an evolved human might actually look like. For this guy, his brain would be enlarged, of course, but so would his eyes and fingers, to make him both more alien and more scientist-y, more apt to probe and to manipulate. This wouldn't mean that he should look thin, however, since that implies weakness. Survival of the fittest dictates that stronger, more agile, and more physically impressive specimens would survive, thus his more imposing look. The armor also empahsizes a skeletal structure,for both the scientist and creepiness factors. Here are some sketches that helped me settle on the final look: