In February, Invincible Iron Man #501 features an unlikely face-off-- IRON MAN versus DOCTOR OCTOPUS !! Dun dun dunnnnn! This cover shows it all, from next month's Invincible Iron Man 502:
This is an amazing development. I love Marvel villains, and I love seeing them pop up in other heroes' books. This is the way to make a vibrant, shared universe, without having everyone throw down with the same villain at the same time in the same event. It lends a dynamism to the universe and a significance to villain character's developments. Here, we learn a lot about Doctor Octopus' motivations and personality by having him interacting with Tony Stark, a true engineering genius, and allowing these two forceful personalities naturally clash. What's more, it takes Octopus' current status quo as the reason he's re-entering Stark's life now.
This kind of villain-go-round reminds me of some classic comics storytelling, where a villain would be a threat to one hero and thus later become a credible threat as a villain somewhere else. One of the earliest was this one, where Spider-Man villain Electro briefly became a Daredevil villain in his second issue (1964):
In the same way that Spidey-villain Rhino made a good heavy to slam into the Hulk in his issue 104 (1968):
And in a complete villain-go-round free-for-all, X-Men 22 (1966) featured Avengers' foe Count Neferia and a gaggle of other goons taking on the X-Men:
Sure, this was probably easier to do back in the day, with a relatively fewer amount of hero-to-rogue combinations, but I would be anxious to see more of these mixings and matchings. So, comics creators, can we make this a trend, please? Thanks!
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