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So, as you may or may not know, Spider-Man went through this massive change recently. In the dumbest massive retcon in... actually, less time than I care to think about... Spider-Man and Mary Jane made a deal with The Devil Mephisto (an evil being who lives on another plane of existence and collects human souls for fun and profit). He'd save Aunt May's life, but, in the process, would steal their eternal love, meaning that their entire marriage was literally magicked out of existence. (This was done because Joe Quesada, the guy in charge at Marvel, couldn't figure out how to tell interesting stories about a mature adult relationship.)
The most frustrating thing about all this is that they did a good job of it. They brought in a new creative team, including one of my favorite writers, fixed a lot of problems that the old people had left behind, reintroduced stuff like a supporting cast, spider-tracers, mechanical webshooters, etc. And now, instead of three monthly books, each with its own story, they have one book that comes out three times a month.
It was shiny and new and, if not perfect, still pretty cool.
But, as part of it, they decided that they needed some new villains. (They also decided to reintroduce the "Parker luck", where everything Peter tries to do, big or small, blows up in his face or at least backfires. Which is one of the dumber traditions I'd been happy to see left behind.)
So, their new and original villains so far?
1. Menace. Yet another guy on a goblin glider. Woo. Add him to the list. We already had three Green Goblins, at least two Hobgoblins, Jack O'Lantern, and I forget who else.
2. A guy whose name I forget. He drives a supercar. The twist with him is that he's a huge Spider-Man fanboy. Which is kind of interesting, but only used as a joke, and in strict moderation.
3. Freak. This is the one who prompted me to write this whole thing in the first place...
Freak is a junkie who broke into the wrong lab and injected himself with the first syringes he found, assuming they were full of heroin or something. Except that they were full of experimental animal technobabble created by Curt "The Lizard" Connors. So now he's a monster with bits and pieces of genes from half a dozen animals. Okay. Been done, but could be interesting, right?
Well, Doc Connors just figured out and explained his powers in last week's issue. When he's killed, his body (using twisted caterpillar DNA) creates a cocoon around him and then, due to technobabble, he regenerates and reforms, hatching a day or so later invulnerable to the thing that killed him. He was shot, he cocooned, he emerged bulletproof. He died in a fire, he cocooned, he'll emerge fireproof.
So... On the upside, at least we don't have a bogus technobabble explanation of how he died so many times that he "evolved past death." And we don't have a nonsensical extension of the power which says that not only is he invulnerable to the cause of death, he's invulnerable to the person who killed him (so the same guy couldn't have shot him and also set him on fire.
On the downside... he's still freaking Doomsday. You know, the guy from The Death of Superman? That's his power. The whole "whatever kills me makes me stronger" bit? That's what he does. It's his signature. He gets killed, then regenerates and comes back as a more powerful version of himself who is invulnerable to whatever killed him last time.
The spider-team decided they needed a fresh new villain to make things more interesting, and they gave us Doomsday as a Spider-Man villain.
The most frustrating thing about all this is that they did a good job of it. They brought in a new creative team, including one of my favorite writers, fixed a lot of problems that the old people had left behind, reintroduced stuff like a supporting cast, spider-tracers, mechanical webshooters, etc. And now, instead of three monthly books, each with its own story, they have one book that comes out three times a month.
It was shiny and new and, if not perfect, still pretty cool.
But, as part of it, they decided that they needed some new villains. (They also decided to reintroduce the "Parker luck", where everything Peter tries to do, big or small, blows up in his face or at least backfires. Which is one of the dumber traditions I'd been happy to see left behind.)
So, their new and original villains so far?
1. Menace. Yet another guy on a goblin glider. Woo. Add him to the list. We already had three Green Goblins, at least two Hobgoblins, Jack O'Lantern, and I forget who else.
2. A guy whose name I forget. He drives a supercar. The twist with him is that he's a huge Spider-Man fanboy. Which is kind of interesting, but only used as a joke, and in strict moderation.
3. Freak. This is the one who prompted me to write this whole thing in the first place...
Freak is a junkie who broke into the wrong lab and injected himself with the first syringes he found, assuming they were full of heroin or something. Except that they were full of experimental animal technobabble created by Curt "The Lizard" Connors. So now he's a monster with bits and pieces of genes from half a dozen animals. Okay. Been done, but could be interesting, right?
Well, Doc Connors just figured out and explained his powers in last week's issue. When he's killed, his body (using twisted caterpillar DNA) creates a cocoon around him and then, due to technobabble, he regenerates and reforms, hatching a day or so later invulnerable to the thing that killed him. He was shot, he cocooned, he emerged bulletproof. He died in a fire, he cocooned, he'll emerge fireproof.
So... On the upside, at least we don't have a bogus technobabble explanation of how he died so many times that he "evolved past death." And we don't have a nonsensical extension of the power which says that not only is he invulnerable to the cause of death, he's invulnerable to the person who killed him (so the same guy couldn't have shot him and also set him on fire.
On the downside... he's still freaking Doomsday. You know, the guy from The Death of Superman? That's his power. The whole "whatever kills me makes me stronger" bit? That's what he does. It's his signature. He gets killed, then regenerates and comes back as a more powerful version of himself who is invulnerable to whatever killed him last time.
The spider-team decided they needed a fresh new villain to make things more interesting, and they gave us Doomsday as a Spider-Man villain.
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