The Infected and The Corrupted: Part 5 of "Bring on the Baddies - More Than 60 Possible Phase-Ending Bosses Still Available to the MCU"

So, at this point we've looked at a variety of directions from which the next phase-ending threat to the Marvel cinematic universe could hail--space, time, various nether realms. But what if the next big challenge was to come from within the ranks of the heroes themselves?

Below, I break down a variety of scenarios drawn from the comics that involve either heroes or their allies becoming corrupted into fiends with the power to conquer or destroy the MCU.

• #54 Marvel Zombies
• #55 The Presence
• #56 The Magus and his doppelgangers
• #57 Deacon Frost and his vampire plague
• #58 Sentry/Void
• #59 The Maestro / Red Hulk / Mindless Hulk / Devil Hulk
• #60 Dragon of the Moon
• #61 Onslaught
• #62 Franklin Richards
• #63 Jamie Braddock
• #64 The Marquis of Death  
• #65 The Squadron Supreme
• #66 The Corrupter
• #67 Psycho Man, The Hate Monger and the Microverse

Marvel Zombies: Continuing a story introduced in the pages of Ultimate Fantastic Four and written by Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead, this very popular mini-series may well qualify as a modern classic. Unlike many zombie stories, this one largely focuses on the zombies themselves--because the infected retain much of their intellect in spite of their overwhelming hunger for human flesh. This leads to poignant scenes of heroes grappling with the revulsion and guilt associated with their depredations, many of which involve them savaging those closest to them. So while many argue that the zombie genre is well past its peak, this feels like a legitimately fresh take. That said, it's hard to imagine the concept fitting into a PG-13 movie plot.

The Presence: An alternative to the above horror-heavy tale, I'd offer one of my favorite stories from Kurt Busiek's run on Avengers in the early 2000s. In this scenario, the Avengers are asked to investigate the disappearance of Russia's super-team The Winter Guard during a mission in Siberia. This investigation reveals that the team has been turned into translucent radioactive zombies connected to a hive mind controlled by the former Soviet physicist The Presence. (They look a bit like the ghost army from under the mountain in Peter Jackson's LOTR finale "The Return of The King.") Close contact with these zombies--unavoidable in combat--leads members of the Avengers team to gradually become irradiated until eventually only Thor remains uninfected. Though the heroes ultimately (and obviously) prevail, this is a dire threat that the cross-time conqueror Kang explains as having wiped out humanity on other less-fortunate earths. And it would offer a gore-reduced yet visually stunning take on the genre.

The Magus: While it's probably getting a bit ahead of the game to talk about an alternate version of a hero that Marvel has yet to feature in its movies, The Magus--an evil doppelganger of Adam Warlock--factors prominently in the comic book sequel to The Infinity Gauntlet. Even though the Magus had been introduced more than a decade earlier in Warlock's own comic, he had been believed eradicated along with the potential future timeline that had spawned him. But finding his way back to the land of the living as a byproduct of the events in Infinity Gauntlet, The Magus sets out to claim the gauntlet and confronts the assembled heroes of the Marvel comics universe with nightmarish doppelgangers of their own. At one point, an expeditionary force of many of the franchise's most powerful characters finds itself in battle with a literally infinite army of doppelgangers that absorbs the fallen and recycles and replenishes its numbers. I'd love to see this depicted on the big screen--as it's clearly cinematic in scope.

Deacon Frost: We've talked about zombies, but you can't forget their undead brethren the vampires. While the OG vampire Count Dracula has been a major player in Marvel comics dating back to the days of his own book, Tomb of Dracula--and in spite of his repeated skirmishes with Doctor Strange and Blade--I'm guessing that the MCU would favor its own unique creation over one borrowed from public domain. I'm supposing then that Deacon Frost--Blade's arch-enemy--would be the natural stand-in. The recurring Captain America villain Baron Blood would be another possibility.

The Sentry and The Void: This character's story took a while to pay off, but there's no denying that the results were pretty spectacular. Robert Reynolds is portrayed as a hero from the early days of Marvel continuity--but one who has been wiped from the memories of both his peers and the general public alike. It's eventually revealed that this massively powerful being--who touts himself as having the power of "a billion exploding suns"--was complicit in wiping everyone's memories to save the world from his arch-enemy The Void, with whom he has some mysterious connection. Coming out of his self-imposed retirement, Reynolds demonstrates a shockingly wide range of abilities--near limitless physical strength, flight, near-invulnerability, apparent serial immortality, etc.--as well as an equally shocking amount of mental instability. The core mystery behind the character's origins and his ties to The Void would make for a slow burn that could culminate in his betrayal of his teammates--much as Reynolds would end up fighting all combatants in the climax of Marvel's Siege crossover in the comics. 

Various incarnations of The Hulk: There is no shortage of stories from Marvel's back catalog focusing on the power of The Hulk.

• The Maestro - An alternate future version of the character who has wiped out all of his former teammates.
• The Red Hulk - A mysterious counterpart to Bruce Banner's alter ego, this ruthless assailant operated much like Scourge from the pages of Captain America in the mid-80s--full of malice and cunning and fueled by inscrutable motives; he'd later prove to be a pawn of the group called The Intelligensia--a cabal including Modok, The Leader, Doctor Doom, The Wizard, and the Red Ghost
• The Mindless Hulk - My favorite bet for a phase-ending threat, this is the mindless engine of destruction that resulted from Bruce Banner being separated from the Hulk persona; this version of the character was literally an avatar of unfocused rage capable of leveling entire cities and tossing the Avengers' most powerful characters like rag dolls
• The Devil Hulk - I'm less familiar with this one, but I believe the idea is that this is the ultimate version of the character--the full destructive potential combined with an independent evil intellect, a force of nature unchained

The Dragon of The Moon: Another combination of an enemy from within and an enemy from without, the Dragon is an ancient being that seeks to enter the world through its pawn--the aptly named would-be hero Moondragon. A human raised by monks on Thanos's home world of Titan, she is a mentalist and martial artist whose haughty demeanor and arrogance leave her vulnerable to the at-first-subtle influence of the dragon. In time, this influence spreads until it takes her over completely and puts her in mortal combat with her teammates among the New Defenders--resulting in the deaths of half the team, herself included.

Onslaught: While this isn't necessarily a popular story, it was nevertheless a landmark event and one that could be commemorated in the MCU--though presumably not until well after mutant-kind has been incorporated into the movie continuity. A gestalt of the consciousnesses of Magneto and Professor Xavier, the Onslaught entity--once revealed--opposed both the X-Men and Marvel's human heroes while exhibiting massive, reality-warping psionic and energy powers. The story saw Earth's human heroes shunted to a pocket dimension where they relived updated versions of their origins before finally finding their way back to Earth-616.

Franklin Richards: Another option that would have to wait on the introduction of characters whose movie rights were--until recently--retained by Fox, you could cover any of the numerous stories involving Franklin Richards, son of Reed and Sue Richards, whose reality-altering powers will one day rival those of Galactus. Over the years, Franklin has been treated as a macguffin by various villains who seek to tap his enormous potential (Doctor Doom, Onslaught, others); and he has served as a threat in his own right, as universe-bending power in the hands of a child can obviously present a precarious situation.

Jamie Braddock: The mutant brother of Brian Braddock (Captain Britain) and Elizabeth Braddock (Psylocke), Jamie poses a threat similar to that of Franklin Richards--though much smaller in scope, as he can only twist reality in his immediate vicinity. But I could picture Marvel up-scaling his abilities if they wanted him to serve as a stand-in for Franklin. His mental instability--which fluctuates between whimsical and terrifying--might also make him a more interesting foe. (When I read through his dialogue bubbles, it brings to mind--for me, at least--a drunken Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of The Caribbean.)

The Marquis of Death: While discussing characters with massive reality-shaping powers, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Clyde Wyncham. Wyncham first appears in the mini-series "1985" where he is shown to be the only mutant on Earth-1218--an institutionalized, brain-damaged individual who unintentionally begins to draw beings from other more fantastical realities to his "real world" Earth where superheros and super-villains only exist in comic books. An alternate future version of this character--one who has unlocked his full potential and has full use of his cognitive abilities--becomes the self-styled Marquis of Death, an ally to Doctor Doom and destroyer of countless Marvel realities until confronted by both the Fantastic Four and the Clyde from the "1985" storyline. The Marquis is one of very few villains whose powers dwarf Thanos's abilities--as they also dwarf those of pretty much everyone else on this list including Franklin Richards.

The Squadron Supreme: Mentioned elsewhere in this blog--in one of the earliest installments, in fact--the Squadron was originally something of a parody of DC's Justice League. They've since taken on a life of their own however--first in Mark Gruenwald's thought-provoking 12-issue Squadron Supreme mini-series and then in various ongoing series in the 2000s. Reflecting the fact that DC heroes are somewhat over-powered compared to their Marvel counterparts, the Squadron members are all potential world-beaters--Hyperion (i.e., Superman) specifically. So any story that would involve the Squadron visiting the MCU and meting out their often-brutal brand of justice would set the stage for a cataclysmic showdown.

The Corrupter: The Corrupter is a fairly small-time villain with the ability to influence the minds of others. To the extent that he has been responsible for some major throw-downs--between the Squadron Supreme and the Avengers, for example--he could be the catalyst for a phase-ending battle even though he's not capable of posing that level of menace on his own.

Psycho Man and the Hate Monger: Psycho Man and the Hate Monger, on the other hand, do have the potential to wreak havoc on a global scale by manipulating emotions in a way that could drive whole civilizations to tear themselves apart. A tyrant from one of the many microverses within what the MCU now calls "The Quantum Realm," Psycho Man enjoys corrupting characters by bringing their baser emotions to the surface--as he most famously did in turning Sue Richards, the Invisible Woman, into the being known as Malice. (Yes--I know--there's a more complicated back story there with a disembodied entity that moves on to inhabit other characters, but we'll stick with the simplest version here.) Teamed with any incarnation of the Hate Monger, they'd make a terrible twosome easily capable of raising armies to challenge the heroes of the Marvel cinematic universe.

So are you ready for next week's dramatic conclusion? How many of the stories I've touched upon seem like plots you'd want to see in the MCU? Would any of them rival your interest in Infinity War and Endgame? Let me know down in the comments section below.

Next time: Part 6 - The Return of The One-Hit Wonders!

Blasts from the Past--or the Future: Part 4 of "Bring on the Baddies - More Than 60 Possible Phase-Ending Bosses Still Available to the MCU"

So we've looked at foes that could pierce the veil between dimensions or that could menace the MCU from across the dark ocean of space. But another source of future stories could be the wide expanse of time--foes looking to restore some forgotten power or empire or who seek to strike at the present from the far-flung future.

Here are some threats from the Marvel comics catalog that could look to conquer or destroy the MCU from across time:

• #42 The Sleepers
• #43 The Serpent Crown and the armies of Atlantis
• #44 The Zodiac
• #45 The Sphinx
• #46 Knull
• #47 Mangog
• #48 Sin-Se-Neg
• #49 Kulan Gath
• #50 Them
• #51 The Scarlet Centurion
• #52 The Warlord
• #53 Zarrko, The Tomorrow Man

The Sleepers:  These are a personal favorite of mine because of their appearance in the 1960s Marvel Superheroes cartoon I later watched in syndication as a child. Three giant robots lying in wait to exact the Red Skull's final revenge if the Third Reich ever fell, they were a menace on a much bigger scale than anything that Captain America had otherwise fought. So while he was conveniently able to disable them in the comics and in the cartoon, one could easily picture a movie plot where the combined prowess of all the MCU's heroes would be required to overpower them once their doomsday trigger had been activated.

The Serpent Crown and the armies of Atlantis: You can consider this a two-for-one deal, as either the crown or simply the discovery/emergence of Atlantis could separately pose a massive threat to the MCU's earthbound heroes. That said, the two are heavily intertwined in Marvel comics history, with the crown having been in play at the time of Atlantis's sinking and having been used more recently to erase the memory of Atlantean heir Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. The crown was a mystical artifact tied to the serpent god Set who used it to retain influence in this realm. It could grant the wearer vast mental powers including both telepathy and telekinesis, though these gifts came at the cost of the user ultimately becoming Set's thrall. In the comics, the crown would eventually influence the barbarian usurper Attuma to lead Atlantis into an all-out war on the surface world in the aptly named "Atlantis Attacks" storyline.

The Zodiac: The Zodiac checks both boxes when it comes to this category, as it involves both a time-lost artifact and an element of time travel. The Zodiac is an international criminal organization with vast resources that is typically in pursuit of an object called the Zodiac Key. The group has 12 leaders each representing a zodialogical sign, though one is usually ascendant--typically Scorpio, who is revealed to be Nick Fury's brother Jake. In a great segment of Dan Slott's somewhat controversial run on Amazing Spider-Man, it's revealed that the key--which has been shown to generate great bursts of energy--is actually designed to open a secret vault containing every detail of future history over the following 12 months. The scope of the organization--which could easily rival Hydra--and the nature of this "macguffin" could easily lend themselves to a high-stakes, multi-story cinematic arc.

The Sphinx: The Sphinx is a character with immense physical strength and energy manipulation powers bestowed by the ancient Ka Stone which also curses him with immortality. Empowered by the stone in ancient times, The Sphinx uses it to influence history for millennia until he is so bored with existence that he becomes obsessed with finding a way to end his own life. This leads him into conflict with the hero Nova, from whom he learns of the living computers of Xandar--a repository of information so extensive that it is bound to have the solution to his quandary. In the end, he gains enough knowledge from a visit to Xandar to learn that he is stuck in a temporal loop that will forever see him flung back into the past to relive his immortal life--a cycle that his subsequent schemes attempt to break.

Knull: This one could be hard to reconcile from a rights perspective, as it's a character that would presumably tie to Sony's Venom movie franchise. The god and source of all symbiotes, Knull hails from the void that predates the known universe and is powerful enough to have clashed with the likes of the Celestials. A very recent addition to the Marvel comics catalog, he's already made a big splash in sparring with their other cosmic characters; so I imagine either studio could generate a lot of interest/excitement around a Knull-based plot if usage could be worked out.

Mangog: A manifestation of the hatred of "a billion billion" beings killed in an invasion repelled by Odin, this creature lies dormant under Asgard until freed by Ulik the troll. Perhaps also a threat that could be explained by the destruction of Asgard itself--its prison having been reduced to a cinder by Surtur?

Sise-Neg: An enormously powerful character, Sise-Neg was a 31st century sorcerer who engaged in a backwards trip through time to absorb magical energy--making him more and more powerful the further back he traveled. Shadowed by Dr. Strange and his oft-time rival Baron Mordo, Sise-Neg would eventually make it back to the dawn of time itself--at which point he essentially became omnipotent and the impetus of creation. (It's in the name--Sise-Neg is Genesis in reverse.) So this would focus on mystical elements likely to be prominent in future MCU phases and would provide a suitably vast scope to match Infinity War and Endgame.

Kulan Gath: Another favorite of mine, Kulan Gath was a Hyborian-era sorcerer who came into continuing conflict with Conan. He would manifest himself in modern times when a necklace containing his essence was donned by the night watchman at a museum--allowing him to regain his physical form. Opposed at first by Spider-Man and a briefly reincarnated Red Sonja, he would later transform all of Manhattan into a Hyborian-era city--a transformation he would threaten to spread across the globe. In the end, it would take the combined forces of the Avengers, X-Men and Dr. Strange to defeat him and restore reality. He has popped up time and again with the same agenda--so Marvel Studios could leverage several variants on this theme as source material.

Them: I actually had some difficulty finding info on this enclave that I had recalled from my childhood comics, as the particularly nondescript (yet menacing) name of "Them" had apparently been used to describe a couple of different shadowy groups. In this case, I'm referencing the ruling council of the ancient hidden city of El Dorado. This group was able to wield mystical powers stemming from a living flame that served as the city's basis for existence. Most dangerous of the council members was an aged version of the villain Tyrannus--former master of an underground kingdom that often clashed with the Mole Man and his subjects. So this would be another scenario involving immortals seeking to restore the greatness of a bygone era by supplanting the modern world.

The Scarlet Centurion: One could argue that these aren't distinct characters--that this character, Rama-Tut, the Warlord mentioned below, etc. are all just various incarnations of the time lord Kang. But from a plotting standpoint, this particular foe would fill a very specific niche. The Scarlet Centurion was a time traveler who visited an alternate Earth (Earth-689) and convinced the Avengers that the only way to prevent a global cataclysm was to defeat and de-power all other super-humans. So I could picture a Marvel Civil War-like outcome where those heroes convinced of the accuracy of this prediction would clash violently with those doubting the centurion's mission and motives. (It could presumably even be mixed with plot points from the Marvel Civil War II story line from the comics--as you could simply replace the prophecies of the Inhuman character Ulysses with the centurion's first hand knowledge and evidence.)

The Warlord: As mentioned above, this is yet another incarnation of Reed Richards's time-tossed father Nathaniel. But in this case, I'm thinking of a specific story line from John Byrne's run on Fantastic Four--the one that introduces the character as having marooned himself in an alternate timeline where human civilization had devolved into a weird mash-up of cowboys, dinosaurs, and killer robots following the destruction of the moon. Yes--you heard me--cowboys, dinosaurs, and killer robots. 'Nuff said. Someone needs to make this happen.

Zarrko, The Tomorrow Man: In some ways a poor man's Kang, Zarrko was a scientist from the 23rd century who clashed with Thor early in the latter's career--back in the pages of a comic that was then still called "Journey Into Mystery." But Zarrko was involved in multiple eons-spanning plots that could be adapted into a phase-ending MCU set piece--like the time that he tried to collapse all eras of time into one, or the one where he enlisted the aid of Marvel's heroes to stop the Time-Twisters, the last living beings from the end of the universe whose periodic interactions with Earth's earlier timelines would result in global destruction. So a lot to choose from there.

That brings us close to 60 potential threats/themes already, and there are two more general categories to come. Which ones have seemed most interesting or promising to you thus far? Did any of my summaries lead you to look up unfamiliar characters or plot lines? Let me know in the comments section below.

Next time: Part 5 - The Infected and The Corrupted!

It Came from Beyond the Stars: Part 3 of "Bring on the Baddies - More Than 60 Possible Phase-Ending Bosses Still Available to the MCU"

With Kevin Feige from Marvel Studios having announced that future MCU films will be cosmic in scope--and with an Eternals movie already on the slate--indications are clear that Marvel will begin to increasingly mine it's deep history of star-born threats. As I mentioned in a previous post, Galactus and the Celestials would be obvious choices to contribute to this offering. However, it would be just like the creative minds behind this supremely successful franchise to once again subvert expectations by either inserting and elevating another "mini boss" from the ranks below, or by somehow enlisting multiple cosmic beings into some sort of multi-faceted crisis.

Because Marvel caught fire during the Silver Age of comics--an era dominated by science fiction themes including a lot of interplanetary travel--its back catalog of space invaders is quite diverse; not every enemy from beyond the stars looks alike or poses the same type of existential threat. So here is some background on several of the best options Marvel Studios could choose to complicate upcoming phases of the MCU:


Threats from beyond the stars (or at least from among them):

• #24 Terminus
• #25 The Shaper of Worlds
• #26 Annihilation Wave
• #27 Korvac
• #28 The Overmind
• #29 The Phalanx
• #30 The High Evolutionary
• #31 The Star Brand
• #32 The Triune Understanding 
• #33 Star Thief
• #34 The Master of The World
• #35 The Stranger
• #36 Space Phantom
• #37 The Watchers 
• #38 Secret Invasion byThe Skrulls
• #39 The Shiar
• #40 The Badoon
• #41 The Z'Nox
• #42 The Brood

Terminus: After saving Earth from Galactus's depredations on numerous occasions throughout the 60s and 70s, the Fantastic Four faced a new twist on the theme during John Byrne's legendary run on the comic in the 1980s. Terminus was a towering physical giant intent on plundering the planet of its resources. Standing roughly 150-feet tall, he was armed with a lance capable of generating powerful bolts of energy and--even more destructive--a seething cloud of plasma that could break down the landscape around him. After initially being driven down deep into the surface of the Earth, the would-be planet-killer escaped and--in battle with the Avengers--completely destroyed the hidden Antarctic dinosaur sanctuary known as "The Savage Land." So there'd be no "mini" to this boss.

The Shaper of Worlds: Another interesting twist on the above theme, I could see The Shaper translating very well into a movie universe. This character--who can't really be called a villain--revealed himself to be the sentience that had emerged from a cosmic cube created by the Skrulls (also mentioned below) in ages past. (Note: In the comics, the Tesseract--or "cosmic cube"--is a man-made device and it functions more like the Reality Stone from the MCU.) The Shaper toured the universe tapping into--and manifesting--the imaginations of various beings he'd encounter. But in an MCU looking to achieve realism within a fantastical world, I think it would be much more interesting to re-imagine The Shaper as a terraforming device or craft. You could still keep much of the same backstory--he could hail from Skrull space and could look to transform planetary surfaces using brain engrams from willing collaborators--but you could skip the part where he looks like a giant blue Skrull sitting in a tank. (Yeah, that's what he looks like.) So the MCU version could be more like The Caretaker from the pilot episode of Star Trek Voyager. (Yep--I buried a deep cut within another deep cut.)

Annihilus and the Annihilation Wave: Sometimes, you just want your villains to be straight-up terrors--which is what Annihilus and his Annihilation Wave represent. The bat-winged insectoid emperor of the antimatter universe known as The Negative Zone, Annihilus is himself a massively powerful being. His "cosmic control rod"--which he guards jealously--makes him the physical equal or better of virtually any hero or force he encounters, the absolute ruler of his domain. And then when you add the locust-like swarm of his insectoid army bent on, well, annihilating the lifeforms of the positive matter universe (as it's in the name Annihilation Wave), he'd clearly be a sufficiently formidable opponent to culminate the end of an upcoming phase of the MCU.

Korvac: While the Korvac Saga is one of my favorite stories, I'll admit that his appearance would be a longshot given his story's similarity to Infinity War. A cyborg who finds a way to tap into the essence of Galactus--and therefore imbue himself and his mate with nearly limitless cosmic power--Korvac is opposed by both the Avengers and the Guardians of The Galaxy in a tale that actually brings the teams together in a way that the Infinity Gauntlet comic does not. In the end, he and his love Carina fight a pitched battle with the groups and seemingly kill both rosters save for Thor and Moondragon before Korvac relents and gives his life to raise the fallen heroes.

The Overmind: Mentioned in passing in my last post, The Overmind is essentially a living weapon that combines--into one persona--the minds of hundreds of millions of beings from a long-dead space-faring race. In theory, it should have unparalleled mental powers--though its comics appearances aim low and focus on subjugating individual heroes (Mr. Fantastic), teams (The Squadron Supreme), and--at the high end--leaders from numerous nations. But the underlying concept is pretty fertile ground that could be expanded--perhaps into a story like the "World War 3" storyline from Grant Morrison's run on DC's JLA. (That story saw a powerful alien entity make entire civilizations tear themselves apart from the inside--fomenting rioting and worldwide war.)

The Phalanx: Moving on from mental domination to physical domination and transformation, we should also consider The Phalanx--a race of techno-organic beings first introduced in the pages of The New Mutants. Much like the Borg--yes, another Star Trek reference--The Phalanx can infect other lifeforms and have been shown in various guises: their own natural state, merged to humans bent on the eradication of mutant-kind, and, finally, being used by Ultron to enslave the denizens of the Kree Empire.

The High Evolutionary: Technically, the High Evolutionary is a threat from Earth that has spread itself across the stars. Starting off as a human scientist named Herbert Wyndham, the High Evolutionary was a geneticist who experimented with his own genetic code--granting himself a wide variety of powers ranging from super-intelligence to energy manipulation. He would then in turn leverage these abilities to "evolve" other creatures--including numerous animals he anthropomorphized into a group he called his "New Men." Based first in Europe, Wyndham ultimately decided to create his own world--a parallel "Counter-Earth" orbiting on the opposite side of the Sun. The power required to accomplish such a feat definitely cements the High Evolutionary as a major player--and his interest in playing God through the advancement and regression of whole societies would generate plenty of opportunities for conflict with the heroes of the MCU.

The Star Brand: I'll probably delve into this more in a future post, but the short history of the Star Brand is that it was introduced as part of Marvel's ill-fated New Universe comics line in the 1980s. Without going into the other comics in the line here, the flagship story revolved around an auto mechanic who found himself branded with an alien tattoo--one conveying the curse of seemingly unlimited energy powers that would continue to grow exponentially with use. In the end, the Star Brand would destroy a city and bring the Earth of the New U to the brink of global war--as well as make itself a prize sought by alien races across the Marvel multiverse. Not a bad post-Infinity Gauntlet macguffin.

The Triune Understanding: The Triune Understanding is actually the name of a pseudo-religious organization that opposed the Avengers during Kurt Busiek's run on the book. The Triune Understanding used its status to undermine the credibility of the superhero group through a well constructed PR campaign that framed the Avengers as intolerant aggressors. Tied to the origins of an obscure hero named 3-D Man--and his successor Triathlon--the leadership of the Triune Understanding was eventually revealed to be pursuing ultimate power in the form of an eldritch pyramid on a collision course with Earth. As luck would have it, the Avengers would find a way to use the pyramid--a fragment of pure evil from another universe--as a weapon against the armies of their perennial adversary Kang. (Another potential macguffin.)

The Star Thief: There have been three unrelated incarnations of the Star Thief which could support stories with very different stakes. Speaking to the smaller scale first, the third Star Thief was a human man imbued with cosmic powers in a satellite accident that killed his family and destroyed his physical body. An energy being, this version of the Star Thief would be more of a pawn rather than a boss-level threat--but a powerful pawn nonetheless, as Ditmil Pirvat was capable of fighting off the entirety of the group called the New Warriors. The first and second uses of the name Star Thief--on the other hand--belong to respective characters who were able, though physically unconscious or insensate, to reach across the universe and affect reality on a cosmic scale including the disappearance of entire stars.

The Master of The World: As I've mentioned before, I was a big fan of the first few years of the Alpha Flight comic back in the early 80s. So it only makes sense that I'd have an interest in the character who effectively serves as their arch-nemesis. The man who styles himself the "master of the world" started off as a caveman who had the misfortune to stumble across a spaceship sent to Earth 40 thousand years ago by the warlike Plodex race. The icebound Plodex vessel would capture and vivisect him--but would retain his consciousness for study, a mistake that would later lead to his mind infiltrating the systems of the ship and rebuilding his body. The Master (for short) would first encounter various members of Alpha Flight, the Sub-Mariner, and the Invisible Woman in a campaign that would lead to them unwittingly freeing him from his erstwhile prison. He would go on to oppose them many times after that--often using Plodex technology in his bids to conquer the world to which he'd so recently been reintroduced.

The Stranger: Though this was not revealed during the initial appearances of the character, The Stranger was the counterpoint to the Overmind--a collection of the minds of the other civilization that had perished in the same galactic war that destroyed the Overmind's people. But unlike the Overmind, the Stranger sought mostly to observe the actions of lesser beings rather than conquer them. Pursued by the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants--both of whom mistakenly assumed he was a powerful mutant--The Stranger whisked Magneto away to his planet, but did so more for the sake of study and evaluation instead of punishment. The Stranger would repeat this type of activity over the years--continuously evaluating and re-evaluating the viability and worthiness of various races including humanity, leaving the door open for him to be included in the MCU as either friend or foe.

The Space Phantom: Not to be confused with Hanna Barbera's "Space Ghost," this character is one of the first villains encountered by the assembled Avengers in the early 1960s. A shape shifter, Space Phantom also had the ability to send the person he was impersonating into a timeless limbo. In time, it was learned that whole planets could be cast into limbo and that there was an entire race of space phantoms--not a singular entity. So this would be a scaleable threat.

The Watchers: While the Watchers are among the better known alien races in the Marvel comic book universe--known specifically for their vow non-interference in the affairs of the beings they observe--not all Watchers have, in fact, chosen to abide by that directive. Uatu, Earth's Watcher, has, on multiple occasions, acted to thwart extinction-type events involving humankind; but there are other other rogue members of his race--most notably Aron--that have sought to use their massive godlike powers for their own machinations and experiments. The Fantastic Four also learned that the Watchers are mortal enemies of the Celestials and that only a fragile detente between them prevents a reality-threatening war between the groups.

Stormtroopers: Made you look. (Ha.) In this instance, I don't mean the fighting force from the Star Wars films. Instead, I'm more generically referencing all of those alien armies that would seek to enslave the human race with a combination of massive armadas and boots on the ground. Their number would include:

• The Skrulls - For those who haven't seen the Captain Marvel movie, I'm just going to bookmark this race--and their foes the Kree--to avoid spoilers. But I will say that the Secret Invasion storyline is one of the most memorable of the 2000s and that the concept of Super Skrulls--Skrulls modified to allow them to duplicate the power sets of multiple super beings such as the rosters of the Fantastic Four and X-Men--would be awesome to seen adapted on the big screen.
• The Shiar -  Sometime foes and sometime allies of the X-Men, this is the race involved in the original telling of the Dark Phoenix saga. At first, they are led by the mad emperor D'Ken who seeks to unleash the power of the M'Kraan crystal--a gem containing an entire galaxy within it, and the artifact that the Phoenix force first emerges to defend. It's also worth noting that the Shiar have their own super beings--a group called the Imperial Guard that clashes with the X-Men on the surface of the moon in a battle for the life of Jean Grey, one of the most memorable fights in Marvel comics history. They'd be more than a match for virtually any assemblage of heroes in a future-phase fight.
• The Badoon - Introduced in the 1970s as a reptilian force that conquered the Earth in the original Guardian's alternate future, they would come to plague numerous super-teams in the present of the Marvel comics universe as well.
• The Z'Nox - Another X-Men foe, these aliens were repelled only after Professor X went into seclusion for many months to construct a defense based on the collective consciousness of all of the humans on Earth.
• The Brood - Yet one more foe of the X-Men, these are quite literally nasty buggers. Think xenomorphs but with different heads and somewhat more insectoid bodies. Also like xenomorphs, they leave eggs in hosts--though these simply transform one into a Brood member rather than erupt from the chest. (Not saying it's a trade up--just different.)

So did I miss any other cosmic menaces you'd have included? There are so many--and some can be so repetitive--that I intentionally kept this summary somewhat surface-level, excluding threats like the floating space maw Galaxy Master or the race of metal masters--both from the pages of The Incredible Hulk--as they felt a bit too campy to me.

Let me know if you'd have included them or others I omitted in the comments below.

Next time: Part 4 - Blasts from the Past--or Future!

From Lovecraft with Love: Part 2 of "Bring on the Baddies - More Than 60 Possible Phase-Ending Bosses Still Available to the MCU"

Continuing a topic I introduced in last week's post, I'm going to explore another one of the several categories of additional threats that the MCU could use to follow Phase 3's focus on Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet.

While some of these enemies are genuinely unique, many assume similar guises as self-styled demons or deities seeking access to the earthly plane from neighboring dimensions (i.e., "There is no Dana; there is only Zul"). So as I've previously mentioned, it's unlikely that Marvel would choose to leverage more than one of these threats--at least not in adjacent phases. I therefore note below where I think that some of these entities have stand-alone appeal outside of representing an unnamed Lovecraftian horror.

The Other-dimensional Threats:

• #9 Nth Man and The Crossroads to Infinity
• #10 The Entropic Man
• #11 The Great Beasts
• #12 The Adversary
• #13 "The Serpent" and Other Dark Gods
• #14 The Demogorge
• #15 Nightmare
• #16 Chthon and the Darkhold Cult
• #17 D'Spayre
• #18 Shuma-Gorath
• #19 Null the Living Darkness
• #20 N'Astirh and The Inferno
• #21 Master Pandemonium
• #22 Belasco
• #23 Mephisto

The Nth Man: I've gushed about this story in other posts, but I've not really described the villain at the center of the Project Pegasus Saga in the pages of Marvel Two-in-One. Unlike the other creatures on this list, the Nth Man wasn't a being seeking access to Earth through a dimensional door. Rather, he was the door itself--a man-shaped hole in reality seeking to turn reality inside out from within the Project Pegasus complex. His battle against The Thing and an eclectic band of heroes present at the complex was the culmination of a multi-part story wherein saboteurs sought to destroy the project using a device called the Nth Projector--a device capable of opening doorways into other dimensions. But their agent chose to use the projector to empower himself, threatening not only Project Pegasus but also the entirety of the multiverse. More than adequate to serve as a a phase-ending show-stopper.

Jude, The Entropic Man: Another product of a multi-part MTIO story, The Entropic Man was a creation of the reality-shaping Cosmic Cube. In a tale that saw the cube stolen from--you guessed it, Project Pegasus--a rogue super-soldier and leader of a cult of nihilists used the device to anthropomorphize entropy as a hooded figure named Jude. Jude wished to bestow the gift of oblivion on all living beings, a desire he demonstrated by turning a couple of unfortunate enthralled bystanders into dust with his touch. In the end, his disciples got cold feet and the cube turned him into a pillar of stone mere hours after his birth--which is probably for the best, as he'd have thought that Thanos only got it half right.

The Great Beasts: Introduced in the pages of Alpha Flight, these elder beings--also known as "The Gods of The Elder Night"--represented a persistent threat to Canada and the wider world thwarted first by the gods of the native inhabitants of northern Canada and more recently by that country's on-again/off-again official super team. While there are several in their number, the monster that most quickly comes to mind when thinking of a phase-ending threat is Tundra--a literal living glacier that can level territory on an almost inconceivable scale.

The Adversary: Introduced in X-Men during the 80s, The Adversary was an ancient mystical being also called The Great Trickster by the Cheyenne. The Adversary came into conflict with the X-Men during a televised battle in the city of Dallas, Texas--one that saw the mutant team seemingly killed in combat. While vulnerable to iron and the Adamantium of Wolverine's claws, the creature nevertheless claimed to have the ability to destroy and recreate the universe on a whim.

The Midgard Serpent and Other Dark Gods: While the MCU has already presented us a take on Ragnarok, the long history of Thor in the comics has included multiple variants on the theme involving different existential threats. Surtur aside, another important component of both the mythological norse concept of Ragnarok and the comics is the Midgard Serpent--treated first as a beast and then later re-interpreted as a deposed heir to the throne of Asgard trapped in the form of the serpent. The latter revelation served as the basis for the multi-faceted "Fear Itself" crossover story that also introduced his followers "The Worthy"--heroes and villains possessed by magical hammers and devoted to spreading the serpent's fear across the Earth.

The Demogorge: A son of the Earth god Gaea--and a brother to Thor--Atum has the affliction that he consumes other mythological demons and deities and becomes a monstrous juggernaut with no control over his rampages. Another mountainous foe capable of serving as the basis for a massive set piece.

Nightmare: A "fear lord" and the master of the realm of dreams, Nightmare is a constant foe of Earth's Sorcerer Supreme Dr. Strange. His ability to attack characters in their sleep is reminiscent of--but greatly predates--Freddy Kreuger. His ultimate aspiration is to extend his influence outside of his dimension.

Chthon and The Darkhold Cult: One of the most overtly Lovecraftian characters on this list, Chthon is an elder god and one of the oldest characters in the Marvel Universe. He was the author of The Darkhold, a tome considered to be the basis for much of the comic universe's darkest magic and a conduit through which he continuously seeks to enter the earthly plane. It's worth noting that The Darkhold--featured prominently in Season 4 of ABC's Agents of Shield--is also the source of all vampires in-universe. (More on them in a later post.)

D'Spayre and The Dweller-in-Darkness: Created by another of the "fear lords" known as the The Dweller-in-Darkness, D'Spayre seeks to break the spirit of the human race. Much like the Nth Man mentioned above, his schemes have driven him to seek access to--and control over--the nexus of all realties, an ideal beachhead for spreading his influence across the multiverse. On a smaller, more intimate level, his plots can also sometimes revolve around crushing the spirits of powerful individuals--a trait that can lend itself to telling stories on both a micro and macro scale. And by essentially serving as a herald for The Dweller-in-Darkness, he can represent an immediate threat as well as the harbinger of the coming of the fear lords.

Shuma-Gorath: Another overtly Lovecraftian entity, Shuma-Gorath is an extradimensional alien deity that previously occupied Earth and thrived on blood sacrifices before being expelled and blocked from this plane by successive human sorcerers including Doctor Strange. A floating eye surrounded by lashing tentacles, this guy is the poster-child for all the nastiness that can lie on the other side of dimensional rifts.

Null The Living Darkness: Seemingly in counterpoint to Shuma-Gorath, Null is an amorphous black cloud with a bunch of eyes and an appetite for mental domination of whole civilizations. Sometime partner of The Over Mind--an alien threat I'll be covering in a subsequent post--as apparently mind control is more fun with friends.

Sundry Demons: Speaking of fun with friends, Marvel has no shortage of demons that have made various power plays throughout the comic book universe's history:

• N'Astirh - Foe of the X-Men who once turned NYC into a hellscape in the Inferno crossover storyline that united the new and original X-Men (then operating under the name of X-Factor)
• Master Pandemonium - A demon master that appeared prominently throughout the distinguished initial run of West Coast Avengers; his arms and legs were made of demons and could spawn a seemingly infinite number of demonic minions
• Belasco - Another X-Men foe, this lord of Limbo was notable for being the source of much of Magik's mystical knowledge and abilities
• Mephisto and The Hood - I list Mephisto last because he's the OG in this subcategory, having been the most common demonic stand-in in Marvel storylines over the last 50 years. (You could also list his rival Zarathos--the entity inhabiting the Ghost Rider--here as well.) While Mephisto has been a player in stories ranging from The Infinity Gauntlet to The Secret Wars, his empowering of the once small-time villain The Hood--turning him into a match for the combined Avengers--is an interesting glimpse into his patience and the subtly of his strategies.

Honestly, I'm sure I could dig further to come up with additional candidates--as this is still a somewhat surface-level investigation of Marvel's many years of stories involving other-dimensional foes--but I think it suffices to show how much runway remains within this sub-genre alone.

Next time: Part 3: It Came from Beyond the Stars!

The Obvious Eight: Part 1 of "Bring on the Baddies - More Than 60 Possible Phase-Ending Bosses Still Available to the MCU"

As my kids get older, these guys come out of the toy box less and less. But where the MCU is concerned, there's still a lot of runway left for them.

I've seen a lot of speculation about whether Disney has enough material to develop interesting and engaging storylines following Avengers Endgame. As a long-time fan and amateur comic historian, I can say that the answer is a definitive "Yes!" But I've noticed that a lot of the numerous commentators debating the topic tend not to think beyond the next few movies. In reality, the Marvel comic book universe is a library of many decades of stories--so many that the issue is less about whether there is enough content for the MCU to draw upon and more about which stories would be the best choices.

To illustrate this point, I'm going to use my next few posts to break down more than 60 villains and associated storylines that could act as the tent poles for future MCU phases. Some are low-hanging fruit--stories that simply expand on existing plot threads and themes. Others are deep cuts, some of which would represent course changes in terms of the tone of the MCU. And many are mutually exclusive, as they represent cards that can only be played once--slots in the overall narrative of the Marvel movie universe that can only accommodate a single film or character.

Today, I'm going to start with the handful of stories that I think are a lock to make it to the big screen at some point in the future either because they've been so obviously hinted at or because the characters are so iconic--what I like to call The Obvious Eight. (In reality, they were--until recently--the Nefarious Nine; but I'm on the fence about one that I've relegated to a later wave for reasons that could be a spoiler for people who haven't seen Captain Marvel. So we'll simply call that the Plot That Shall Not Be Named... at least for now.)

So--drum roll, please...

Presenting - The Obvious Eight:

• #1: The Fourth Host of The Celestials
• #2: The Beyonder and The Secret Wars
• #3: Kang and The Council of Kangs
• #4: The Sinister Six
• #5: Maximum Carnage
• #6: Galactus
• #7: Emperor Doom
• #8: Scarlet Witch and The House of M

The Fourth Host of The Celestials: While I list this one first, it's likely to be the least familiar to casual fans. And Marvel has even provided some red herrings that could complicate the appearance of these villains in their comic book forms. But there are clues that suggest that these Space Gods are lurking in the future of the MCU.

In the comics, The Celestials are inscrutable, near-immortal giants who seed worlds with life and then revisit them over hundreds of thousands of years to observe progress--sometimes terminating their experiments through wholesale genocide.

The name has been used to describe Ego the Living Planet and it is seemingly a Celestial whose severed head now serves as Knowhere. A Celestial is also shown, during The Collector's explanation of the Power Stone, using the gem to wipe out the surface of an entire planet.

But it's Disney's addition of an Eternals movie to their upcoming slate that makes these nigh-omnipotent beings a cinch to appear either in that movie or shortly thereafter. The Celestials created The Eternals, a hidden race of largely earthbound superhumans--so it's hard to imagine telling the story of the latter without delving more deeply into the back story of the former.

It's also quite likely that the assembling of the Infinity Stones is just the sort of impetus that would lead to the Celestials stepping out of the shadows to investigate.

The Beyonder and His Secret Wars: After the Infinity Gauntlet, it may be difficult for some people to think of another threat with sufficient scope to follow. So what about a villain with the power to create a shimmering millions-of-miles-wide rift in space and assemble a planet from pieces drawn from across the galaxy? And what if that villain could assemble an eclectic group of heroes and villains from across time and space in an epic throwdown for whatever their hearts desire? Yeah--I think that would do the trick.

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, I'm pretty partial to the original Secret Wars story--more than Secret Wars II and the recent revisitation of Secret Wars--though I could see the earlier and later stories serving as bookends at the beginning and end of an MCU phase. Timed correctly, these stories could blend the current reality hosting the MCU with one containing the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. (Not the only possibility out there though--read on...)

Kang(s): I'd thought that the cross-time conqueror Kang would have entered the fray much earlier than this, but I recently heard that the character may pose some problems when it comes to worldwide marketing of Marvel properties. That said, he's arguably The Avengers' greatest villain--so, if there's any opportunity to include him in ANY form, I really feel like Disney needs to act on it. And with time travel apparently playing a big part in Avengers Endgame, it makes sense that such activity could either attract Kang's attention or even provide an origin story for him. So it's hard to imagine Marvel not getting this done.

And given the fact that there's not just one Kang--that there's a near infinite number of Kangs from different timelines opposing or supporting each other, even forming a Council of Kangs--the story possibilities are likewise nearly infinite. (It would also be particularly fun to see his sword-shaped starship headquarters--Damocles Base--on the big screen.)

The Sinister Six: So, this is an idea that literally should have happened on multiple occasions over the last decade-and-a-half. We've seen incarnations of all but one of this villain team's initial membership across various adaptations of Spider-Man: Doc Ock, Sandman, Electro, Vulture, now Mysterio. And given that the Scorpion's alter-ego, Mac Gargan, was seen in Spider-Man: Homecoming, it's easy to picture him serving as a replacement for the absent Kraven The Hunter.

What might not seem likely is that these villains could collectively pose a phase-ending threat. But they've actually made some really significant power plays in the comics--threatening Earth from destruction via satellite, affecting global weather, etc. I could therefore picture a well-reasoned story that introduces some of the AWOL Sinister Six members building to a similar world-spanning, world-threatening climax.

Maximum Carnage: This one is a bit of a cheat, as it's something that is obviously coming--just likely not to the mainstream MCU. With the success of Sony's Venom movie, we're clearly going to see Venom square off against his offspring Carnage in that studio's MCU-adjacent movie universe. That said, I'd love to see Sony really maximize the value and menace of the younger symbiote by following not the Maximum Carnage storyline from the 90s--which saw Cletus Cassidy build a posse and run riot through Manhattan--but rather the Carnage USA storyline from 2011. That story saw the symbiote infect and take over an entire Colorado town as well as numerous human and superhuman responders to the disaster--a scope fitting to serve as the culmination of a phase or trilogy.

Galactus: This one is tough to reconcile, but it's also been talked about non-stop since the announcement of the Disney/Fox merger. While I think I tend to be more forgiving of the depiction of Galactus in Fantastic Four: The Rise of The Silver Surfer--hey, come on, you can see his shape in the center of the energy cloud--that depiction rendered him simply as a force of nature. And while it's true that Galactus operates on a plane where he's largely oblivious to the lives of the lesser beings whose planets he consumes--out of necessity, frankly, if he's to stay sane throughout his immortal life--his previous cinematic treatment really missed out on an opportunity to show him as a fully fleshed out character.

He is clearly an entity that fans desperately want to see--but I find the possibility of him being featured in the current-state MCU a bit problematic. Because, as I've noted above, certain threats seem like they fill an exclusive slot--and The Celestials and Galactus may simply be too similar as gigantic existential threats to individual worlds. They have appeared in stories together--have even fought each other in the presence of lesser beings in stories like Earth X and Jonathan Hickman's run on Fantastic Four. So featuring both in the MCU isn't impossible--especially if fan interest is high--but it could require some creative storytelling.

Emperor (Doctor) Doom: If Galactus is iconic, then Doctor Doom is simply next-level. To the extent that Fox's efforts to adapt the Fantastic Four haven't received a lot of critical acclaim, it's generally accepted that Victor Von Doom--one of the most compelling villains in all of comics--is ripe to be reinterpreted in the MCU. It's hard to imagine this preceding the introduction of the FF, but anything is possible. Since Doom is best shown as a layered, complicated character who can sometimes even straddle the line between villain and antihero, you could certainly show him numerous times in multiple lights across multiple films. (I've enjoyed Michael Fassbender's portrayal of Magneto, so I'd look for Marvel to cast someone who can deliver an equivalent performance.)

Interestingly, Doom has sparred with characters ranging from Daredevil to the Silver Surfer in his comic book appearances. In some ways, he's a utility villain--a megalomaniac who can be trusted to rise or sink to the level of his opponents. But when used best--whether it's stealing the powers of one of Galactus's heralds or even The Beyonder, or augmenting the abilities of the Purple Man to brainwash the entire world into recognizing him as emperor--he's more than a match for all of the heroes in the current or future MCU combined.

House of M: This one is another cheat, or it would be--but not mine. This story provides a simple way to integrate the MCU and the Fox-owned Marvel properties in a story with a smaller scope than Secret Wars. In the comics, Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, demonstrates how massive her powers are by changing reality on multiple occasions--first in the events of Avengers Disassembled (where she unintentionally manifests numerous deadly threats to her own team), next in changing the world by putting humans under the rule of mutants, and last in depopulating the world almost entirely of mutants.

But what if the MCU was coming into the story half-way? What if Wanda had already eliminated all mutants and the memory of them prior to the events of the first Iron Man movie? And what if that revelation led to her fixing what she'd done?

It would certainly provide a tidy and self-contained way to integrate the universes while selectively keeping as much of the current MCU as Disney would desire. Either way, the not-so-subtle hints at the extent of Wanda's powers make it very likely that some version of this story will make it to the screen.

OK--that's it for the low-hanging fruit. Join me for my next post where I dig a little deeper into Marvel's back catalog to identify other boss-level threats and the preconditions necessary for their implementation in the MCU.

A League of Their Own

By recurring guest blogger, C. L. Schock:

Because the Captain Marvel movie is scheduled for release later this week, I thought it would be fun to write about some of my favorite female heroes and why I have an affinity for them. My husband knows much more about comics than I do, but never let it be said that I am not a geek in my own right or that I don’t have my own distinct opinions on all things nerdy.

Certainly, my journey started many years before I met him. When I was in elementary school, my favorite cartoon was Super Friends. (Footnote: It was eventually eclipsed when the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon came out, but that’s a tale for another time.) While watching these iconic super heroes fighting crime on Saturday mornings, I became well... a bit obsessed with Wonder Woman. In addition to the Super Friends cartoon, I faithfully watched the live action Wonder Woman television show starring Linda Carter throughout its run. I can neither confirm nor deny that Underoos may have been purchased. And I even spent many hours on the playground pretending to fight criminals as an Amazon princess. That’s a powerful and empowering image that remains vivid in my memory even today. So, as you can imagine, when I saw the DCEU Wonder Woman movie starring Gal Gadot, my eight-year-old self was dancing for joy inside my head as I sat there in the theater. Therefore, while this is more a series of reminiscences rather than a ranking, Wonder Woman would have to rank #1 for me if I were to create a list of my favorite comic book heroes.

Carrying that logic forward, I think I could quickly rattle off the next few heroines on my list—if I was making such a list, which I’m not—though the next contender could only be considered a comic book hero in an indirect sense. Princess Leia, from the Star Wars universe, has political influence, serves as a general in the Rebel Alliance, and can hold her own with a blaster. She plays an important role in many battles and is well respected both as a diplomat and a tactician. Though I never owned any Star Wars comics, I played with several different Princess Leia toys as a child—all of which would surely be worth much more today if I had left them in their boxes. However, the value of those memories is... no, who am I kidding. I had lots of toys as a kid. I should have left the Star Wars toys in their boxes. (Sigh. Groan. Sigh. Giggle.)

Later, after my husband came on the scene, my exposure to comic-book-based entertainment expanded—both because of his love for the genre and because its prevalence simply increased. I remember enjoying the 1990s X-Men cartoon, in particular, and, if I was ranking my favorite heroes—which I’m not—then I know I’d need to add two of their number into the third and fourth slots.
 

Number three on this non-existent list would be Rogue. I know she has a complicated back story in the comics, and started off as a villain, but I hadn't really known much about the character before this appearance and I liked how she was portrayed. I find that the nature of her powers makes her quite sympathetic, and I think that the cartoon did a decent job of conveying that in a way that even kids could understand.

The other X-Man in question would be Storm. I like how, at least in the cartoon, the stories helped to convey that Storm usually only uses a fraction of her full power. Her capacity to alter the weather is enormous, and it shows her level of self-control when she only uses them to the extent necessary to get the job done. Her skill in leading a team in a fight is admirable, and she rightfully earns the respect of her fellow X-Men.

Does this positioning suppose that I like Princess Leia more than any one X-Man? Not necessarily. I'd like to say it's a profound philosophical decision--because it feels too much like a beauty contest or because I chaff at the idea of pitting women against women--but it's more basic than that. I'm sure my husband could describe to you in detail whether Rogue's powers would work on Diana's Amazonian abilities or whether Leia could navigate a snowspeeder through one of Storm's tempests, but the traits I tend to idolize in my fictional heroes are more absolute rather than comparative. Wonder Woman is kind and noble. Storm is wise and self-possessed. Leia is courageous. Rogue is perseverant.These are all core aspects of the characters that don't need to be stacked against each other--traits that I value not only in my superheroes, but also in the people I choose to surround me.

And from my current vantage in life, I find that there's one more heroine that I'd like to add to this select circle--Elastigirl from Pixar's The Incredibles. Whereas I spent hours pretending to be Wonder Woman on the playground as a child, I find that Helen Parr represents the kind of grown-up I want to be. Not one of the throng of femme fatales that litter comics, she's a realistic modern woman who strikes an almost perfect balance between being a powerful super hero and being a great wife and mother. As a mom myself, I have a personal appreciation for this character and what she represents. She's not perfect, but she owns up to her mistakes. She is a powerful and intelligent superhero, using her abilities in creative and sometimes unexpected ways. She does her best to protect her family while also catching villains and making meatloaf for dinner.

Time will tell whether or not I will enjoy the Captain Marvel movie. But I know one thing for sure--that a lot of previous female heroes have influenced my opinions on the subject and that I'll be judging Ms. Danvers not on marketing hype but on expectations set by them and the other real-life women and men I consider to be role models. Does that set the bar pretty high? Yes, I suppose it does. Within the week, we will learn if she can fly higher.

Bromance with A Bronze Age Brawler

The flu decided to pay us a visit this week, knocking our family's axis off its tilt for several days. While everyone has pretty much recovered, there wasn't much time for blogging at the beginning of the week--so we're playing a bit of catch-up, with each spouse working on a topic. C. L. will have one to post on Monday, and mine is shared below.

A friend recently turned me on to Ollie's Bargain Outlet--a regional retailer of closeout merchandise--as a great place to find deeply discounted graphic novels. What I found there last weekend was a bit of a mixed bag. While there were two floor-to-ceiling shelves devoted to graphic novels and trade paperback comics compilations--a flabbergasting amount, frankly--the current selection skewed heavily towards the latter. And though I was sorely tempted by some of the volumes devoted to Geoff Johns' run on JSA, I didn't feel like a lot of the books represented landmark stories worthy of donation to my local library.

I did however grab a compilation encapsulating essentially the complete story of the bronze age Deathlok. Flipping through it was an interesting journey that reminded me of how the character touched upon several of my favorite series and storylines of the 70s and 80s.

As a kid, I'd been allowed to buy several issues from the character's original run in Astonishing Tales #25 through #36--but I'd have to guess that my parents were unaware of how different these books were from the types of stories I'd been reading in comics like Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Avengers. Set against the backdrop of urban warfare on the eve of the new millennium, Deathlok was serious dystopian science fiction and social commentary packaged as a superhero story.

Luther Manning is a cyborg. And typical of the trope, he's rebuilt based on the agenda of others. But this isn't a surface-level tale of social control and rebellion. In what was extremely dark plotting and dialogue for a comic in the mid-70s, Luther Manning faces genuine existential horror in the face of cloning and transhumanism--which his inner dialogue with the computer integrated into his consciousness lays bare for the reader. It's also a violent story that brings to mind Frank Castle, The Punisher, as Manning kills both as a pawn of his masters to start and then in eventual pursuit of his revenge. So, for those reasons alone, I would have considered the character and story arc memorable and visionary.

But then Marvel's editors did something that was, at that time, very common in their fluidly and fully integrated fictional universe. They continued--and ultimately completed--Deathlok's story in the pages of other title characters' comics. Like a group of experienced golfers "playing through" on a Saturday afternoon, characters could carry their storylines into any number of popular Marvel comics--and two, in particular, were specifically designed to thrive on that kind of story-telling. I have a soft spot in my heart for both Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One, though I'd have to admit that the former was typically the better of the two.

MTU was a monthly comic featuring Spider-Man and another random guest character. (Marvel toyed with the dynamic occasionally making the anchor of the team-up either The Human Torch or The Hulk, but that was always a change-up and never lasted for more than an issue at a time.) This was a great and ultimately rather logical formula as Peter Parker--being a photojournalist working in one of the most superhero-dense areas of the globe--could be expected to bump elbows with any number of other costumed crime-fighters. And when those adventures sometimes took him to more exotic locales in space or time, well--you could wink at that without too much difficulty. Marvel Two-in-One featured Ben Grimm, The Thing, and another guest character. In this case, the story would often revolve around someone coming to the Fantastic Four for assistance and finding only Ben home. That premise got a little threadbare after while, but it was still a charming romp.

These titles were the glue of the 70s and early 80s Marvel universe, as this was a time before limited series were common--back when comic book companies worked primarily through outlets like newstands and drug stores and they were publishing only as many books as would collectively fit on a wire rack. There weren't "niche" books. New characters would have to grab a following either in the pages of anthology books (as the B-side to a more notable character's story), in books that rotated stories and characters (Marvel Premiere, Marvel Spotlight, etc.), or in MTU and MTIO.

Luther Manning made appearances in each of MTU and MTIO that are captured in this compilation. In the case of his MTU visit, Deathlok played host to Spider-Man in the future. But in his MTIO appearances, Luther Manning was the one to switch timelines--becoming planted in the then-present-day Marvel Universe. While not typical for the respective comics, I believe that the MTIO stories are better. That's mostly true however because they link back to what I think is definitively the best multi-chapter story from MTIO and likely the best MTIO story overall--the Project Pegasus Saga, which saw an eclectic group of heroes ranging from Quasar to Thundra to Giant-Man help The Thing to prevent Armageddon at the hands of a villain, the Nth Man, who could/would make a great (and unusual) "big bad" for a later phase of the MCU.

Marvel could have used this as a final, if unsatisfying, chapter in Deathlok's own narrative (as his body ended up seemingly destroyed)--but chose instead to pit the unwilling cyborg super-soldier of the future against its original super-soldier, Captain America in the latter's comic. Not a mindless mash-up, this story brought both characters back into Deathlok's now-alternate future and ultimately tied up most of the remaining loose ends from his run in Astonishing Tales--while giving the good captain a lot of food for thought related to how quickly his country could descend into barbarism.

I'm not saying that this compilation is going to float everyone's boat or--just as importantly--that it's an all-ages read; because it's definitely not. Despite Marvel's protestation that he's an "offbeat superhero," Deathlok is more appropriately described as an antihero. And the book--while perhaps not as gritty as modern takes on similar themes of dehumanization and body horror--is nevertheless a dark science fiction story. (Brace yourself for several references to off-panel cannibalism--even one in the Captain America crossover.)

As a compilation, it also suffers from a problem that many trade paperbacks suffer--inconsistency in the art. With the story crossing the desks of multiple writers, editors, and artists over more than a decade, the look of the character and his environment evolves. The cover to Astonishing Tales #34 is perhaps one of my all-time favorite comic book covers from the bronze age of comics, and I enjoy the pencilwork of creator Rich Buckler throughout that series--particularly, I think, when inked by Klaus Janson. I also enjoy the clean, detailed look of John Byrne's art from MTIO #54, but Byrne deviates significantly from the original character design. And while that difference has a decent in-story explanation, it's an explanation not made until subsequent appearances. Given that I really love the original look of the character, that's a bit of a detractor from my perspective.

Nevertheless, in weighing these factors I ultimately decided that the story's merits and its historical significance far outweigh any of its shortcomings. So I picked it up and plan to deposit as a gift to our library later this week. (Mind you, I should point out that it wasn't a quick and decisive choice; I made my family browse the rest of Ollie's discount merchandise for about 30 minutes before deciding to go back and pick the book up.)

What do you think? Does this initial take on the character--albeit now a bit outdated, set in a dark vision of 1991--sound like something you'd read? Let me know in the comments below. And happy bargain hunting!