Friday, May 19, 2017

Top 100 Super Palookas Part 5.




#80: MASTER OF THE WORLD

 
John Byrne's run on Alpha Flight, while not nearly as strong his run on FF, is still the defining run the characters have ever had, and he did an admirable job of giving them worthwhile adversaries of their own.
The Master was actually a 40,000 year old caveman named Eshu who was subjected to horrific alien experimentation for thousands of years. Those same experiments increased his mental and physical abilities to near superhuman heights and made him virtually immortal. 
He would try numerous times to become a world conqueror, only to meet defeat time and time again. 
He always felt like he should have been a bigger deal, but just never hit with comic readers. It might because he's essentially Vandal Savage in the most over-the-top super villain costume ever. 

#79: SHOTGUN


The Punisher never really had much of a rogues gallery...it's hard to have returning villains when you murder them all.
J.R. Walker was an attempt to give Frank a reoccurring, capable foe. Designed by John Romita Jr., he was very much a product of the 90s, but still felt more believable than most of the other one-trick pony tough guys plaguing comics at the time.
Unfortunately, he was given the most obnoxious, macho posturing dialogue and a very weak back story (tough as hell mercenary obsessed with big guns.) Even Jigsaw has more depth.

#78: THE GIBBON

 
 Man. Poor Gibbon....he just wanted to be Spidey's partner, but Web Head just laughed in his face. Man, J. Jonah Jameson was right, Spider-Man's an asshole.
A mutant with superhuman strength and agility, he's bounced between trying to do right and be a hero, and falling back into crime and joining up with other fuck-ups like the Legion of Losers. 
He actually got a chance to shine as the lead character in the Marvel Apes series. He was also nearly killed by the Punisher at the wake for Stilt-Man.
All because Spider-Man laughed at him. 
Fuck you, Spidey. 


#77: THE SLUG

So he's basically Fatter-Kingpin. Like, he's literally just an obese crime lord. Except, you know how Kingpin has that line "People mistake my immense girth for fat, when in reality it is thick muscle mass"? Well, the Slug is just a tubby, tubby bitch.
He makes this list for 2 reasons: he's managed to be a pretty consistent character in the MU, and because he literally kills people by suffocating them in the folds of his fat. That's just fucking gross. 

#76: BLOCKBUSTER
 
 
I have a soft spot for big, brutish characters, but Blockbuster was a pretty one dimensional character, your basic Hulk rip off. Mark Desmond was a scientist looking to make himself stronger, but the transformation cost him his intellect and made him savage and biolent. He was a Bat foe for quite a few years, but mainly being manipulated by smarter accomplices.
His brother would actually become the 2nd Blockbuster, but wound up becoming super smart on top of strength and durability, and became a crime lord in Blüdhaven, and Nightwing's arch nemesis in the process. 

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