“Oh, no. No no no. That’s—that’s Venom. That’s Venom as me. That’s—and it’s not even the good one. It’s Mac Gargan.”

— Spider-Man, New Avengers #50

Due to popular demand, I guess I have to dedicate one of these installments towards Mac Gargan, the current Venom. First, a quick refresher on who Mac Gargan is and what he was up to before donning the hungry goo spandex.

Mac Gargan used to be a greedy private investigator, doing just about any job as long as the price was right. Jonah Jameson hired him to figure out the link between Spider-Man and Peter Parker. Mac wasn’t getting anywhere due to Peter’s spider-sense indicating when to slip away, so Jameson pulled out the big bucks for more desperate measures. Using an experimental serum and a cybernetic suit, he transformed Mac into the Scorpion. On the plus side, he was granted strength and agility to counter Spider-Man, along with a cool tail that shoots stuff. On the minus side, it drove him completely mad.

I think we need more villains who are only evil because whatever gave them powers also made them fucking crazy. A lot of the early Spider-Man villains had that going for them.

Scorpion existed for decades as a B-list Spider-Man villain. He was one of the many, many villains who in some way existed as the dark shadow of Spider-Man. Due to his insanity and his insatiable hatred for Jameson, Gargan tended to fail as a team player. Also, some of his insanity came from his inability to remove his costume.

Mark Millar reinvented Gargan for the better during his run in Marvel Knights Spider-Man, which I covered earlier in this series. At some point, Gargan had become a top henchman for Norman Osborn. His armor was gone, though with many operational scars left behind, and his sanity had been more or less restored. Sure, he was still a bad guy, but he was a coherent bad guy. Under Osborn’s orders, he orchestrated the kidnapping of Aunt May as a way to mess with Spider-Man and get Osborn out of prison.

As we know, the Venom symbiote – having skipped on its latest host – decided that Gargan was ideal. Perhaps it was how Gargan’s Scorpion powers are notably comparable to Spider-Man’s. Perhaps it was Gargan’s hatred of Spider-Man, spiked with his lack of Eddie Brock’s morals. But by the end of the day, Mac Gargan had become Venom.

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I dig O’Neil in general, is pretty great, but his look at Ann Nocenti’s story in Daredevil #500 was superlative.

But Nocenti is, well, better than that. Just in these pages she gives us a lot: a Daredevil / Bullseye fight, yeah, but that’s not really the main event. The main event is the two spectators who watch the fight and then, with a wounded Daredevil, explicate the preceding action. So not only do you see the fight, but every action in the fight is interpreted after the fact. The fight isn’t what’s important – in fact, you don’t even know why they’re fighting, or even what year the fight occurs. It could have happened in 1982 or 2006. I’ve read dozens of Daredevil / Bullseye fights over the years, but I haven’t read one that actually felt this visceral in years and years – you see every punch, but you also see the moment after the punch lands. No wonder one of the spectator characters is a boxer – boxing is another symbolically freighted activity, and Daredevil’s history with boxing makes for a nice overlap of symbolic metatext. Daredevil isn’t the invincible ninja master anymore, he’s a broken fighter with a concussion – possibly hallucinating.

Every word is true.

Abhay also goes in over on SavCrit, and he nails it, too. Gotcha good.

Follow-up #1
Follow-up #2
Follow-up #3
Follow-up #4
Follow-up #5

(Don’t read #4 if you intend on seeing that Orphan movie any time soon)

It’s been an interesting week for Dr. Doom. Wait, let me rephrase that: Dr. Doom has been a total jerk this week! Yes, I know being a jerk is his thing, but he’s gone the extra mile lately. In Dark Avengers, he’s rude to Osborn and his henchmen for saving his life. In Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil, not only does he double-cross Magneto, but the entire miniseries is reasoning to make Doom even more of an asshole. Then you have Dark Reign: The Cabal. In one segment, he burns alive two of his servants just to make sure Loki is who she says she is.

Plus there’s the first segment, written by Jonathan Hickman and Adi Granov. I thought it was a cool segment (I love Granov-drawn Venom), but… I just didn’t think they went far enough. So I went back and fixed it up. The first page is untouched, but I’d like to think that the rest of it is an improvement.

Interesting that Doom thinks that Noh-Varr and Ares won’t stand for Osborn’s shit for too long. Plus I guess we’re getting the Spider-Man movie Goblin armor in comic form once Osborn gets tired of being Iron Patriot.

Based on one of the comments in an earlier article, I should probably mention that despite Deadpool being awesome in other forms of media (some of them, at least), I’m only counting comic book stuff for this countdown.

Sorry, no inclusions of the time in Ultimate Alliance where he talks to Weasel about the time he stabbed him in the leg for taking the last cheese puff. Or the conversation where he tries to convince Black Bolt to say “spatula”.

This also means no inclusions of animated Deadpool shooting Hulk and Wolverine with a crapload of tranquilizer darts before saying, “Hey, Logan! It’s me, Deadpool! I shot youuuuu!” Which is a shame in of itself because Hulk vs. Wolverine is such a brilliant depiction of the mouthed merc.

50) Rock ‘n’ Roll!
Identity Disc #2 (2004)
Writer: Rob Rodi

For those who haven’t heard of it, Identity Disc is a miniseries from a few years back that is essentially what happened when a writer decided to take The Usual Suspects and rewrite it with six supervillains. Five of the villains are interesting characters and help sell the series, but the other one sucks and is somehow the main character. Hint: I’m talking about Vulture.

Deadpool is part of this group in search for the Identity Disc, which has the identities of every superhero. In one scene, he hangs out with Bullseye, waiting to strike a facility and steal a skeleton key device. The two talk about what the Kaiser Soze knockoff of a villain has on them to make them play ball. For Deadpool, he’ll get information on where his ex-wife is. I don’t even think they meant Mercedes from the Kelly run, which makes it more of a continuity clusterfuck. For Bullseye, he’s tried working both sides of a gang war and it’s blown up in his face. If he does his job here, the slate will be wiped clean.

Finally, it hits nightfall and after all that waiting, they can finally get to business. Bullseye says, “Time to rock ‘n’ roll,” as the two sneak around the building. After all the lead-up, all that happens is Bulleye knocks a security guard out by flicking a piece of gravel onto his forehead and then finds the safe and gets the prize. Deadpool is angry over the complete lack of action and the fact that he wasn’t even needed to begin with.

To make up for it…

And there it is. The only scene from Identity Disc you’ll see on the list.

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This is several days late, but like I’ve said, computer troubles. Read it anyway.

Secret Invasion has come and gone. Skrulls are old news and now the more beloved villains are beginning to step forward, forming their own little Evil Illuminati. Fittingly, they all counter the original Marvel faction in their own way.

– Tony Stark is replaced by a more ruthless businessman/inventor in Norman Osborn, who shares similar ideals on unity among the powerful.
– Reed Richards is replaced by Victor Von Doom, his eternal rival when it comes to his intelligence.
– Charles Xavier is replaced by Emma Frost, who, while heroic, could potentially do some more underhanded things to help her race. Then again, look at who I’m talking about. Xavier’s done some shady stuff already. Bendis originally wanted Magneto for the role, but you know how it is for that guy.
– Doctor Strange is replaced by the Hood, the magical avatar of the Dread Dormammu himself.
– The enigmatic and overly powerful Black Bolt is replaced by the more enigmatic and more powerful Loki, now in a female form.
– Namor, once a proud king able to own the room with his regal presence, is replaced by a meeker, disheveled and more desperate shell of himself.

Norman puts together his own Secret Society concept and tries to sell it onto the others. The two main points of interest are the mystery man – which I will get to in a second – and the suggestion by Doom to Namor that this will all lead into some kind of massive supervillain Civil War in the future.

That discussion is for another time. Let’s discuss the mystery man.

“If you so choose as to even lift a suspicious eyebrow towards me and mine… you and my friend here will have some words. Emma, you’re a psychic, I can feel you poking around in my head now… You read minds… Tell me… Am I lying?”

“No.”

“Something for even a goddess of mischief to think about.”

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