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Post by brutalis on Jun 12, 2019 8:54:57 GMT -5
Marvel's Nova had 2 recurring villains in his original run who have lapsed into obscurity.
The Condor
Diamondhead
The Sphinx though has managed to make his way into relative notoriety as a big name villain at times.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 12, 2019 8:55:55 GMT -5
Faceless, Mr. V, and The Vulture (all the same villain) were the focus of the final series of martian manhunter stories in House of Mystery, published back when air was new. Oh yeah, it turned into like a spy book, right? I've never read any of that. (It can't be as good as the Idol Head of Diabolu!) Kind of, yeah. Once the Idol-Head serial was over, Zook was ditched (until very late in this run), MM assumed the identity of a dead international playboy named Marco Xavier, and the strip took on some elements of the Bond movies and "The Man From U.N.C.L.E": a worldwide criminal organization with a clever acronym (VULTURE), international settings, outlandish weapons and plots, etc., etc. It was a gallant effort of sorts, but MM hadn't been mentioned, let alone depicted, on a cover of HOM for five issues before the Faceless serial began. Once Robby Reed was introduced (capitalizing on the camp super-hero craze), MM was not just doomed to the back of the book, but unbilled, even in HOM 173, the last issue before the format changed to horror stories. Come on, DC, throw the guy a bone; he'd had a monthly story since his debut back in 1955, not to mention his being a mainstay of the first 50 issues of JLA! |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2019 10:18:02 GMT -5
Not sure about forgotten as such, but when did The Leader last appear?
I always felt he could have been more than a Hulk foe. There didn't seem to be as much "cross-pollination" with the Leader. I'd have loved to have seen him take on Spidey, the FF, Iron Man, Thor, Silver Surfer, etc. He seemed to save his grudges for the Hulk, though.
I possibly last saw him in a Wolverine comic many moons ago. I know I could Wikipedia this, but who's to say characters' Wiki bios are updated regularly?
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Post by badwolf on Jun 12, 2019 10:56:10 GMT -5
Last I remember seeing The Leader was in Bruce Jones' Hulk run, but I'm not really up on recent stuff.
I guess the gamma-related foes pretty much stuck with the Hulk. Has the Abomination been seen much outside of his books?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2019 11:00:29 GMT -5
I don't recall many Abomination appearances outside Hulk books. I read one where he fought Spidey and She-Hulk once.
I'd love to see Abomination VS Thing, Abomination VS Iron Man, Abomination VS X-Men, etc.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jun 12, 2019 11:05:04 GMT -5
Ant Man foes during his Tales to Astonish days: they were tossing anybody and everybody at the Pymster hoping to create some enemies. The Protector Scarlet Beetle The Porcupine (has he ever really been considered a true threat as a villain?) The Living Eraser El Toro Madame Macabre A couple managed to stick: Egghead and Human Top AKA Whirlwind. Good ones. Egghead was pushed as a (the) # 1 villain but he ended up dead for quite a few years IIRC. And Hank Pym hasn't had a solo story in... well, it's been a while. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 12, 2019 11:21:50 GMT -5
 Evilheart is a fairly forgotten Archie-enemy. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Jun 12, 2019 13:04:08 GMT -5
I don't recall many Abomination appearances outside Hulk books. I read one where he fought Spidey and She-Hulk once. I'd love to see Abomination VS Thing, Abomination VS Iron Man, Abomination VS X-Men, etc. Abomination fought the Silver Surfer and Thor in the late '60s (in Silver Surfer #12 and Thor #178, respectively).
Cei-U! Check 'em out!
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Post by badwolf on Jun 12, 2019 14:06:18 GMT -5
I don't recall many Abomination appearances outside Hulk books. I read one where he fought Spidey and She-Hulk once. I'd love to see Abomination VS Thing, Abomination VS Iron Man, Abomination VS X-Men, etc. Abomination fought the Silver Surfer and Thor in the late '60s (in Silver Surfer #12 and Thor #178, respectively).
Cei-U! Check 'em out!
Forgot about the Surfer story! I have the Fantasy Masterpieces reprint. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jun 12, 2019 15:38:58 GMT -5
I don't recall many Abomination appearances outside Hulk books. I read one where he fought Spidey and She-Hulk once. I'd love to see Abomination VS Thing, Abomination VS Iron Man, Abomination VS X-Men, etc. Abomination fought the Silver Surfer and Thor in the late '60s (in Silver Surfer #12 and Thor #178, respectively).
Cei-U! Check 'em out!
That was freakin' weird. It had like a witch's coven bringing him back from the dead, right? I was kind of impressed how that totally failed to work as a Silver Surfer story AND totally failed to work as an Abomination story. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 12, 2019 21:01:12 GMT -5
Reading early 70s Iron Man, it's hard to believe that Firebrand was essentially his biggest villain for a solid year.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Jun 12, 2019 22:29:45 GMT -5
Oh My God, I've only read like two issues in the middle of the Firebrand arc. I didn't know it went on (and on and on and on) so long.
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Post by foxley on Jun 12, 2019 23:13:46 GMT -5
He was never an arch-foe, but writer David V. Reed made a concerted (and, quite frankly, bizarre) effort to make Dr. Tzin-Tzin a major member of Batman's rogues gallery, even going so far as to have Bats refer to him as something like 'my most dangerous foe' (IIRC).
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Post by berkley on Jun 13, 2019 2:17:47 GMT -5
Last I remember seeing The Leader was in Bruce Jones' Hulk run, but I'm not really up on recent stuff. I guess the gamma-related foes pretty much stuck with the Hulk. Has the Abomination been seen much outside of his books? To me, these were both interesting concepts that Marvel failed to carry through on: was the Leader ever written as "the smartest one there is", in analogy to the Hulk being "the strongest one there is"? Not that I've seen, though I certainly haven't seen everything.
I don't mean we have to take those rhetorical superlatives literally. All I'm getting at is, if the Hulk is far, far stronger than even the strongest non-super, non-gamma-irradiated human being, then shouldn't the Leader be far, far more intelligent than even the cleverest unenhanced (as far as the brain is concerned) Marvel geniuses like Reed Richards, Dr. Doom, etc?
And I always thought the idea of the Abomination was, here's a monster who's even "more Hulk" - more gamma radiation, stronger, more monstrous - than the Hulk himself - and I admit that he has occasionally been written that way, but not consistently, and the idea seemed to be dropped as time went on - though I could have a mistaken impression about this, whether from memory lapses or having missed a lot of stuff.
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Post by Cei-U! on Jun 13, 2019 7:04:03 GMT -5
In his debut in Tales to Astonish #90-91, Abomination wasn't so much "more Hulk" as "what if Hulk had normal intelligence and a malevolent streak." The 2008 Hulk movie (Norton, not Bana) got that much right, even if they did alter his origin (no big deal in my book) and appearance (a big deal, in that what they came up with wasn't nearly as interesting visually as the Gil Kane original).
And I agree that the Leader has seldom, if ever, lived up to his premise, spending most of his time as just another teeth-gnashing, cliche-spouting, generic Stan Lee bad guy.
Cei-U!
I summon the gamma ray repellent!
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