In a no limits scenario I’d overhaul the costumed villain community to eliminate some of the randomness. There would still be nutjobs coming up with their own gimmicks and those created by accidents. But a lot of the name villains would be the product of military or corporate funded villain farms for lack of a better term. For example, the Marvel US would have a smaller scale version of the Weapon Plus program that headhunt troubled youth with hidden talents to exploit; brought about by the success of the earlier Nuke program. Bullseye, Bullet, and Typhoid Mary would all be graduates of this particular program. Like in the Deadpool movie, this phase used torture to trigger mutation. Bullseye had psychic ability allowing him a 360 view of his environment and ability to focus on a target while blocking all other stimulus. As a mutant, he’s naturally stronger than an average human. The aim is all him though. Bullet gained added mass & durability. And Mary’s more aggressive pyrokinetic persona was amplified by experimentation.
In another location, Oscorp’s lower levels and off the books locations are churning out a lot of NY’s powered villains. Before they move on, blacklisted scientists like Calvin Zabo, Karl Malus, and Harlan Stillwell are conducting illegal experiments on prisoners and mercenaries. The Human Fly, Scorpion, Armadillo, and those types are coming out of there. The feds eventually crack down after Osborn becomes more ambitious and revenge obsessed. That’s when ROXXON is given the green light to start their version of this experiment. It’s all a necessary evil to keep the superhero community in check. Europe does it too but it’s wealthy organized crime figures outfitting costumed villains while the government focuses on registering/regulating vigilante.
There’s yet another program that specializes in cybernetics and the use of artificial part replacement. Donald Pierce was involved early on. Bushwhacker and Constrictor we’re beneficiaries of this program. At some point they get ahold of the symbiote that eventually becomes Venom. They intended it to be an organic alternative to their work with plastics. None of the test subjects survived. It was kept in storage. You can figure out the rest.
Scorpion
Some mild changes. I’m changing his name to Macías “Mac” Garana. He’s still a sleazy detective of sorts. He starts out providing dirt on people Norman wants to ruin or leverage. That eventually leads to him trying to exhort money from Norman. A lot of pants pissing and pain later, Mac “volunteers” to become the Scorpion. And he finds that he enjoys it. Thus a lackey is born. I wanted more visual and ethnic diversity in the spider villains. Mac would basically look like Vin Gonzales from Slott’s run. So consider it a merger. I took JJ out of the equation because he already has the Spider-Slayers on his conscience. I’ll do more spider villains when I have more free time.
Nah, that makes the rings responsible for him being a super-soldier, when it should be him being a super-soldier that is responsible for him getting the rings.
There is the implication in some of the rumors about the Shang-Chi movie that Mandarin is part of an organization that trains orphans to be super-soldiers, and that he presumably rose through the ranks of that organization himself at some point. That sorta fits in with his comic origin, where his parents die and his aunt squanders all of his money having him trained to be a super-soldier. In the comics, it is never detailed who trains the Mandarin to be a super-soldier. All we are told is that it took every bit of his wealth to do it.
A logical expansion on his comicbook origin is to make it be the Ten Rings organization that his aunt paid to train him. They train him, he rises in their organization, and he is told all their legends, including that of the Makluans and the rings. He is, however, the first member to decipher all of the clues and actually find the rings.
That keeps the Mandarin the center of the story, avoids retconning anything because it is more about filling in gaps, and it keeps him a super-soldier who discovered valuable technology rather than a Gollum figure who got lucky one day.
Last edited by MichaelC; 05-08-2020 at 09:48 AM.
I can work with that. But you’re just trading the rings for the aunt. You say that the story is centered on the Mandarin. I am seeing him becoming what his aunt intended. My version still has to seek out training. All the rings do is show him the way/show him a picture of what he needs to be the best version of himself. I wanted to give him a life change moment similar to Stark’s. His aunt tried to ruin him by raising him without hardship or empathy. He left her behind and sought influence. The rings/Makkulan is basically a stranger who runs afoul of the Mandarin and ends up being a tool for a greater threat.
Last edited by Michael Watkins; 05-08-2020 at 10:13 AM.
Good! The rings are boring compared to the human aunt, and the human trainers she hired to turn him into a super-soldier.
The parallel between Stark and The Mandarin is that they are both orphans with horrible parents.
Finding the rings versus building the armor should be a contrast between them, not a parallel. Tony Stark was a colonizer/imperialist before building the armor. Building the armor was a rejection of his colonizer/imperialist past.
The Mandarin, conversely, acted in a very Christopher Columbus way in getting the rings. He was a wandering explorer who found alien resources, then enslaved the local villagers, making the alien tech at once the gold Columbus enslaved the Taino to loot, and the guns he used to do the enslaving. The Mandarin's empire is built on him embracing the colonizing and exploitation that Stark rejected. He is a Tony Stark who never had a come-to-Jesus moment, because continuing to be a conqueror and exploiter just lead him from strength to strength.
In other words, the key difference between Stark and Mandarin is that nothing happened to Mandarin to make him change from what his aunt and the trainers she hired twisted him into. The conquering, exploiting super-soldier they twisted him into worked for him, perfectly.
He doesn't need one shred of Gollumness. Not an ounce. Not a speck. Not an atom. The rings are just like the gold Columbus forced the Taino to mine. A valuable resource he exploited because that's who he already was.
Last edited by MichaelC; 05-08-2020 at 10:45 AM.
I agree up until a point. Super soldier implies that he’s in someone’s army. Just wish this was more than a rehash of the MCU’s Red Skull origin. Bad kid has bad parent grows into bad adult exploits power source rinse repeat but I will reserve judgment until after I have seen Shang Chi. Because it makes sense if they are using Shang as the parallel. I have a feeling that you’re not going to like it though. The obvious contrast is Shang’s power coming from within and Mandarin relying on the external.
Last edited by Michael Watkins; 05-08-2020 at 01:50 PM.
This overall premise, I definitely like. Speaking of Venom specifically, I could see the symbiote escaping its imprisonment through Spider-Man, who has tracked down one of those super-mercenaries and is about to stumble upon the dark secret behind them, taking him as a host that lasts longer than the others the program attempted to bind it to due to his superhuman physiology. From there, it becomes a merger of elements of the original comics' Alien Costume Saga and the 90s TAS version leading into the creation of Venom; while Spider-Man exults in his increased power and speed and the symbiote's ability to generate its own seemingly never-ending supply of webbing and emulate regular clothes whenever he has to attend to his day-to-day life as Peter Parker, he also becomes more aggressive, more combative, and more hostile, though not for the expected reasons. The symbiote isn't trying to take control of him per se, but it is "autopiloting" his body when he's trying to sleep, going out to brutalize criminals and villains and ultimately to avenge itself against the program that imprisoned, tortured, and experimented on it.
Peter himself isn't aware of what the symbiote is or what it's using him to do at first, but the lack of actual sleep as a result is what's making him more irritable, aggressive, and even irrational, especially when the symbiote's nocturnal activities start getting picked up by the media and, as per J. Jonah Jameson, interpreted to cast Spider-Man in an even more unfavorable light. Of course, thanks to the symbiote's actions, the conspiracy behind the supervillains thinks he's figured it out already and forces him through a gauntlet of super-mercenaries in hopes of taking him out before he reveals its existence to the public or to his fellow superheroes. One of those super-mercenaries happens to be the Shocker, whose gauntlet weapons actually nearly force the symbiote off Spider-Man by emitting high-powered sonic vibrations, making him realize through its agony and rage that he's been wearing a living (and sapient) creature. He manages through sheer tenacity (and the help of the symbiote's rage) to overcome the Shocker's attack and damage his gauntlets to the point they're useless, though the symbiote's attempt to press on and finish off the Shocker while he's helpless causes Spider-Man to realize that bonding with it might not have been the best idea, to say the least.
Needless to say, Spider-Man manages to ultimately force the symbiote off him, but angered at his rejection, the symbiote finds another host --- an embittered rival of Peter Parker by the name of Eddie Brock, now privy to all of Peter's secrets and possessed of all Spider-Man's abilities. While the symbiote is still driven ultimately by revenge against the program that imprisoned and experimented on it, it has a more immediate target in mind for its wrath . . . Spider-Man.
The spider is always on the hunt.
In the sense that he’s a survivor. I want the powers to take a backseat to what actually makes him dangerous; his paranoia and unwillingness to let his guard down long enough to find something good in humanity. In a way he has more in common with movie Ras. Bruce lost his parents. He wasn’t buried alive with them. Emotionally Bruce and Max are adolescents in a never ending struggle to save their respective families Bruce was frightened of bats and darkness. Magneto is still haunted by evil. That’s why he has devil horns on his helmet. He’s inflicting his fear on others. His trauma was deeper than Bruce’s. And he didn’t have to seek out martial arts practitioners to become a weapon. But the psychology is similar. I’m just tired of mutants being such easy victims without their powers. Magneto is way too paranoid to not have a backup plan.
Just to clarify, I wasn’t erasing the events of secret wars. I glossed over it because it’s a lot of continuity. For the purposes of my rewrite assume that the symbiote escaped the facility and went on the same adventure as in the comics before finding Brock. I’m just trying to establish that the randomness in the marvel universe is more coordinated than it looks. Something like Brock becoming Venom would be a big deal. He’s instantly a threat to the status quo. Maybe Carnage didn’t get to go on a killing spree by accident. Maybe they were hoping for them to take each other out.
Vulture
wedding the comics and what I liked from the movie. A much younger and athletic Adrian is active as a costumed villain in the past (pre-Fantastic Four); mechanic flight harness and all. Older smarter Toombs has done time and isn’t stupid enough to risk a heart attack or head trauma flying around in a bright green leotard. True to the Vulture name, he raids super fights, construction sites, and tech companies for salvageable machinery that can be sold to other villains. And he does so with the young delinquents that are rejected by Taskmaster’s University. He updates his business model when Spider-man starts busting up his operations. He invests in his crew and outfits them as the Vulturions. But he’s kind of notorious for being loyal to no one. When he is forced to fight, he does so in an ugly heavily armored vulture suit that used to be stark tech but was upgraded by the Tinkerer. He has a rep in the villain community as being as smart as he is ruthless. Some of the less experienced come to him for advice or replacement parts (Tinkerer charges more).
Sinister Syndicate
Biggest change will be their ages. If Peter is a high school freshman, most of them would be college freshmen. I wanted them to be upstarts gunning for the respect of an established group like the Sinister Six. They are also, initially, acting without the consent of the larger military/industrial/organized crime complex. That changes when Beetle sells their services to the Kingpin (arguably the smart play).
Beetle -Abe Jenkins is the oldest and smartest of the group- overly careful and a bit of a schemer - his weakness is that he cares what others think of him and is insecure about being one of the only guys without powers- he and Herman get their start in the Vulture’s crew - both have mechanical skill - Adrian cut him loose because he clearly wasn’t dumb enough to keep following orders- it was, in a way, a show of respect. I wanted Abe to be ethnically Jewish because I see he, Herman, and James as the villain equivalent to the Beastie Boys.
Speed Demon- I guess he’d be the most changed. There was a speed demon in the Squadron Sinister. But it wasn’t Jimbo(at least not the 616 version). He was probably selling drugs at a house party when all of that went down. He got his powers from a street drug whose side effects activated his inhuman gene. He joined the Syndicate because he felt badly after stealing all of the money from an armored vehicle Abe and Herman targeted their first time in costume. He was also really bored.
Shocker - son of a famous safecracker he never got to know but idealized - Abe is more or less an older brother figure to him in high school- he returns the favor by getting Abe into Vulture’s crew - Herman has a decent rep among the newer villains because of his father and his own skill - he’s the last to develop a killer instinct but can still be particularly brutal when pushed- the Scourge stuff still happens
Hydro-Man - Morrie is the youngest and was on the same football team as Flash Thompson (but didn’t know the kid) - he’s one of those rare villains who got their powers accidentally; fell off a dock near a discarded super weapon- he’s the same guy personality wise as he is in the comics- the most powerful and least creative
Boomerang- still an Aussie still a show off- pretends to be to good for the Syndicate was is new to the NY villain scene and desperate to league-up - often takes solo gigs - he and Rhino are last minute recruits (they really wanted six members)
Rhino - Alexei is very young when he becomes muscle for a mobbed up club owner - easily convinced to field test the Rhino suit- it turned out to be hard to remove- he was a Russian agent (in my revamps, the Cold War has been prolonged due to the superhuman arms race) for awhile but wasn’t competent enough for the big leagues- the Syndicate recruited him outside the Bar with No Name- he was in desperate need of the family structure
Yellowjacket
This is a three-fer
Rita Demara will have an origin similar to Nadia Van Dyne’s. She would be Americanized in a red room variant and sent to the U.S to get close to the, at this point, divorced Henry Pym. She maybe even becomes his temporary lab assistant (to replace Foster) during the breakdown. Anyways, she gets it in her head to steal the YJ suit. Fast forward, she appears to be mortally wounded. The Russian’s patch her up but the cure leaves her looking like Swarm from the Ultimate Universe. She shows up now and again mainly as one of Janet’s rogues. It’s not ideal but she still gets to be active. In case you’re wondering, a time displaced Cassie Lang is who shows up to be a Guardian if the Galaxy. It happens when Doom kills her in another reality and that reality’s Iron Lad tries to save her. She’s older and has been surviving on her own in the time stream before meeting her new team.
https://static.comicvine.com/uploads...5-redwasp5.jpg
Second half...
Introducing a political dynasty in the Cross family. Darren is a titan of industry (all of the military contracts Oscorp can no longer take), a tech whiz, and the likely running mate of the next president. Neither he or his business can afford controversy. Darren’s cousin William started out doing work for the CIA and spun that and his family connections into running a Blackwater-esque private military company. They are very much involved in regime change, creating chaos, and presenting the superhero community with stumbling blocks behind the scenes. Darren also has ties to AIM, uses many of their scientists, and owes them financially for the creation of his company. In doing business with them, he uses the guise of “Doctor Nemesis.” He’s very under the radar and only runs afoul of Henry Pym by accident. But he also sees benefit in Pym’s work. As regular old Darren Cross he attempts to hire Pym. When that fails, he hires Rita Demara, knowing nothing of her ties to Russia. That leads to William finding someone skilled enough to break into Pym’s lab whom they can dispose of later. They find a fresh out of prison Scott Lang. [skip] after his encounter with two pesky costumed types, Darren is placed in a medically induced coma. His gargantuan security force are disposed of after their hearts unexpectedly give out. The media writes it up as the actions of terrorists. Augustine takes over as the now-secretly-AIM run business. William, now missing an eye, kicks his war on superheroes into the next gear. Darren eventually resurfaces with a spiffy new Yellowjacket-like armor. I was never a fan of big pink hulk cross. So I merged him with Doctor Nemesis and movie Cross. He’s a media savvy and politically astute guy who would have eventually been a problem for Tony Stark. Lang ended up being the threat he didn’t see coming. It’s still a class warfare story like in the original. Cassie is still the leverage. But they aren’t harvesting organs from transients. They are trying to create size changing mercenaries after experimenting on transients and dumb volunteers.
Yeah, I could definitely see that, though Carnage would likely immediately drive that plan off the rails by killing anyone who thought they could control or direct him, and even if he didn't kill them, he could just "Mind Bomb" them with his symbiote and drive them insane to the point where they take each other out for him.
I like your Vulture and Sinister Syndicate, especially the former because it reminds me of his post-Spider-Island revamp, which I thought made a lot of sense for his character. I'll have to throw in some ideas myself later.
Last edited by Huntsman Spider; 05-08-2020 at 08:32 PM.
The spider is always on the hunt.
Doctor Doom
Doom’s mother came from a long line of sorceresses/tribal healers. But there’s a price to wielding magic. It tends to bring out the worst in people. Her husband Werner kept her grounded and urged her to put down the spell book. Just like in the comics, some great injustice was done that pushed Cynthia to make a tragic deal with dark forces. She asked for revenge and that her people would find some place to call home. Soon after she became pregnant and gave birth to Victor. This coincided with several children in the surrounding villages falling dead. It didn’t take long for the zeffiro tribe to be blamed. They were attacked. Cynthia, in a weakened state, uses an attack spell that allows the others to escape but claims her life. The other Zeffiro banish Werner and his abnormally clever son. Only Boris, a family friend, accompanies them.
They become nomadic. Victor’s intelligence & quickness at picking up languages is readily apparent. He partipates in their grifts and even acts as a performer (sleight of hand, “mind reading,” etc). He learns from every stranger they meet. One is a former physicist turned alcoholic who first introduces him to the science theories he will eventually master and improve upon. And much at the same time and against Werner’s wishes, Boris tells Victor about his mother and her significance to their people. I guess this would be a good time to mention that Boris was actually killed during the initial attack on the tribe. His corpse is still there folded like laundry behind a tree...