As far as mutant powers go, this doesn’t sound like it’s enough to go into the assassin trade, but good on her for following her dreams. Whoa, the gals down at Fabric Land’s discount counter saw this lass coming a mile away, huh? As you might guess, she’s a mutant with the power to upset a person’s balance. Not a terrible idea, but a good case study in the dangers of letting the fans dictate direction. Except the fans wouldn’t have that, and Venom kept coming back again and again at the expense of other characters with more depth, and he morphed into yet another overexposed ’90s anti-hero who was barely better morality-wise than the homicidal scumbags he gleefully dispatched. And Eddie Brock wasn’t even someone that Parker already knew! How refreshing is that? The problem is that once you paint Venom as an unstoppable killing machine who will keep coming at Parker until he’s dead, there’s only one place to take that story arc - and since Marvel wasn’t willing to go there, they instead had Parker fake his own death and Venom retire to a desert island. Spidey’s books have always had an element of sci-fi in them, and the idea of his costume being a co-dependent, semi-sentient alien had potential, especially when the spurned alien bonded with someone who also felt an insane hatred for Spider-Man. Let’s be clear: it’s not the concept of Venom I have an issue with. Does it get any sillier than that? Why, yes! “To her own astonishment, Vagabond even succeeded in defeating the Black Racer, a member of the Serpent Society, by tickling her into helplessness.” Hey, maybe she’s the real reason Doctor Doom wears all that armor. My, we sure loved our off-the-shoulder look in the ’80s, didn’t we? Priscilla Lyons was a hitch-hiker who hooked up with Nomad while searching for her missing brother she then decides to become a superhero herself despite having no powers or training of any kind and weighing all of 120 lbs. Ask that Costanza guy, he knows what I’m talkin’ about. Oddly enough, extreme cold causes me to experience the exact same problem. He’s king of the Frost Giants and shrinks in size when he’s exposed to extreme heat. In a franchise that’s already threatening to burst at the seams with too many characters to keep track of, there’s not much point in adding one whose sole reason for existing is to remind people of another hero who’s better than him in every way.” Also? No one seems to know if his name is spelled “U.S. As I wrote a while ago in a list of the least essential Avengers: “We’ll let the man himself explain it: ‘The power of a tank, and I still get treated like the Captain America stand-in I used to be.’ Well… because you are, dude. “Ben Urich has the normal human strength of a man of his age, height and build who engages in no regular exercise.” As a former journalist myself, I’d say that sounds about right. He figured out Daredevil’s identity and swore not to tell anyone, depriving himself of the biggest scoop in his career. A blue-skinned mer-man making an alliance with a bunch of white racists? What could possibly go wrong? C-īen Urich is an archetype I don’t think really exists anymore: the chain-smoking, ink-stained newspaper reporter who ferrets out the truth through quiet and dogged determination. Anyway, U-Man is an Atlantean mad scientist who backed the wrong pony in World War II and is now stuck with a belt buckle that attracts zero chicks outside of certain parts of Idaho. Remember back in the ’80s when they made shows starring kid versions of our favorite cartoon characters, like Muppet Babies and The Flintstone Kids? I kind of want to see someone try that with Marvel characters. “As a boy Meranno was a playmate of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, but actually despised him.” I get the feeling a lot of Namor’s playmates felt the same. Or maybe I’ll look into that game based on confectionery crushing that everyone keeps talking about. Hey, why not personal hygiene tasks? That seems to be a popular choice among my fellow train commuters. Now that I’ve gone through all the Who’s Who and OHOTMU issues I care to review, I’ll have to think of something else to do on the way to work. Let’s call this mad project for what it is, my attempt over the last two-and-half years to stave off the crushing boredom of my daily commute. I feel like I should have a speech prepared, maybe take some time to thank everyone who made these reviews possible. This time out: Volume 8, from U-Man to Zaladane (with a secret surprise corpse at the end). The final time we gather to take a fond look back at The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Update ’89.
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