Green-Mamba

Real Name: Blackagar Boltagon

First Appearance: Fantastic Four #45 (December 1965)

When humanity made its first contact with the Kree during Mar-Vell's battle with Yon-Rogg, the Fantastic Four witnessed a strange anomaly--cloaked with unknown technology but picked up by Reed's sensors was a group of oddly dressed people and possible mutants performing some sort of silent ceremony while the battle in Earth's orbit took place.  But the bizarre members of the ritual discovered the four watching their moves, and before they could react, the strange visitors were upon them.

By the time they came to the Fantastic Four found themselves in what looked like a palace with truly alien architecture.  They were prisoners of the Inhumans, in their hidden city of Attilan.  The Inhumans apparently were a cadre of people who had been experimented on by what they called their gods (the Kree, possibly?) in the past, and when exposed to a chemical called 'terrigan' they mutated.  Their society was built around this 'terrigenesis' and heavily based on a caste system.  Their leader who stood before them was the most powerful of all Inhumans, the lord of house Agon, known simply as the Black Bolt in their language.  Supposedly he was so powerful that his very voice could level a city--the others in the Inhuman Royal Family spoke for him.  His decree was simple--Attilan and the Inhumans were to remain a perfect secret to the world, and it was up to the Fantastic Four to explain their plight.

----

He would eventually become a distant ally of the Fantastic Four and heroes around the world as he relaxes his decree a little bit.  Maybe even join an Illuminati of sorts?

For the Inhumans I wanted them to be just that--inhuman.  Bizarre, otherworldly, and totally unknowable.  But still recognizable as people under all that strangeness.  So that's kinda where I started with Black Bolt.  I didn't want the Inhumans to just look like regular superheroes, so I decided Black Bolt would look very regal and kingly, at least by the standards of his people.  So his suit is kinda overcomplicated looking, but it's actually kind of based on my Captain Marvel suit design--I wanted there to be kind of a commonality between the Inhumans and the Kree at some surface level.

I kept the overall design of Black Bolt's suit, but decided against the mask in the end.  For a while I was considering giving him the full Earth X styled mask but I instead decided that Black Bolt's mouth should be unimpeded--kinda like it's there, out in the open, to remind everyone around him what he's capable of.  To make them stranger and less friendly looking I gave him some tattoos, or maybe makeup, on his face that kinda traces a similar shape to his mask as well as highlighting his mouth--the vertical line down his mouth is supposed to be kind of symbolic of a finger shushing him.  And of course he has a tuning fork stuck to his forehead.  And then I transformed his arm fins into this king like cape, I imagine it can kinda transform into wings maybe?

Doing whatever a mysterious stranger can!  This is pretty much just for shits and giggles.

(you didn't actually think I was seriously going to do the Swiss Miss, did you?)

----

If you remember back to character 91, the Sin-Eater, you might recall that the killer wore a "Spider Hero" mask, and I explained that "Spider Hero" was a series of movies ripping off Spider-man that Peter wasn't terribly fond of.  That's what this is!

When Peter first started making a name for himself as Spider-man, way back when he was in high school, the public was both afraid of him and absolutely fascinated by him.  Talk of a film adaptation was in talks basically immediately, which Peter wasn't aware of until they started filming.  Because of the unclear legality of Spider-man's actions and the actual ownership of the character (he did first appear in that wrestling show, though the footage didn't get released to the public until long after the fact) the studio decided to create a character who was essentially Spider-man with the serial numbers filed off.  They called him "Spider Hero."  No hyphen.

Filming for the first film took place in the summer after Peter graduated high school.  Peter actually accidentally caused trouble for the production when he mistakenly thought a scene being filmed was actually a crime in progress--he saw a dude that looked like some sort of half tiger, half man blowing up a bus or something--it was being kinda soon after the Man-Wolf incident and Peter was still kinda sensitive to half human animal hybrids.  He attacked the actor in costume and security tried to get a hold of him and it kind of escalated before he realized what was going on.

Reading up more on what was going on with the film, the producers and writers were kind of in the dark regarding his origin and just made stuff up--in the film Spider Hero was an alien from Counter-Earth, or something.  The tiger guy was the villain, (Lord Tyger?) a knight who had come to take Spider Hero back to their home planet.  It was all pretty dumb, and Peter wasn't having any of it, but without revealing his identity there wasn't much he could legally do.

The film was a box office smash hit, unfortunately, and a sequel began production basically immediately after the first, this one with a bigger budget and longer production cycle than before.  This one would be called "Spider Hero & Lady Vermin."  Lady Vermin was apparently his love interest, or something.  Filming for this one was actually impacted by supervillain activity; Kraven the Hunter, in his long campaign against Spider-man following the Revenge of the Sinister Six, attacked the production while it was filming a scene in Central Park.  He apparently was trying to leverage the cast and crew against Spider-man, but of course Spidey ended up defeating the hunter and saving the production of the movie that was sure to be an embarrassment to him in the future.

And an embarrassment it was!  It was released to considerably less critical acclaim than the first (around just after the Clone Saga took place), though still made a lot of money, and Spider Hero's intense romance with a rat woman served as an endless fountain of hilarity for Mary Jane.

Of course production on a third was not far behind, but during filming the Sin-Eater attacks began.  With the Sin-Eater's use of the Spider Hero mask the public perception of the movie character took a turn for the worse, and the production company decided to stop filming and try to retool it for the time being.

There the film toiled in production hell for a while until a fateful buyout took place--Wilson Fisk, expanding his economic base, bought the rights to the Spider Hero films without even being aware of it until his executives brought it to his attention.  Realizing the potential, Fisk ordered the film to be completed with the footage they had already filmed with minimal new footage to be shot for a new ending.

At the tail end of the year after the Spider Island incident (where I said not much happened) the third film in the series was released, rather suddenly at that.  Called Spider Hero: Rise of the Swiss Miss, Spider Hero and Lady Vermin found themselves attacked by a being called the Swiss Miss, the queen of the Planet of the Knife Women, the eternal enemies of Counter-Earth.  But what most people were talking about in this film wasn't the goofy villains and the romance subplot (Lady Vermin was even killed off in the film rather suddenly)--it was the final act of the film where Spider Hero is abruptly saved from the Swiss Miss by a private military firm owned by a character who sure as hell looked an awful lot like Wilson Fisk.  In the end, the Fisk analogue reinvents Spider Hero into Spider-man, for whom Spider-man is eternally grateful to.

Fisk's ending change was as bold as it was bizarre, but the intent was clear.  Spider Hero merchandise everywhere was suddenly replaced by Spider-man merchandise, and it all went to line Fisk's pockets.  The Kingpin now owned Spider-man, and there wasn't much Peter could do about it.

----

So that kind of took a dark turn at the end, the plot there being clearly based on a similar one from Ultimate Spider-man.

But basically this started as an excuse to do the goofiest shit I could imagine as a "Spider Hero" movie poster.  So I chose one of the dumbest villains in Spider-man history, the Swiss Miss, as a focal point, and decided to also dip my toes into the Spider-man Unlimited pool a bit with Lady Vermin.  Just the absolute dumbest nonsense I could muster.  If you recall, Spider Hero actually originated in the Mighty Avengers as a knockoff Spider-man costume that Blade wore to conceal his identity--the design is basically lifted straight from that.  Lady Vermin's pretty much on model as well.  Swiss Miss I took some liberties with (as I figured the crossover between people who will see this picture and people who have actually seen Turn Off the Dark has got to be pretty much zero), and I figured maybe her powerset would be that she can transform her body (or is that her armor?) into various bladed instruments, so she's got scissors for fingers here!  It was a fun poster design to do.

And then we have Peter absolutely flabbergasted by what he sees and MJ enjoying Peter's pain a little too much.

Real Name: Eddie Brock

First Appearance: The Amazing Spider-Man #300 (May 1988)

When Peter Parker's parents died, his connection with Eddie Brock died with them.  Their fathers had been business partners, trying to raise capital to work on their great scientific work--a miraculous protoplasmic suit that could enhance a person's biological functions allowing them to combat cancer.  But when their parents died in a fateful plane crash, Peter and Eddie went their separate ways, and the suit was forgotten about--almost.  It turned out that Eddie's father had left an in progress variant of the suit to his son, and when Eddie went to college he and his professor, Doctor Curt Connors, started working with the prototype to practice applications for it.

Peter and Eddie eventually reconnected, which was where Peter first learned of the black suit.  Accidentally "stealing" it as Spider-man while attempting to prevent its theft, he found it was completely capable of augmenting his already powerful spider abilities, but at a cost, feeding off of his hatred and warping his personality.  When Peter tried to destroy it, his relationship with Eddie by that point had turned very sour, and the suit instead bonded with Eddie.  Enhanced by its time with Spider-man and feeding off of Eddie's own intense loathing of Peter it transformed Eddie into a terrible being of immense strength, a creature of two minds with one goal: to poison Peter's life the way Peter had poisoned theirs.  They were Venom.

----

Uh, basically, if you've been following my Spider-man project at all--it's Venom from that, transplanted here.

I had toyed with the idea of changing Venom up in my Greater Marvel Universe project from how I had established him in my Spider-man project by giving the suit its more traditional alien origin, but even after all this time I still really prefer the Ultimate way in this instance, and it's not like I'm going to be doing any more symbiote characters in this project than I did, or will be doing, in the Spider-man project (actually probably less), so it wouldn't really make a big difference in any grand way.

In terms of his design this is kinda a redesign of my own previous Venom redesign in the Spider-man project.  Kind of a second take.  I elected to make his suit look more alien in nature, kinda carapace like, to give it more texture to play with the lighting more, and just generally make him scarier.  I also increased the size of his mouth and teeth from my Spider-man project interpretation, again, mostly just to make him scarier.  Still no big long tongue though.  And I elected to alter the spider symbol to more closely resemble its traditional design and added the white patches on the back of his hands.

And that's all I got here.

Long time no update to the Spider-man Project!  Sorry it's not something more interesting than fifth costume for Spidey, but it is what it is.

----

When Peter and his Aunt May finally sat down to discuss Peter's role as Spider-man following the events of Spider Island, May told Peter that she couldn't be more proud of the good he had been doing, but she still worried about his well being constantly.  She didn't want him to stop being Spider-man unless it was his own decision, but just asked if there was any way if he could protect himself a little better?  The cloth costume didn't offer much in the way of defense.

(at this point Peter realized that May was actually the identity of the mystery writer who wrote in to the Daily Bugle constantly worried about Spider-man's costume not offering him enough protection)

Over the next year or so there was something of a lull in supervillain plans.  Most of the big movers and shakers seemed to be taken care of or weren't making big moves, the Kingpin being the only real exception.  So while Peter started going back to trying to deal with petty thugs and gangsters, talking a little more with MJ (though still not quite getting to the point of her accepting him again), panicking upon the realization that he hadn't exactly been lining up potential jobs after college, and cautiously seeing the new Gwen get her feet wet in the Spider-woman business, he got to work seeing if he could make something a bit more protective.

After his "sister" Jessica Drew's death he got some of her belongings, one of these being parts of her SILK agent disguise.  Peter found that it was armored in key places with some sort of synthetic polymer that was likely created by the Scriers a while back.  Secretly using some ESU equipment he, uh, borrowed, for the time being, he created a larger set of armor that covered more of his body, and developed a new black under suit to go with it (with the help of Aunt May).

Unfortunately, during his first proper live field test in a Kingpin gang related shootout he found out why the armor had been so limited in the SILK agent uniforms--it was kinda awkward, inflexible, and sorta heavy.  For a guy used to relying on his speed, flexibility, and agility in fire fights, this proved to be problematic, causing him to take a bullet right to the chest.  The armor performed miraculously well, better than a proper bullet proof vest, but it caused him to lose focus and take quite a few more physical blows than he really should have.  Some of the gangsters got away that shouldn't have, and he ended up feeling more beat up at the end of it all than he had in his normal outfit, requiring him to take a night or two off from Spidey antics.  So... back to the drawing board.  The armor was a good idea in theory, but this particular version would have to be hung up for the time being.  Didn't get much use in the end, but it kinda looked cool.

----

And that's basically the extent of the story there, maybe it will pop up again in the future.  I dunno.

Like I said earlier, the period of time in between Spider Island and the year later when Gog was unleashed by Ana Kravinoff is kind of a down time, not much happens.  So it was as good a place as any to take a break I guess.  But I should be back now.

If you're wondering, this was the design I was having difficulties with.  I initially had something much more similar to his goofy chrome armor from the nineties, and I was nearly done with it before I just decided I didn't like it at all and scrapped the whole thing.  So while the final product is still supposed to be this project's take on the Spider-Armor Mark I, with the black and grey color scheme, it's actually kinda based on the set pictures for Far From Home's new Spider Noir inspired stealth suit.  Sorta.  I guess you could say that it's a combination of the two.

That's all I got, except I wanted to mention that I saw Into the Spider-Verse last weekend and that I would highly, highly recommend it.