Post by dans on Jan 6, 2024 16:40:30 GMT
The Earth S Black Spider was the first bad guy Bulletman and Bulletgirl faced in Bulletman #1 1941 comic book. He was a convicted murderer who had been tried in the Bullets' home city, then sent to prison in France, where he went blind and learned to communicate with spiders, who became his friends. He returned to the US somehow and began murdering people on the team that convicted him, including the judge and the Mayor at the time - and Sergeant Kent, Jim Barr, and Susan Kent. He never really appeared to be blind in this story.
After interrupting a kidnapping attempt on the judge, Bulletman and Bulletgirl capture all the kidnappers except 1, who gets away with the judge, who is the killed when the Black Spider has his pet black widow spider Suzy bit the judge. (I've noticed that a LOT of Golden Age comics start off with a pretty blatant failure by the hero to prevent a murder after the hero realizes that a specific person is the next target - they get there in time but fail to prevent that particular murder... it is a very peculiar trope...)
So anyway... at the end of the story, Bulletman crushes Suzy and the Black Spider is killed by being bitten by his other per spiders. And as far as I can tell, the Black Spider of Earth 3 does not appear in any 5EP stories (though the Black Spider of Earth 1 does appear...). It appears that even Libby hasn't used him yet.
So I would like to use him in a story set in the current present on Earth S, which I believe is like 1987? But how? I'd like some suggestions, please...
First, he didn't die. That one is fairly easy. He was bitten by dozens of different types of spiders, and the unique combination of all their venom didn't kill him, but put him in a death-like coma.
But... does he wake up in a coffin in an unmarked grave or someplace else? If he wakes up in a coffin, two questions: How did the air in the coffin sustain him for almost 50 years after it was buried? and: How does he get out?
If he's not in a coffin, where is he and why? What wakes him up? (Initial thoughts - the medical team that examined him realized he wasn't actually dead and stashed him away somewhere in the hope that they could learn his secret, and somehow in the past 45 years or so, his body ended up in a medical school somewhere?)
Finally, what powers does he have after he wakes up? I figure he can still communicate with and command spiders - and since he didn't show any signs of blindness, he either had some kind of spider sensory capabilities or maybe he could see through the eyes of nearby spiders, which is why his hideout was filled with spiders in this story. Are there any spider-related powers that are not already overused? Probably during his coma he developed the ability to climb walls but I don't want him to just be a Spider-man rip off.
Thanks for your thoughts!
After interrupting a kidnapping attempt on the judge, Bulletman and Bulletgirl capture all the kidnappers except 1, who gets away with the judge, who is the killed when the Black Spider has his pet black widow spider Suzy bit the judge. (I've noticed that a LOT of Golden Age comics start off with a pretty blatant failure by the hero to prevent a murder after the hero realizes that a specific person is the next target - they get there in time but fail to prevent that particular murder... it is a very peculiar trope...)
So anyway... at the end of the story, Bulletman crushes Suzy and the Black Spider is killed by being bitten by his other per spiders. And as far as I can tell, the Black Spider of Earth 3 does not appear in any 5EP stories (though the Black Spider of Earth 1 does appear...). It appears that even Libby hasn't used him yet.
So I would like to use him in a story set in the current present on Earth S, which I believe is like 1987? But how? I'd like some suggestions, please...
First, he didn't die. That one is fairly easy. He was bitten by dozens of different types of spiders, and the unique combination of all their venom didn't kill him, but put him in a death-like coma.
But... does he wake up in a coffin in an unmarked grave or someplace else? If he wakes up in a coffin, two questions: How did the air in the coffin sustain him for almost 50 years after it was buried? and: How does he get out?
If he's not in a coffin, where is he and why? What wakes him up? (Initial thoughts - the medical team that examined him realized he wasn't actually dead and stashed him away somewhere in the hope that they could learn his secret, and somehow in the past 45 years or so, his body ended up in a medical school somewhere?)
Finally, what powers does he have after he wakes up? I figure he can still communicate with and command spiders - and since he didn't show any signs of blindness, he either had some kind of spider sensory capabilities or maybe he could see through the eyes of nearby spiders, which is why his hideout was filled with spiders in this story. Are there any spider-related powers that are not already overused? Probably during his coma he developed the ability to climb walls but I don't want him to just be a Spider-man rip off.
Thanks for your thoughts!