How do you make him catch on? For the most part he's just kind of been there compared to Spidey's other big rogues.
He has no good stories like Kraven's Last Hunt or Flowers for Rhino, he's nowhere near as hyped up as Ock or Norman, he had his evil counterpart shtick outdone by Venom, and when he DID become Venom everyone hated him and he's the least preferred of the main hosts with people usually choosing Flash and Eddie over him. He also became an anti-symbiote dude named Virus but that didn't stick at all either.
How do you fix him?
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>Exonerated from past crimes, refuting that he was not in his right mind because of the procedure done to him. Poison and super steroids aiding his defense.
>Sues J Jonah for a fat check
>Joins the NYPD as a state recognized civil servant superhero
>It's all bullshit
>He's a dirty cop with superpowers
>Gargan is a mini crime boss, his territory is what's "legit" on the other side of the law.
>Takes contracts from Knigpin, Hammerhead, etc
>He's now the official "Anti-Spider-Man" because he's not only a false hero, but his "poison" is infecting everything Peter is trying to defend
How did I do?
I like the idea, but it sure sounds that it would depend heavily in the execution. Also, exonerating him for everything by now would be a long shot. This is why DC pulls restarts; I am not about to say it's better, but it certainly opens the door to trying new things with popular characters
It's too late now, if he have had a good movie, or other adaptation really, that would have translated in giving him more opportunities in comics. A shame.
Bro if Kingpin can get off on all of his charges and become mayor of New York, I think Mac can get a clean record based on this case.
>"I was out of my mind, twisted by the treatments and cybernetics J Jonah Jameson funded. I just want a fresh start, maybe turn The Scorpion into a force for good...."
>"I'm told Spider-Man is here to speak concerning this case. Sir?"
>"Yeah, are you all out of your noggins? But hey, I saw Fisks polls, so I'm not surprised"
What I want is for Peter to have cop friends again, so battles are happening behind the scenes and on the front lines. I miss Yuri and Jean. Maybe it's time for Peter to get a new friend on the force to help with this problem
>Bro if Kingpin can get off on all of his charges and become mayor of New York, I think Mac can get a clean record based on this case.
Ok, no, I get you and I can see it being done, I just think it would be bullshit. I am not a fan of Spider-man fans becoming successful politicians either; the fact that I can think of two out of the top of my mind and I am likely missing something just reeks of bull stable.
Osborn is well-known to be an unstable, schizophrenic, recidivist criminal with a body count who frequently entangles his company in his crimes. Not only was he put in charge of major government operations twice (both times being clearly corrupt and openly violating laws), he also still has his company and fortune. Fisk becoming mayor at least falls within the realm of possibility.
How fricking tired I am that I wrote Spider-man Fans rather than Enemies/Villains. Thanks for ignoring that.
Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking doubting the common sense of comics. I can just picture myself squinting as I read Gargan being exonerated after years and years of a criminal career.
Mac can point to being a regular, law-abiding citizen before the procedure that turned him into Scorpion, a history of delusional psychosis afterwards, and periods of lucidity when being properly medicated. It'd be a realistic application of a diminished capacity defense; less an exoneration and more being unable to hold him accountable due to external circumstances.
You're making the mistake of assuming everything readers know about villains is all public knowledge, and everyone accepts it unquestioningly.
In actual Marvel canon, Kingpin uses his weight to hack into government and police databases to erase records on him actually he just has really good lawyers and usually manages to avoid any direct connection to his crimes so he can maintain the pose of being just a businessman
As for Norman, he's not "well-known" to be a criminal or a killer, he's publicly confessed to suffering with mental health issues, but has consistently managed to convince the public and authorities that someone else is the real Green Goblin, someone with a vendetta against the Osborn family, who's managed to manipulate both Norman and Harry into wearing the costume at times. Norman also has a lot of powerful friends in high places who are willing to believe his version of events about how he didn't do anything wrong and someone else set him up, so nothing ever sticks to him. It helps that the Spider-Man office frequently seem like the just want to memoryhole the entire Dark Reign era when they lost control of him to other books, so anything from back then is seldom mentioned.
Basically with both Osborn and Fisk no dirt ever sticks and they always end up getting away with everything, and a lot of the public will believe they're innocent, because they're of more value to Marvel like this than if they were just treated like regular supervillains. Eventually you just make your peace with that and accept they're never getting permanently taken down or you grow out of reading Spider-Man and Daredevil.
Norman has like legit glow in the dark connections because he used to make supervillains for corpos and black ops shit before he went goblin mode.
It's also public knowledge that a number of different people have been the Green Goblin, which means anything the Green Goblin does is hard to pin on Norman unless he's immediately caught and unmasked in public, and Peter can't expose everything he knows about Norman and go all out to bring him down without his own secret identity being exposed too.
Norman is like the exact type of person who the USA would defend just to get some sweet sweet public defense contracts from him since Stark isn't touching that shit anymore. So yeah, I can see both the multiple goblins and the fact he's too big too fail helping a lot.
>Kingpin uses his weight to hack into government and police databases to erase records on him
I knew he was ruthless... but this??
>actually he just has really good lawyers and usually manages to avoid any direct connection to his crimes so he can maintain the pose of being just a businessman
You would think being constantly plagued by a wall crawling photographer would do prevent this.
Edits, deepfakes, forgeries. You can hire experts to DEBOONK them.
>because of MY WEIGHT
I like it. Very cool. For follow up, maybe:
>Scorpion is extremely self-interested and treacherous.
>While he takes jobs for Kingpin and other criminals, he secretly sabotages his competitors, getting them arrested or killed, thus screwing up Kingpin's other operations, with the benefit of increasing his own value.
>Eventually he's put on a team by Kingpin for special op.
>Can't resist fricking them over, for almost no reason at all except his own pride
>Word gets out
>Scorpion is now the most hated criminal in New York's Underworld.
>Now gets regularly attacked by other criminals when they run into him out on jobs, because they think he's not pretending to be a hero, but actually is a hero in disguise
>Because of lack of hired work, he becomes extremely opportunistic criminal. Has to constantly run out on his two girlfriends (they don't know about each other) for any job he can force his way into
>Scorpion keeps sabatoging himself and others because it's in his nature.
Clever.
I feel like I posted the frog/scorpion concept ages ago but maybe people had the same idea
I'm sure there was a Drawthread pic like that with Gargan and Frog-Man some time ago.
Indeed
>I feel like I posted the frog/scorpion concept ages ago but maybe people had the same idea
it's one of those ideas that so stupidly good that nobody has done it because everyone thinks it must already be a thing
>Scorpion is now the most hated criminal in New York's Underworld.
>Now gets regularly attacked by other criminals when they run into him out on jobs, because they think he's not pretending to be a hero, but actually is a hero in disguise
A story arc about a supervillain pretending to go legit for personal gain, only to constantly slip into actually heroic deeds more often than not, because his plan worked too well would be pretty funny.
OG Thunderbolts.
That design is terrific. The metal segmented armor works great as a revamp of his original look.
Really good actually
>How do you fix him?
Firstly, his whole thing is that he's stronger than Spider-Man. Stop using him as a jobber, stop letting other books use him as a jobber, and memoryhole Slott's "Peter was always holding back, even when fighting guys like Scorpion" nonsense, never mention it again and quietly retcon it away to stop anyone ever doing it again.
Secondly the other hook to Scorpion is that he's nuts. Not a Joker or Carnage kind of insane where they're lucid and coherent but just murderous, Gargan is flat out unhinged crazy in addition to being obsessed with murdering Spider-Man and JJJ.
What I'd do with him is that when he's not trying to kill Spider-Man and Jonah, he's working as a merc in the supervillain underground for the money and to maintain his costume and cybernetic tail, sometimes he'll get paid in the form of some new weapon upgrade for the tail, but his rep for being crazy means he's not a guy you hire for subtle, covert work, he's the guy you hire for jobs where a whole city block is going to end up wrecked.
Most of the other Spider-Man villains won't really want to work with him because he's a dangerous lunatic, but he actually developed some loyalty to Norman back in their Thunderbolts/Dark Avengers days, and they bonded over the shared experience of how the right meds can keep them stable but hold them back from their full potential, Gargan's always ready and willing to hench for Norman.
Gargan's past with symbiotes should be like an addiction he's trying to beat for his own good, he knows how much he lost control when he had the Venom symbiote, the cannibalism is one of the few things he's done he'd feel any real regret about, but every time he goes up against a symbiote guy he wants one for himself again.
>Gargan's past with symbiotes should be like an addiction he's trying to beat for his own good, he knows how much he lost control when he had the Venom symbiote, the cannibalism is one of the few things he's done he'd feel any real regret about, but every time he goes up against a symbiote guy he wants one for himself again.
I kinda wish they'd let him put on the symbiote again just to tear up shop. Like he was a threat in Thunderbolts, New Ways to Die and Marvel Knights but like an embarrassing amount of times had him be a jobber.
Another thing to add might be having him be a stalker like he was a private detective at one point so having him follow people around out of costume could be another thing to play off of to enhance the creep factor.
>He has no good stories
Then let him rot.
They need to give the poor dude SOMETHING. Hell, even immunity to Miles bullshit zap powers would at least make him a bit of a threat that can't just be swatted away again
Having him suddenly like and respect Miles was such bullshit, he should tolerate him because there's no personal beef at best
Should mention Gargan flipped on Miles
In what sense?
They're not allies anymore
I like the Fake Red Scorpion design
Remember that time he thought he couldn't remove his costume, even his mask? And all the while he actually could? It was funny
>humans conquer the planet with 10 toes and fingers
>give your superhuman warrior 3 fingers and2 toes
???
Better leverage to dig them into the sides of buildings.
>How do you fix him?
Make him just a completely irredeemable butthole.
Every single villain seems to have some hamfisted tragic backstory in an attempt at making them a well-rounded character.
Some people are just buttholes, that's good writing.
and it's right there
>put scorpion on your back
>tell scorpion not to sting
>scorpion says it won't sting
>it stings
it's RIGHT THERE.
What the frick do you mean Mac Gargan doesn't have a good story? He was one of the central antagonists of Marvel Knights along with Osborn which is one of the best Spidey books in fricking years btw.
Scorpions popularity was hamstrung by the fact that throughout all his early years when he should have been making a name for himself as a spider-man villain his tail wasn't allowed to have a spike.
Was that an actual rule or something the CCA mandated, or did Ditko just make the choice to have Scorpion's tale be a blunt clubbing implement instead of having a stinger, and nobody thought to redesign it for almost 30 years?
Dock ock and green goblin kind of over lap with his look
Bumping the thread because I think its interesting
My idea for him basically breaks down under scrutiny because it turns him into a kind of proto-Venom.
Essentially make him a pathetic wounded character because his whole schtick is "You know what hunts spiders? Scorpions." That is to say, making him the Scorpion counterpart to Spider-Man's Spider. Same set-up. Somebody, whoever, wanted to make a person who could reasonably beat Spider-Man so they just recreated the Spider Bite with a Scorpion instead. Because it's the same thing with a different arthropod, everything about him because imitation and "whataboutme," "aren't I good enough?"
But really, if you take him to the extreme in that regard, then his plight and plot is just various iterations of Venom without the ailen goo.
Desu, you can just give him the Venom symbiote cuz he wore it in Thunderbolts and Dark Reign for like a decade. Also that was literally his origin. JJ paid for him to become a superhero to fight Spider-Man and the doctor used Scorpions as his basis since they hunt Spiders. He was already the proto venom
Dont give him a symbiote. Enough already
Desu, the symbiote's fun mostly for expanding his roster of attacks cuz alien goo. I will say
This is basically Sinister Spider-Man, I can storytime this if you guys want.
>the symbiote's fun mostly for expanding his roster of attacks cuz alien goo
He doesn't need that, and that doesn't have anything to do with characterization. We've done it before, it didn't stick, and symbiotes are so damn oversaturated at this point
Bruv, he wore it for a decade and it leaned into how mask off he's pure id. Unable to control himself, his appetites be it consuming flesh, booze, fricking women or eating them. It sells Gargan's inability to not FRICK UP and keep control to the point everyone around him thinks he's a deranged freak. Like, people have walked it back but part of the symbiote is revealing who you are mask off as inherently symbiotes exist as a sort of twisted self actualization
Flash imagines himself as the perfect soldier
Andi imagines herself as a cool goth punk
Peter imagines himself as a perfect superhero
Cletus imagines himself as a flayed corpse
I bring up Gargan as the symbiote cuz I think he didn't really have a fair run of it. Essentially the purpose of him being the symbiote was to combine the two major anti Spider-Men together into a singular character. So yeah, I'll defend Mac's symbiote shit even if the execution is FLAWED, very, very, very, very, very flawed.
As for Mac as the Scorpion, the major issue is he has no definitive design. A really solid way to make the character stick is coming up with a design that people will use for more than five seconds instead of hopping back and forth between so many different looks that you might as well not recognize him.
This is pretty good, the all too wide smile and the beady white eyes help a lot in selling this dude is a complete nutcase. Issue is the exposed flesh and the orange highlights hurt it a lot.
Here's another pretty good Scorpion design I'm fond of
The design is very clean and simple, very minimalistic with a three colors and also a texturing with the segmentation present that gives the material something going beyond mere spandex. I'd say there's one major issue with it.
It looks like a green prowler with a mouth.
You can see the similarities lol.
The idea sucks, move on
Another pretty good Mac Gargan design is the 90s cartoon, while campy the two tone costume does a lot to break up costume into something more read able the eyes that most scorpion designs fail to recognize that you need to make the character easily readable rather than a single color. This brings out the tip of his tail, the gloves, boots, waist, and eyes via the dark green highlights. Plus it makes the flesh tones look less off in a way.
If I want opinions from morons I'll ask for them.
very toyetic... God i miss when characters looked like they were about to be made into an action figure.
we need to return to that mentality
Hasn't he already caught on? He's stuck around for decades and is always on the short list of Spidey rogues.
The thing that always pissed me off was that he was originally a private investigator when JJJ hired him to become Scorpion. Having a sleazy P.I. sticking his nose in places and tossing his strength around to get what he wants would be a good hook and set him apart from Spidey’s other foes.
Does he have any interesting story hooks/motivations? Very casual reader but he just seems to show up to beat up Spidey, never any real hook to it.
Few ideas I have.
>play up his PI persona for horror value. Don't just make him a dumb goon, make him someone who could learn everything about you and stalk you without you noticing. You can pull the old "my Spider-Sense is tingling for no reason but everything seems fine" bit with Spider-Man.
>stop writing him like a dumbass jobber, actually remember he's Peter's physical superior. Make him less punching bag and more unstoppable juggernaut that should be outwitted not outmuscled, at least for Peter.
>remember that he's a vindictive psychopath and write him as such
Those are simple fixes without rebooting him as a character completely.
>when he DID become Venom everyone hated him
Because he was still written like a complete joke and a jobber.
To further expand upon the “Dirty Cop” Gargan, what NYPD connection should Peter have these days? Isn’t Carlie Cooper a coroner or forensic scientist or something?