I started reading Starlin's Adam Warlock run last night and it got me thinking about characters that could only really happen in corporate comics. A lot of people tend to vilify corporate comics in favor of creator-owned and indie books, but there are these characters and runs that can only really happen in corporate comics due to their desire to exploit existing IP.

With Adam Warlock, you have a Fantastic Four villain that was actually a source of contention for Jack Kirby -- he apparently wanted the scientists that created Him to have good intentions and for Him to end up evil on his own. In any case, he was a foil for the FF and then appeared again as a foil for Thor. At that point, he almost seemed like a poor man's Silver Surfer and fated to be a footnote among Lee and Kirby's creations.



But then Roy Thomas wanted to do his version of Jesus Christ Superstar and put Warlock on a counter-Earth created by the High Evolutionary to keep him away from the regular Marvel Universe. By some unimaginable coincidence, this Earth had an identical history as our Earth, complete with their own Adolf Hitler and everything. I mean, holy shit.

And then later, Jim Starlin got ahold of him and had him take on a intergalactic space cult led by his own evil future-self.

This is what I mean -- only in comics could a character have such a bizarre and convoluted history! Another one I like is Man-Wolf, AKA John Jameson.

He's a character that was created for Spider-Man to save, only to raise the ire of his eventual boss, J. Jonah Jameson. Lee and Romita brought him back from space later in ASM with temporary super-powers that made him aggressive and cruel. But Spidey saves the day and Jameson goes back to normal.

At least until the next time he's in space, when he finds a jewel that turns him into a werewolf! Eventually, he takes a mission in space to get back in the government's good graces and of course, turns into a werewolf in space... when he makes it back to the moon, he goes through a secret portal to another world, where it turns out he's the chosen one to rescue a group of people from an evil sorcerer.



I mean, could you imagine this all would happen after reading ASM #1? It's positively nutty.

What other crazy characters can you think of that could only have come about from a company's desire to make existing IP profitable?

Tigra is the first one I thought of. There are no doubt a whole lot of them, but she's the first one that sprang to mind.

Not familiar with her -- explain, please.

Marvel had acquired the rights to Tigger, from Winnie the Pooh, along with Christopher Robin. DC got an injunction against the use of the name "Robin" in any Marvel Comic (as they were reintroducing Captain Marvel as Shaazam). Marvel countered by changing Tigger's origin, gender, and his name to "Tigra," which was strongly reminiscent of an early Legion member "Tigera" from the planet Tigeria, who had the power to create holographic images of tigers to frighten opponents of the Legion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigra



She was an existing character who wore a super-suit as The Cat. Years later, Marvel revived her during their Bronze-Age 'Monster' phase as Tigra, a literal human/feline hybrid instead of someone who was just called 'The Cat'. Thanks. Pardon?

And that was just in the first issue of Giant-Sized Thrillers.

I'm always amused by these non-powered characters who later go on to gain super powers that
fit in perfectly with their hero names/themes.

I kind of want to read the comic that Li'l Jay is describing: Pencilled by Marie Severin and inked by Wally Wood.

Snapper Carr is the most perfect example of this.

He became a Transformer?

They prefer to be called Transmodular Cybernetic Beings nowadays...but yes.

Whoa, I didn't realize they were the same character!

YES

And her old suit as The Cat was later given to long-running (as in decades-long running) teen comic character Patsy Walker, who became Hellcat. It was later explained that Patsy Walker's mother had been a comics creator, and that most of Patsy's teen adventures were imaginary stories written by her mom.

So yeah, only in corporate comics. When the company decided to go all super-heroes, all the time, they simply reworked some of their old non-super characters into the Marvel Universe.

Then it gets even more convoluted when you have Marvel's redhead teen queen, Patsy Walker from the 1940s,
appear in a Bronze Age issue of the Avengers, finds the original Cat suit, and becomes Hellcat, and then she
goes on to get demonic powers, marries the Son of Satan.

Meanwhile, Tigra goes on to have an affair with one of Marvel's oldest heroes, Henry Pym, who turns out to be a Skrull
mimicing Pym down to the atomic level, and then she has a child with him, a cat-boy, who's born cat quickly.

Ah, Daphne beat me to it.

Not to disrupt the lovely 70's remembrances of convoluted kitties, but how about Cable?

I mean, the time travelling clone of a villain who himself was the child of a popular mutant and his former lover's clone raised in an alternate future before being returned to the present day to try and keep the future from occurring? C'mon, that's gotta be corporate.

Tigra was one of the issues in that great little mini-run that Claremont/Byrne did in Marvel Team-Up. It was the issue before the epic Man-Thing issue, and the issue after the Power-Man issue.

Yes, the Patsy Walker connection* was something I forgot to mention, but you're right - it makes the corporate angle even more obvious.



I'd also forgotten about 'Son of Tigra'...that means he's a Human/Skrull/Feline hybrid? Does that make him a mutant or...I dunno. Did he also grow up cat quickly?

'Cat Quickly' somehow sounds like a 1940's Marvel/Timely character's name (IMO).




*The Patsy Walker Connection sounds like a 70's Disco act.

It sounds like he was created via committee to me, yeah.

Another character we shouldn't forget is Dazzler, who was created (by management) to cash in on the Disco craze.

Cat Quickly sounds like a relative of Mistress Nell Quickly in Shakespeare's Henry V.

*Exeunt, pursued by a Cat Person*