Angar the Screamer.

So, a couple of months ago, Chris tasked me to write about Angar the Screamer. I realized that I haven't done one of these "Lame Villains"* posts in a long time, so I figured Angar would be a great way to bring this feature back. I finally got around to scanning some stuff so, strap yourself in, because we're going on a ride. A long and psychedelic ride involving dragons and wizards**.

Angar is pretty much a walking cliche, having been created in the 70's by Marvel staffers. You can see by the picture to the left here that he's pretty much a hippie, and in traditional Marvel heavy-handedness, they made his city of birth San Francisco. Yeah, they were really creative with his back story. Anyways, so one day, David Angar (and yep, that's his real name) volunteered for an experiment that would give him superhuman powers and his vocal chords were bombarded with hypersound, whatever that is. Basically, he can scream very loud and cause people to hallucinate. So to review, he's a hippie and he can make people hallucinate. Way to go there, Marvel, really pushing the creative envelope there.

Angar decided to use his "powers" for evil and ended up spending most of the 70's and early 80's getting his ass kicked by pretty much every secondary street-level hero that Marvel had to offer. Then, sadly, Angar's final appearance occurred in the Thunderbolts '97 Annual in a story called "Screams of Anguish" (by the way, the cover to that Annual is so 90's it's painful). The story is about Screaming Mimi and how she became Songbird. Apparently, Angar and Mimi were boyfriend/girlfriend and while on a bank heist, Angar got shot from a stray bullet and died in Mimi's arms. Here's his death panel:



Mimi/Songbird screamed for an hour straight over her loss and blew out her vocal chords and the Fixer (who I might also have to do one of these things for) had to build something technological for her to reproduce her powers. Sad times all around.

BUT!, he was later revived as a creature of pure sound called Scream, who became part of the Redeemers, who were kind of part of the Thunderbolts for a brief time. I'm reading that story arc right now and it's kind of confusing.

Personally, I think they need to bring Angar back, and that they should introduce him in the Ultimate universe. Like maybe he's the lead singer of a metal band and while they are performing at Metalfest '08, the stage is hit by a mystical lightening bolt transforming him into Angar, the Living Amplifier. Basically, his powers involve screaming at high decibels and blowing out people's eardrums. He could even have an awesome jagged metal-style Angar logo. Marvel, if you're reading this, email me and I'll let you know where to send the Brinks trucks to deposit the money that you will owe me. This is a sure-fire hit.

So, yeah, Angar; pretty awesome, right? Ok, yeah, he's pretty lame, but my idea to bring him back as Ultimate Angar is pretty strong. Marvel, get back to me soon, I want my money.


*If you want to read more about the lame villains we've covered, click on the "Lame Villains" tag at that bottom of the post, or you can click here.

**Ok, fine, it turns there weren't any dragons or wizards involved. I made that part up. But I'm sure if Angar was real, he'd have owned a van a one point in the 70's with a mural painted on it involving a dragon and a wizard. So, that kind of relates to what I was saying.

Arcade.

I've been threatening to write this post for awhile now, so I guess now is as good of a time as any to talk about the crapfactory that is Arcade. My personal first-hand introduction to the character occurred in approximately 1988, when I finally tracked down a backissue of X-Men #204, which had been a giant hole in my X-Men collection for a long time. When I finally bought a copy, I was severely disappointed. Months later, Arcade was featured in a couple of the early issues of Excalibur and that pretty much sealed the deal for me. God, I hate Arcade. He serves no purpose, other than to fill a back up story, which is used when they change creative teams or if they're behind on the production schedule and need a filler issue. Every time I would crack open an issue and see his stupid face and his stupid red hair, I would become immediately depressed that I just blew a $1 to $1.50 on a crappy comic. What a waste of newsprint.

Anyways, so a little backstory, and I had to do some research on Arcade because I had zero inclination to do so before this, but I was not surprised to find out that he was a spoiled rich kid. I was very annoyed to find that several different references referred to him as a "supervillian" and an "evil genius" (the next paragraph will go a little more into detail as why he's neither of those two things). Much of his history is clouded, but at one point Arcade did divulge some information. At one point his father cut off his allowance and he killed him. He then became a hitman, even thought he really didn't need the money. Then he developed "Murderworld". Kind of a boring backstory if you ask me.

The thing that really annoys me about him is that every time he's in a book, the plot always follows the exact same formula. He kidnaps someone, they have to survive his "Murderworld" park, which includes lifelike robots that look like various superheroes. So, chaos ensues, the kidnapped character has to "kill" someone they know (only to find out that it was a robot) so then they get mad and fight their way through to the control room and end up "killing" Arcade. Which would be awesome, BUT, every time he gets killed, we find out that it was an Arcade robot and that he somehow escaped. This is totally frustrating because he never, ever dies. AND he never actually kills anyone, which is his whole stated purpose. So, when you think about, no one ever gets killed or murdered, which, in my opinion, kind of defeats the whole purpose of calling your joint "Murderworld". Thinking about this annoys me to no end.

The only thing that is remotely redeeming about an Arcade story is that you're pretty much guaranteed an appearance by Miss Locke. Wow, she was smokin' hot. I had a huge crush on her and would flip through pages of annoying dialogue just to get to a panel that featured her. A very underrated and underused character, in my opinion.

Apparently, it is not known if he is alive or not (I vote for not), as in his last known appearance, he was transported to the Savage Land. Hopefully, he made a nice meal for a Tyrannosaurus Rex there. A guy can dream, can't he?

The Shocker.

Whenever I think of The Shocker, I am reminded of a quote from Happy Gilmore:

"If I saw myself dressed like that, I'd have to kick my own ass".

So that pretty much sums up my thoughts about The Shocker, he's got costume that causes people to go into epileptic shock when they see him. Let's see, what else do we have here...you know what? I don't even know why he's called The Shocker, because his "power" is that he can "project a concentrated blast of air that vibrates at an intense frequency". And I had to use "power" in quotes because he is just a normal dude; he built some gloves that shoot air out of them whenever he holds down a thumb trigger. Apparently, the feedback from these gloves can get pretty intense so he made a costume with a heavy amount of insulation to protect himself from the shock. Hence the name, The Shocker. Pretty lame explanation if you ask me. You kind of expect a dude with a name like The Shocker to have some kind of powers that involve electricity, but since he mainly fought Spider-Man, that idea probably got thrown out the window, because by the time his character was introduced, Spidey was already spending a lot of his time kicking Electro's ass on a regular basis. And I guess having two villains that have electrical powers would just end up confusing the readers, and "Wind Guy" just doesn't have a good ring to it, so they named him The Shocker. I think it's actually a cool name, but then they gave him the ugliest costume they could come up with, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because with a name as cool as The Shocker, you'd think he'd also have a super cool costume. I guess there's a reason I don't work at Marvel.

Anyways, so the one thing that really annoys me about some of these super-villains from the Sixties is the amount of times they went to jail and the fact that they kept getting paroled. I mean, I know this is comic book logic we're dealing with, but The Shocker went to jail like three or four times and got paroled each time and went right back to super-villainy. And he didn't even bother to change his horrible costume each time, he'd just go out and commit crimes. I mean, once Spider-Man or the police noticed that The Shocker was going around committing crimes, wouldn't they just contact Herman Schultz's parole officer and have him sent back to jail?

You can read about the rest of The Shocker's bio on Wikipedia. Apparently for some reason, they even bothered to make an Ultimate version of The Shocker. I am going to ask a simple question: does the world really need an Ultimate Shocker? My answer is no. Marvel needs to really stop the madness sometimes.

So to wrap this thing up, we salute you The Shocker (and I guess you too, Ultimate Shocker) for your ability to suck while wearing a costume that looks like you bought it from a Stryper estate sale. Bravo, sir.

The Trapster

Ok, so, The Trapster. Wow is he super lame. Super Powers: none. Special Abilities: none. Basically, his whole thing is that he developed some kind of super powerful glue and then he developed a glue gun to use it. Then he decided to use this amazing technology for evil. You read all of that correctly, I'm not making any of it up; the only thing he's got going for himself is a glue gun. That's how he fights Superheroes, with some glue. So it shouldn't come as a suprise that he gets his ass kicked on a regular basis. I mean, basically, you could just walk down to the nearest Home Depot and become The Trapster if you really wanted to. It's really that easy. The hard part would be going up against Cap or Iron Man or Thor or Spidey when you're just packing glue. After you start losing to guys like Antman or Nomad, it's probably time to rethink your career choice.

So a little back story on the old Trapster, and again I am totally not making this up, but his original evil-doer name was Paste-Pot-Pete. Yep, that's right, his original name was Paste-Pot-Pete. Wow. I guess that's how they did things back in the '60s. Apparently, Spider-Man doubled over in laughter one time way back in the day and that hurt really hurt poor Pete's feelings. Then he joined the Frightful Four and they said his name wasn't wasn't Frightful enough, so they made him change his name and his costume. Apparently, no one was interested in buying what Paste-Pot-Pete was selling. After this amazing transformation (well, at least the name and costume) he was somehow able to secure a victory over Daredevil. However, he does hold the embarrassing distinction of being the first villain to be defeated by an empty building when he tried to enter the old Baxter Building and couldn't get past the security systems. Totally awesome.

If you'd like to build your own Trapster Paste Gun, I scanned in the technical drawings from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Deluxe Edition. Here's his paste gun and his paste shooters. Knock yourself out. It'll make a great Halloween costume.

Anywho, I think the last time the Trapster was seen in Marvel 616 continuity was in Silver Sable #26. Rumors abound that he was a villian in the 1602 universe, but that he had more of a hunter/trapper shtick, which might have been kind of interesting, only if he hadn't stolen the idea from another, more established, supervillian (Kraven, anyone?).

So to wrap this thing up, we salute you, Trapster, for your amazing ability to snatch defeat from the claws of victory. Keep up the good mediocre work.