It's time once again for a trip through the pages of the unimaginably tedious All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.  In the back pages of 52, they have a 'secret origins' feature where they recap major events in the history of a character in two short pages of art; Marvel either hasn't realized that there is value in concision, or has realized that their fan base eats up this elaborate shit with a short-handled spoon.  But the end result is, the History section of these clowns is so incredibly long and boring that you're lucky you have me to read them for you.  Or pretend to read them for you.

Anyway, let's get started.  We got a lot to wade through.

BENNY BUCKLEY.  The massively powerful offspring of William F. and Betty Buckley, young Benny grew up to terrorize the world with his overly verbose, cranky right-wing bloviating.  Ha ha!  NO REALLY.  This kid first appeared in something called Captain Comet, which I never heard of despite the fact that it came out in 1987.  He was an astronaut's son who was tortured by his uncle until he got massive superpowers, which happens a lot.  This was the kid who turned out to be the Red Skull in the Earth-X continuity, and that was pretty good, so maybe his past appearances are worth reading.  But then again, maybe not.  In the art, he's wearing one of those t-shirts so beloved by comic artists:  it's a U2 sweatshirt, but it doesn't have a logo or graphics or anything.  Just an orange sweatshirt with "U2" written on it in what appears to be Magic Marker.  With nearly infinite power, you'd think Benny could get himself some officially licensed merch.

BEDLAM.  Bedlam was involved with the X-nonsense that ruined Marvel comics.  I know I keep harping on this, but rather than talk about this boring character, let's just look at the X-groups mentioned just in this issue of OHOTMU:  the X-Force; M.U.S.E. (Mutant Underground Support Engine); the X-Men; the Weapon X Project; the X-Corps; the Brotherhood of Mutants; the Freedom Force; the New Mutants; X-Factor; the Twelve; the Mutant Underground; the X-Terminators; the Genoshan Mutates; the Mutant Liberation Front; the X-Corporation; the Morlocks; Excalibur; and Generation X.  Of the 49 characters in the issue, 21 are mutants.  You screwed the pooch, Marvel.

BERSERKER.  This was actually a pretty good Avengers villain, an ancient time-traveling barbarian who went around finding wars, getting one side to hire him and then wiping out the other one.  He showed up back on Earth and mopped the floor with the Avengers until Wonder Man used a convenient deus ex machina to get rid of him.

BETA RAY BILL.  You'd think I'd find a lot more joke-fodder from a freaky-looking alien named Bill who flew around in a spaceship called Skuttlebutt and impersonated Thor, but no.  This was actually one of the greatest characters of the '80s and early '90s. 

BIG WHEEL.  It's always tough to know how to approach these joke characters, because by turning them into goofs on the superhero genre, comics writers somewhat defang any attempt to make fun of them.  Of course, comics treated dipshits like this seriously for a long time before goofing on them, so I think I'm entering the house justified.  The oddest detail from his bio is that the villain (who drove around in an armored wheel bristling with weapons) was really named Axel Weele; when he reformed and gave up on supervillainy, he changed his name -- to Jackson Weele. 

BLACK BOX.  Another mutant character, and thus likely to put me in a coma, Black Box was an Indian who had the ability to absorb electronic transmissions.  Prior to his current incarnation as Black Box, he was called Commcast, until he was presumably sued out of existence by Time-Warner Cable.

BLACK DRAGON.  A giant dragon who got his kicks out of destroying the mystic city of K'un-Lun every couple thousand years, or weeks, or whatever.  Although a male in both his human and dragon form, he lays eggs, until the Black Panther goes and gives him a preemptive abortion with his Wakandan Air Force.  It's a child, not a choice, T'challa!

BLACK WIDOW.  Not the Russian ex-spy, but a Golden Age character who was put into the service of Satan to butcher evil people who the devil wanted in Hell prior to their natural death from hardening of the arteries.  In a typical manifestation of the kind of horrific violence that was ever-present but rarely discussed in '40s comics, she killed people by touching them, which caused them to catch on fire, and she left a charred spider-mark on their corpses.  Yuckola!

BLAQUESMITH.  Although this sounds more like a late-'70s porn star, this is actually another mutant who fucked around and gunked with continuity in the 1990s.  I briefly considered recapping his entire history, which involved at least two different children of four different Jean Grey/Scott Summerses of three different alternate Earths, in order to illustrate the ridiculous overcomplexity of the MU around this time, but it made me too sleepy.  Just read that previous sentence again and you'll get the gist.

BLINDSPOT.  I...wh...hey!  This is a latter-day X-character with an interesting power, an intriguing backstory, plausible motivations, and a history that can actually be followed by a casual reader!  What are you trying to pull here, Marvel?

BLIZZARD.   The editors probably engage in overkill by devoting two whole pages to this hapless second-string villain, but here's the bit that really grabbed me.  In the middle of a seemingly endless list of his failed schemes, the history section for this cold-wielding dunce mentions that he was not only beaten by Agent X, but "forced-fed a candy apple"!  Man, harsh.

BLOB.  Two things I didn't know about this lard-sack supervillain, one from the beginning of his career and one from the end:  first, after the M-day debacle, he lost all his powers and, apparently, his fatty tissue, leaving him with gigantic folds of flab hanging off his frame looking like an evil, bipedal Shih Tzu.  Second, he was originally meant to have joined the X-Men, but when he got all jackass and refused to do so, Professor X wiped his memory so he wouldn't remember!  Man, Charles, way to fuck with people.  Small wonder he spent the next 40 years trying to kill your hairless ass.

BLOODWRAITH.  Hey, while we're having fun making lists, how about the alternate earths that Marvel, once again failing to learn from DC, has come up with in this issue alone?  There's Earth-9997 (the "Earth X" reality); Earth-4935 (the post-apocalyptic 4000 A.D. of Blaquesmith); Earth-616 (Marvel's main reality); Earth-811 (the alternate Earth of the Askani and Rachel Summers); Earth-751 (home of a crazy, evil alternate version of the Black Knight); Earth-9921 (home of a crazy, evil alternate version of Gambit); Earth-982 (the universe where Peter Parker's daughter May became Spider-Girl); Earth-295 (home of Nate Gray, an alternate Cable); Earth-238 (home of Captain U.K., a different version of Captain Britain); Earth-794 (ruled by the tyrant Opul Lun Sat-Yr9); Earth-839 (home of the Monarch); Earth-78411 ("Dinosaur World"); and Earth-691 (much like the current Marvel Earth, but with a different set of Celestials).  And keep in mind, none of these are What If? worlds; they're all part of regular Marvel continuity.  Still wanna keep reading, do you?  Fine.

BOGATRYRI.  It takes a lot of stones to create an evil Soviet version of the Fantastic Four in 1992, after the fall of Russian communism, but that's the kind of bold editorial decision that separates the men from the, well, whoever it is that edits these things.

BOGEYMAN.  I have no intention of altering my longstandng policy of not discussing anyone who first appeared in Power Pack or had a crossover in ROM:  Space Knight.  Let's move on.

ALEXANDER BONT.  Behold the peril of screwing with real-time:  Bont was supposedly a gang boss who got started in 1936, when he was presumably in his mid-twenties  He fought Daredevil "decades later" than 1945, and the two became enemies; but the problem with dropping in all the specific dates in a universe that doesn't follow real time is that you end up with Bont now being 93 years old when he first tussled with DD fist-to-fist.  REAL TIME FOREVER!  FRANGIBILITY NEVER!  OR NOT VERY OFTEN!   MAYBE!

BOUNTY.  An intergalactic mercenary and quicker-picker-upper.

BOOM-BOOM.  Hey, remember this shitbag?  She first appeared in Secret Wars!  And taught the Beyonder about what it means to be human by putting a bomb down his pants!  Apparently Marvel was so desperate for new characters in the late '80s that they made her into a major character, who now has so much backstory that it fills up two whole pages excluding a bit of lousy Rob Liefeld art.

BELLA DONNA BOUDREAUX.  This is Gambit's ex-wife.  She's a mutant too (what a goddamn surprise), a fact that leaves open the horrifying possibility that there is an offspring of the loathesome Remy LeBeau out there, waiting to annoy countless legions of future Marvel fans.

THE BROOD.  It doesn't speak particularly well to Chris Claremont's legacy that perhaps his most memorable villain is a rip-off of the monsters in Alien.  Wait, did I just type the words "Chris Claremont's legacy"?  I need sleep.

BRUISER.  Another member of the Runaways, the adventures of whom I keep getting e-mail urging me to read, this super-strong teenager (also known, pitifully enough, as "Princess Powerful") is drawn holding aloft a Hummer and fittin to drop it on that ass.  The art is by Jo Chen again, and whoo, it's snazzy.

THE B-SIDES.  Okay, look, I know I haven't read a lot of recent Marvel stuff.  Part of this is because I used to have a life, and part of it is because Marvel's recent stuff has sucked dingus, but it cannot be denied that it interferes with my ability to both offer an informed criticism and make snotty wisecracks.  And I know that some of you assure me that these books are worth reading.  But I refuse to believe that a group consisting of four teenagers named Mize, Feeva, Fateball and Jughandle, drawn by someone named "ChrisCross", is anything other than litter liner.

BUG.  Man, did you realize that Bug and Ambush Bug not only look exactly alike, but that the former predates the latter by about five years?  Which means, terrifyingly enough, that Keith Giffen ripped off the Micronauts.  Yikes.

JOHN BUSHMASTER.  It's entries like this deeply boring Power Man villain that make me seriously regret my decision to review every fucking entry in these books.  What am I gonna say about John Bushmaster other than that he has a smutty name and he looks like Billy Dee Williams?  Nothing, is what.

THE BUZZ.  Yet another alternate-universe creation, this Spider-Girl ally (fucking Spider-Girl has been around for like eight years!) is an alternate version of J. Jonah Jameson's alternate grandson wearing an alternate version of the Beetle's armored battle suit and spending his time as a member of the alternate New Warriors.  He is capable of causing me alternate boredom.

CAGLIOSTRO.  Not just a dipshit sorcerer with the same name as Giuseppe Balsamo, but the actual Count Alesandro di Cagliostro!  Someone around the Bullpen back in the mid-'70s was reading Robert Anton Wilson.

CALIBAN.  As I mentioned in the last OHOTMU recap, the introduction of Caliban in 1981 marked the exact moment in Marvel history when mutant mania started up and the whole company started a slow circle of the drain.  In a similar ratchet-up gimmick to the one DC did with the wizard whose name I forget that turned a bunch of bush-league villains into ultra-powerful monsters, the mutant Apocalypse (who, sadly, was not the mutant apocalypse) ramped him into this batshit Hulk knockoff with super-strength, invulnerabilty, and the ability to generate a psychoactive virus that puts readers instantly into a coma.

CALLISTO.  Hey, speaking of!  If Caliban marked the moment when the mutant explosion first started, Callisto's introduction marked the one where the toilet where this stuff was all floating got flushed, leading to a situation by the late 1980s where everyone in the Marvel Universe was either a mutant or was trying to kill mutants.  She too got a big power boost at some point, acquiring a set of green tentacles in an obvious attempt to cater to the burgeoning tentacle-rape demographic, but she lost her powers on M-day and now is just annoying.

CALYPSO.  She's a Haitian voodoo queen, see, and her name -- her actual, real name, is Calypso!  Plus she wears a skimpy outfit with cat's-eyes over the titties!  Basically, she's a supervillanous version of Foxy Brown.

CAPTAIN U.K.  More like Captain U.C.K.!  Hey, look, you try to write these goddamn things.

CAPTAIN ULTRA.  Yet another character played as a joke, so it's hard to riff on it too much.  The thing is, I always get this guy confused with...

CAPTAIN UNIVERSE.  ...who gets almost three pages despite being a crappy Green Lantern knockoff who hung around in the back of the Micronauts comics.  I used to be sad that the great Steve Ditko had to spend the late '70s drawing a horseshit character who was the backup for a toy line, but then again, it kept him from doing more Randroid nonsense like The Avenging World, so maybe it's not so bad.

THE CARETAKERS.  Another posse of cosmic glopheads who went around creating alien races, making werewolves, and generally causing trouble for superheroes who wouldn't exist for thousands of more years.  Their base of operations is listed as "the planet Arcturus IV; formerly Los Angeles, CA and the Savage Land".  I think that's pretty much the route I'm taking as well.

BLACK TOM CASSIDY.  I was dreading this entry, because Black Tom was previously known for being the brother of on character I didn't like and the partner of another character I do like but who is about a thousand times more interesting than he is.  But apparently, sometime in the last few years, Black Tom got turned into Swamp Thing, and now I don't have to care about him anymore, because DC already has a Swamp Thing who's better.

THE CELESTIALS.  There's no way I'm going to recap these guys again; their history is ultra-complicated even without any mutants in it.  I liked the Celestials a lot more before they became overused; they benefit from sparing use, but Marvel's getting all cosmic again these days.

CENTENNIAL.  A black superhero from Canada in the 1930s.  He had the good fortune of falling into a coma for 30 years, and then that fucking busybody Sasquatch woke him up and made him go back to work at age ninety-six just to be a fucking dick.  He found out he has a Black Muslim grandson named Blaque X, which must have made him pretty goddamn happy to be awake.

CENTURIOUS.  A Ghost Rider villain alternately known as "The Soulless Man" and "The Man Without a Soul", which pretty much covers all the bases, you must admit.  His former associates and underlings include Death Ninja, Sin-Eater, Steel Vengeance, and many other hair-metal bands of the late 1980s.

CEREBRA.  I was trying to figure out why the mutant-finding computer has a girl's name now, but after I got through the first eighty paragraphs of its history I started to nod off.  This is the same one that's in all the movies, I guess, and apparently there's now smaller versions in X-Corporation offices all over the world, leading one to believe that Professor X is all up in the franchise and licensing shit like his name was Bill Gates.

CERISE.  The Allen Davis art for this entry.  So bad.  So very, very bad.

THE CHALLENGER.  Another Marvel/Timely Golden Age character from the delightfully titled Daring Mystery Comics, the Challenger -- a weapons-master type who fought a wrestler named the Ape -- has recently returned in the pages of She-Hulk to my great amusement.  It's a bit sad that one of the best comics being published by Marvel right now is the one that clowns on its entire legacy.

CHAMBER.  Mutant ability, volatile energy, Generation X, Emplate, X-Cutioner, Black Ton, Operation:  Zero Tolerance, Psylocke, the Academy, X-Man, Hunter Brawn, Warden Coffin's House of Correction, Weapon X, zzzzzzz.

LILA CHENEY.  Basically a cosmic mutant version of Dazzler (with all the quality storytelling that implies), and not another lesbian offspring of Dick and Lynne Cheney.  Too bad.

CHINA FORCE.  They're a Chinese communist super-team, see, and some of them defected because China is so awful and oppressive, and then some others formed a mutant freedom group in China called "3Peace", and they were all named after signs of the Chinese zodiac.  For another instructive lesson in Marvel vs. DC, compare and contrast with the Great Ten.

CODE:  BLUE.  A team of high-powered New York cops designed to take on supervillains.  Following the Rule of Non-Powered Groups, they feature a heroic, wide-jawed whitebread leader (Shelley Conklin); a big, tough black bruiser (Lt. Marcus Stone); a smart, nebbishy guy ("Fireworks" Fielstein), and an exotic foreign lady ("Rigger" Ruiz).  Somehow they forgot the hot blonde with the stripper name, but there's always time for that later.

KASPER COLE.  Also known as the White Tiger, a Black Panther villain who was nicknamed Kasper by other kids because he was a light-skinded mofo.  Once again, I am told that the Black Panther series this guy was from was actually quite good, so I'll restrict myself to one snotty comment:  one of his enemies was Triage, whose real name was Nigel Blaque.  Which is the third time in this book a nonwhite character is given the name "Blaque".  All of them created after 1990, too.

THE COLLECTIVE MAN.   See "China Force".  See the vomit on my floor.

THE COLLECTOR.  Despite being one of the profoundly crappy Elders of the Universe, the Collector -- the Collector!  a guy who has spent endless millennia shoring up his china hutch filled with Hummel figurines!  -- gets three pages in this book.  Apparently, among his cosmic geegaws are a Venusian Retriever-Anemone, a Jupiterian Sauro-Beast, the Vultures of Nepenthe, energy-sapping Venusian shock flies, and a rare alternate variant-cover of Evangelyne #0.

PROJECT:  CONTINGENCY.  This was a S.H.I.E.L.D. black ops squad designed to assassinate mutant superheroes if they ever turned on the public.  Because, you know, we didn't have enough people out to assassinate mutants hanging around.  It's a pretty neat idea, actually -- I've long dug the idea of a government agency designed to kill superhumans if they ever become uncontrollable -- but it looks like these guys went to shit in about five minutes.  They take the "let's turn everyone into mutants" schtick to a ridiculous new high, as it turns out that a computer chip they were using itself mutated into a higher form of technology.  Give it up, people.

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