Unless you somehow missed SECRET INVASION #8 last week, you know by know that the
Skrulls did not claim victory in their attempted conquest of Earth, but the good guys didn't manage to notch a true win either.
When the dust settled, we didn't see
Iron Man,
Wolverine or
Thor standing tall, the hero of the day, but rather
Norman Osborn, the one-time Green Goblin who scored the kill shot on the queen of the Skrulls and earned the adulation of a grateful nation. As we saw this week in SECRET INVASION: DARK REIGN, Norman has some insidious plans for the Marvel Universe, and things will likely get a whole lot worse before they get any better.
However, this doesn't mark the first time the bad guys have walked away the victors in their struggles with Marvel's heroes. In the end, good may always triumph, but evil sure manages to have some fun along the way.
We asked various Marvel editors and creators to recall times the villains came out on top and received the following responses.
It's Friday, so kick back, relax and enjoy.
JASON AARON (upcoming writer of WOLVERINE: WEAPON X): "Kraven's Last Hunt." Still one of my all-time favorite Marvel stories and one of the darkest super hero tales you'll ever read. Kraven shoots
Spider-Man, buries him alive and then takes his place, all to show that he's superior to Spidey in every way. And you if you don't know what happens after that, then you're missing out on one of the most shocking endings in Marvel history.
CHRIS YOST (co-writer of X-FORCE): Hands down, EMPEROR DOOM. Doom had won, flat out. He'd used the
Purple Man to take over the world, and even when the
Avengers resisted, they only won because Doom allowed it. Doom is a conqueror, not an administrator.
Doom getting the power of the
Beyonder in 'Secret Wars' and Doom using Dr. Strange to free his mother's soul in "Triumph and Torment" are close runner-ups.
Doooooom!!!
JIM MCCANN (upcoming writer of NEW AVENGERS: THE REUNION): There is no contest on this for me: "Avengers: Under Siege," when the
Masters of Evil stormed Avengers Mansion, beating the Earth's Mightiest down worse than anyone had ever done, and destroying Cap's few mementos he had left from his pre-WWII life. Truly
brutal and heartbreaking stuff. Fortunately, Cap and the Avengers are able to rally as the Masters of Evil begin to turn upon each other, and ultimately it is
Zemo's pride that costs him everything in the final moments. Best Avengers story out there, I feel.
WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS (former writer of THOR): There was a moment at the end of a
Fantastic Four special back in my checkered youth where Doctor Doom had forced a mental duel with
Reed Richards. They both got hooked up to a big old [Jack] Kirby Mento-vac and started fighting. They both sweat and strained, but at last Doom's relentless, ruthless intellect won out. Reed groaned, blood spurted out of his ears and he collapsed, dead. Sue and Johnny fell sobbing across his body. Doom, who had them all dead to rights, casually released them and strolled away.
Sue and Johnny turned to Reed and asked: "Why did he just leave?" Reed explained he had used the machine to give Doom the
illusion of his own defeat. As a kid I found that whole dénouement at first confusing, then incredibly cool and so satisfying, much more than the usual fight scene.
JOHN ROMITA JR. (upcoming artist of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN): The scene is [AMAZING SPIDER-MAN v1 #33]with Spider-Man pinned under a huge chunk of machinery with the serum to save Aunt May agonizingly out of reach. Doc Ock is the villain, but Spidey's escape from that is, quite possibly, the greatest single scene in Spidey history, let alone for your purposes.
MIKE PERKINS (artist of THE STAND: CAPTAI TRIPS): The comic that immediately comes to mind, simply because it was so well-conceived and written in the script stage that it convinced me to illustrate it, is the ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST PROLOGUE. There's a brooding sense of menace in the air which snowballs, picks up steam, leaves bodies strewn left, right and center and culminates in the
Phalanx corrupting and assimilating the entire
Kree race! Brilliant use of the cliffhanger ending. My hat is raised to Mr. Abnett and Mr. Lanning—and Mr. Rosemann too for putting the whole thing together.
KEVIN GREVIOUX (writer of ADAM: LEGEND OF THE BLUE MARVEL): The 80's graphic novel EMPORER DOOM. Without question,
Dr. Doom actually conquered the world and could've quelled the Avengers insurgence with a push of the
button. But being the egoist that he is, the need to have conflict far out-weighed the need to be victorious. It was a great issue.
BILL ROSEMANN (Marvel editor): When I was in the 1st grade, I somehow got my greedy hands on paperback-sized reprints of the first 21 issues of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. It was a full-color, three-volume set by Pocket Books. They were, and always will be, my favorite books of all time. That is where Stan Lee and Steve Ditko ushered in the magical Marvel formula—and every issue had me believing that Spider-Man was defeated for good. Seriously, go back and check out those issues—from the
Sandman to
Mysterio to the Green Goblin, everyone hands Spidey a brutal smackdown! Too many modern stories turn super villains into jokes and pushovers, but Stan & Steve knew: a hero is measured by his villains—and the Spidey villains were the most compelling and threatening of them all!
MARC SUMERAK (writer of WEAPON X: FIRST CLASS): A few years back, Kurt Busiek and George Perez did a story called "
Ultron Unlimited" where the
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DAREDEVIL #227 |
Avengers were nearly decimated by an army of Ultron robots. The sheer magnitude of the battle really made me doubt whether or not our heroes would make it through the story in one piece. The Avengers eventually managed to rally, but there were definitely a few moments where it looked mighty grim for Earth's Mightiest!
STEVE WACKER (Marvel editor): "It was a nice piece of work,
Kingpin. You shouldn't have signed it." –DAREDEVIL #227.
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