Today, discover how one of Spider-Man's Sinister Six villains was recruited by Magneto to be part of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!

This is "Foundationed Deep," a feature where we look at particular odd/strange/interesting instances of retroactively connecting different comic book characters (for instance, Uncanny X-Men #268 retroactively established that Wolverine knew both Captain America and the Black Widow from World War II).

When Spider-Man debuted, he had one of the most unusual superhero origins of the era, as a teen lead hero (already a novel idea) who initially turns down using his powers for good and instead just tries to make money off of them (even more novel) before his decision to not stop a criminal leads to a personal tragedy when that same criminal murders Spider-Man's beloved Uncle Ben. A chastened Spider-Man devotes himself to being a hero, now knowing that with great power comes great responsibility.

Here's the thing, though, once Spider-Man became a hit, you could tell that Stan Lee (and presumably Martin Goodman, Publisher of Marvel Comics) started to HEAVILY lean into the novel aspect of the series. The "you've never seen a hero like THIS before" became a major aspect of the series in those early years and while that never wholly went away, after two years or so it became LESS of a central aspect of the comic (I think I'd say the famous issue where Spider-Man goes a whole issue without fighting a villain was probably the last issue of that era to really heavily lean into "Look! Do you see? This is very different!"). In those early issues, Lee had more of a plotting presence on the series, so he likely was telling Steve Ditko to lean into that aspect of the comic.

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HOW ELECTRO STOOD OUT AS A SPIDER-MAN VILLAIN

That takes us to Amazing Spider-Man #9, where Ditko and Lee introduce Elektro, who pointedly stood out as a new villain. First off, after a series of fascinating new villains who had some measure of tortured aspects to them (like Doctor Octopus or the Wizard), Electro was just a jerk who loved having superpowers and wanted to do crimes with them...

The deeper meaning of the character was that there WASN'T any deeper meaning. He was just a crook who happened to have superpowers.

This was then highlighted when Spider-Man defeats Electro and unmasks him and makes a note about how he doesn't recognize him under the mask.

Again, you can see them lean into the novelty of the situation. "Some OTHER comic book might have me have some connection to the villain now that he is unmasked, but not this comic book! No sir!"

What was funny, though, is that mixed into all of this is a supervillain origin that doesn't even really have a pretense of making any sort of sense. It's not Jay Garrrick's "inhaling hard water gives me super speed" or the Whizzer's "a mongoose blood transfusion...also gives me super speed" but it is close. He gets hit by lightning and now became a human generator? It doesn't remotely make sense. A much later comic book explored that concept.

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ELECTRO MEETS MAGNETO

2009's Web of Spider-Man #2 (by Fred Van Lente, Barry Kitson and Jeremy Cox) shows that same scene from Amazing Spider-Man #9 of Electro turning his house into a electricity lab as he increases his powers, only this time, we also see that his experiments were interrupted by someone very fast...but not too fast that a wide blast of electricity couldn't slow him down...

Yep, it is Quicksilver, in his early costume, which means that Magneto and Scarlet Witch can't be far behind and they are not, as here they are!

Magneto explains that he was drawn to Electro by the sheer amount of electromagnetic energy that Electro was giving off. This led to a fascinating scene where Magneto mocks Electro's understanding of his own origin, explaining that while yes, he certainly DID get struck by lightning, it was not nearly the REAL reason for his origin.

The interesting thing here is that Van Lente didn't take this opportunity to retcon Electro AS a mutant (which was all the rage for a while there in the 1990s), but rather that he is something else, not quite human but also not quite a mutant.

But it ends up all tying back to the general understanding that we have of Electro. He really isn't what you would call a "galaxy-brain" thinker. He is an off the cuff jerk who just wants to get by with whatever occurs to him in the given moment. He's also the type of jerk who is anti-mutant and so when given the chance to possibly change the very world with Magneto, he would prefer to continue with his original plan of using his powers to rob banks...

Magneto gets in some good zingers about Electro's lack of ambition and there's a good bit where Scarlet With worries about Professor Xavier recruiting Electro to the X-Men (which does remind me of just how many early X-Men stories were simply, "Cerebro found a new mutant! Let's go recruit them!" even though none of the mutants that they find ever actually end up getting recruited to the team) and Magneto dispels her worry by explaining that Xavier would have no use for a person like this, either.

It really speaks to just how well that Magneto nailed him that Electro doesn't even really fight back, as he sort of kind of just accepts his judgement, even though he is clearly seething with rage over it. Eventually, over time, Electro tries to do more things with his powers. Eventually.

Thanks to my pal, Tom A., for suggesting this one! If anyone else has a suggestion for a Foundationed Deep (retroactive connections between characters), feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com.

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