In addition to the revived-hero guest stars in Archie Comics' THE FLY, three issues played host to a multi-villain cabal out to destroy the hero and his partner Fly Girl. Said cabal, "the Anti-Fly League," was mostly made up of one-shot villains except for the Fly's closest thing to an arch-nemesis, The Spider. Fiends included two Earth criminals, Linda Drake and Karl Rance, and various visitors from other times and planets such as Dovi, LXO III, Bra-Kr, and Roxr, and one cherub who wasn't a "repeat villain" but a "you killed my brother" duplicate of said villain. (The first guy was called "The Metal Master," while the second fellow was "The Metal Monster." Nice of the writer to keep them distinct.)
The serial lasted only three issues, #21-23, and then pooped out so that only The Spider, Dovi and LXO III got to set insidious traps for the Dropsophilidae Duo. It may be that the writer got bored with the trope, or realized that he'd written himself in a corner by including Linda and Rance, who in their one-shot appearances only provided a threat to the super-powered heroes because they the crooks acquired accidental super-resources. Hard to say if this group was influenced by the similar sounding Superman Revenge Squad, which appeared at DC the same year. About two years later Marvel used the trope more memorably in the first SPIDER-MAN annual, in which the Sinister Six also considerately took turns attacking the hero instead of ganging up on him en masse.
No comments:
Post a Comment