Spider-Man No Way Home: Electro Explained | Comics Explained

so back in 2013 when i first started this channel god i can't believe it's been that long it's been almost 10 years uh one of the first videos that we did was electro explained but it was nine minutes long it was a static image and it was not very in-depth and because jamie foxx's electro was going to appear or at least slate it to appear in spider-man no way home i figured we would make a video explaining the character give you an in-depth explanation so you guys can walk away as an expert on who max dillon is so max dylan or electro first appeared in amazing spider-man number nine in 1964 and was created by stan lee and steve ditko but here's the funny thing as with most marvel comic characters while you did get something of an origin for elektro in his early appearance you actually got a far more in-depth origin and amazing spider-man issue number 422 by tom defalco now with this origin being more comprehensive it did bookend to the original origin from spider-man number 9 and 64. but this one offers a lot more insight into the life and times of maxwell dylan and why it is he ended up becoming the person that he was so what this really told us was that at a previous point in time his father was exceedingly abusive towards his mother now it wasn't really on the same level as like brian banner in the sense that uh bruce banner's father was abusive towards bruce and his mother but the father of electro was really just beating on its mother now eventually he abandoned the family and in a lot of ways it left a kind of survivor's guilt so to speak with regards to his mother insofar as she saw herself as a failure because she couldn't keep her husband at the same time she was also exceedingly protective of maxwell dylan to the point where she actually kind of kept him from really being able to get out there and experience the world where he could get bumps bruises make mistakes screw things up and basically struggle in the world to understand that resolve is what's needed to make it in the world and so because of that as he grew older and even to the point where he actually considered college his mom always shot him down and said no you're not ready for that kind of environment out there right you don't have the intellect you don't have the the attributes necessary to make it in the world and was always doing what she could to keep him close to home now again a lot of that seemed to be a psychological extension of the fact that she had lost her husband right her husband had walked away and in an effort to continue or at least to to prevent herself from experiencing that kind of loss again despite how twisted that whole situation was she was always trying to keep her son close to the vest now eventually she ended up dying about three days before his 25th birthday and then it turned out at least from his perspective she was essentially right that when he went out into the world the first thing he did was latch on to a person he immediately latched on to a girl named norma lynn and the two of them were married really six months after they'd met now the environment was really conducive to this circumstance right they both worked for the same electrical company there was already chemistry there but it was one of these things where she ultimately left him because from her perspective he had no real drive or ambition right that he was an electrical lineman and had no desire to move beyond this station and that because of that she ultimately saw him as somebody with no ambition that would no drive to improve himself which really seemed to kind of indicate there would really be no drive to improve the relationship beyond its current standard until she ultimately left the result of this is that the constant loss and the fact that he had kind of been left ill-equipped to function in the world really turned maxwell dylan into a very harsh person so much so that he wouldn't help anybody unless there was something to be gained in it right he basically went from one end to the other and that makes sense when the pendulum swings it swings in the extremes right it goes from one end to the other all this came to a head when he was looking to essentially gain a promotion and instead of just kind of working his butt off the way that we normally expect and so far as you know equal treatment from our employers and being allowed to move up based on our performance on the job that instead when there was a lineman that was stuck ultimately maxwell dylan's response was i'm not going to help him unless you basically offer me a promotion give me more money whatever the case is now during this time lightning ended up striking really in the midst of his storms it struck this pole killed the lineman who was stuck and because of his proximity to some electrical wires dylan was shocked as well but instead of killing him it turned him into electro and so given the harsh direction his life had gone in he did the most logical thing which was to become a villain to use this this newfound power for the purpose of just kind of achieving his own personal goals right now this of course again kind of wrapping back around to amazing spider-man number nine brought him in direct conflict with peter parker and one of the funny things about this is that right off the bat within the first two years of elektro's appearance in marvel comics he was starkly different from a lot of other villains that we'd seen first and foremost the power he possessed was not really brought to us in the full-scale form that it would be and in fact there were future upgrades that took place with regards to his power that helped to boost it but the main focus here is that with him being a villain of spider-man the idea was to basically show what spider-man was capable of that the ability of peter parker to be a superhero was not relegated to web slinging and punching but also using his intellect as well it was one of the hallmarks of stan lee's storytelling back in the day that his desire was to convey to the reader there's more to being a superhero than just beating people up having intelligence being able to use your brain as much as your brawn is a hallmark of what it means to truly be an effective hero and so the funny thing about this is that there were kind of plot threads that were thrown in there for the purpose of adding a little bit of drama that where peter parker ultimately defeated electro using a combination of rubber gloves and shoes right just due to their resistance to uh to electricity then it basically also led to j jonah jameson in this exact same story in the beginning when elektra went into a bank and robbed it basically coming to the realization and really just kind of convincing himself that peter parker and electro were the same person and so this was really more stan lee and steve ditko writing the narrative in such a way to where peter parker just couldn't catch a break that j jonah jameson always had it out for peter and he would cook the books however he needed to to ensure that it looked like peter parker was the villain right the daily bugle would always kind of be this public enemy of peter and so far as how they wrote their articles and how they depicted him and the press but beyond that despite elektro being defeated again he had a huge involvement in terms of how villains were portrayed in marvel comics the reason why was because villains were pretty straightforward back then right i mean at this point in time the the marvel landscape was still being fleshed out in a lot of ways right back in 1964 1965 marvel was still figuring some things out but by and large villains were not really the main focus a lot of it was on heroes right evolving heroes growing heroes that's why more often than not when you looked at teams like the x-men or you look at the introduction of the inhumans or black panther that they had a lot of crossover with stories belonging to the fantastic four fantastic four was marvel's premier superhero team they were the most popular comic that marvel had running at the time right up until the releases of spider-man then that one took over in popularity and so you saw a lot of superheroes being brought in and being you know really premiering in fantastic four stories but more so than that superheroes were really just being shared around right you had heroes who were appearing in other hero stories heroes whose motivations and their immoral compass was being solidified over and over and over again and while i wouldn't say that villains were taking the back seat and being left behind i will say they weren't necessarily the main focus elektro changed that because almost immediately after his appearance stan lee and bill everett threw him into the pages of daredevil issue number two where he fought matt murdock for the very first time and actually held his own to a degree right following that you go into amazing spider-man annual number one in 1964 which basically gave us the sinister six and this was a genius idea on behalf of marvel right as most of you guys know the sinister six was a concept created by marvel to basically unify the various villains right and in a lot of ways it was i wouldn't say designed to be the antithesis of the fantastic four but it was designed to build on the popularity of a superhero team but super villains instead and it was composed of spider-man's really top-tier villains at the time really his only villains at the time but basically having this team working together for the purpose of defeating spider-man was huge right because it basically hit all the marks you focus on the intelligence of doctor octopus and organizing the team you focus on the power of electro insofar as what happens when peter parker fights him on his home turf literally in an electrical plant right all these different characters mysterio so on and so forth sandman all these guys are really kind of elevated and beefed up and not only did it help to basically solidify spider-man as a hero that could essentially overcome the odds despite the sheer amount of resistance he's facing but it also helped to kind of set the stage for what the various villains could become and so following that you go into daredevil annual in 1967 and then you move elektro beyond simply being a spider-man villain and you actually started moving him in the direction of becoming what was an effect of villain for hire the reason for this was that at the time while you had like the frightful four that basically faced off against the the fantastic four you had the sinister six facing off against spider-man you had what is in a lot of ways a much lesser known team called the emissaries of evil that faced off against daredevil and electro was brought on to become part of the emissaries of evil to kind of expand this notion that he was a villain that really covered a lot of the the capabilities that were necessary to face off against a lot of different superheroes and so again it was kind of big because following that going into fantastic four annual number three you ended up having electro who actually face off against the fantastic four at the behest of doctor doom so again kind of expanding this roster now one of the funny things about this comic is it really stands out this particular story stands out in comparison to most all the other stories because you did experience a team up between spider-man and the fantastic four much later on in peter parker's spectacular spider-man number 42 when elektro joined the frightful four and then fought both spider-man and the fantastic four and held his own right and that was one of the stories where it just kind of solidified this guy's huge right this guy's a very big deal being able to hold his own and in fact actually stand toe to toe with the human torch johnny storm as well as the thing ben grimm and spider-man along with the rest of the fantastic four was massive and in fact a lot of the stories that would come much much later stories like the raft things like that that basically had electro facing off against the this veritable you know who's who of the superhero community all has its roots in this fantastic four and peter parker the spectacular spider-man story face off against a fantastic four and was able to hold his own now following that you actually go into one of the more lesser known stories written by steve gerber in 1975 and 1976 which was called omega the unknown now omega the unknown was marvel's attempt to really one of their last attempts to basically take a comic book character created and just throw it out into solo series and see what works at that point in time marvel had largely been focusing on things like marvel premiere marvel 21 different things like that to kind of give us these these stories that took place in comics like marvel spotlight to basically give us characters and teams that they didn't want to invest the time in as far as like a solo book went if it didn't succeed uh omega the unknown was one of the last holdouts right one of the last times that marvel did that of course it was a terribly received comic it was cancelled after like 10 or 12 issues due to low sales but one of the things that happens in the story is because of electro's popularity at the time marvel threw him in there hoping that elektra would help to kind of beef up the story a little bit and give it a strong start and so in issues number two and three you actually see elektro fight the incredible hulk and take him out in one punch it was huge right just one hit and he takes out the hulk that was big right at that point in time that was massive the comic alone already had a pretty strong roster right the incredible hulk electro omega whose powers were a little ambiguous along with his name it was a terrible concept for a comic book but seeing a character like elektro take out the incredible hulk just in one single shot was again one of these things that kind of established him as being a solid character now one of the big issues this comic had and people even still talk about it to this day is the inconsistency and power that if elektra was a villain who could be defeated by a superhero like spider-man and spider-man had previously been defeated by the incredible hulk how much sense did it make that electro could defeat the incredible hulk right especially if it's just done in one single shot but that's one of the things that marvel kind of chalked up and even in the pages right they called them the omega letters and the pages themselves marvel kind of responded to this by simply saying well you can't look at comics as an absolute right just because the circumstance happened in one comic does not mean it's guaranteed to happen across every single comic right but regardless of how you slice it in the aftermath of this and really for the next 20 years or so electro was a character that had the potential to be massive in terms of his danger to the overall superhero community but there didn't really seem to be a lot of emphasis put on him now as to why that's the case i don't fully know i would argue that a lot of that's because by the time you got to the late 1970s going into the early 1980s marvel wanted to focus more on cerebral stories involving the failure of superheroes a lot of that really seemed to come out of the death of gwen stacy and really even the dark knight returns right just coming out of stories you know where where you had like batman who was darker face off against superman right kind of ushering in the bronze age of comics as we know it but focusing on more character-driven stories that belong to superheroes that show that superheroes could fail the rise of the anti-hero different things along those lines electro was again very much a villain for hire and so because of that there really didn't seem to be a lot of impetus a lot of focus put on his character and so following that one of the big things that really came out of this era it goes into the 1990s and the 1990s again kind of continued this idea and you did see efforts by marvel especially with tom lyle in uh spider-man unlimited number nine in 1995 that were designed to actually beef up electro and make him a more significant character specifically when he joins mysterio sinister seven now the sinister seven is looked at as you know from spider-man fans as i understand it with kind of didn't really happen and the reason why was because the sinister seven was largely rooted in the clone saga right this idea of kane and and ben reilly the idea like which one is actually peter parker um the whole point of the sinister seven as it was assembled was designed to be a version of the sinister six that focused and was designed to belong to kane as opposed to the traditional peter parker spider-man sinister six for its part the story was interesting but at the end of the day because clone saga was so reviled among spider-man fans a lot of times it seems to be kind of lumped in with it and so because clone song is considered bad that sinister 7 is considered bad as well i'm not entirely sure i agree with that there were elements of it that i thought were cool but that was kind of the running thing when it came to electro right as a villain for hire it was always if you have the money to hire electro he'll do almost anything you want in terms of taking down various villains or facing off against various threats which again was designed to kind of go into this idea that he was a credible threat when you look at captain america issues 411 through 413 by mark gruenwald which was actually written back in 1993 it's electro facing off against captain america and a handful of the avengers and again holding his own against these guys now one of the other cool things that happened here was that uh kind of circling back to amazing spider-man 422 that electro had experienced a big boost to his powers and the reason why was because up to that point electro despite being a guy who was a kind of a harbinger or a source of electricity at the end of the day was like a battery if anything else right he needed to maintain a charge the boost in power that he received that was really due to a guy named rose which we don't necessarily need to go into jack's character but the boost in power that he received actually was the results of marvel transforming him and really moving him away from it being this kind of battery-esque character and turning him into what was in effect living lightning so he didn't really need a charge anymore not only that one of the things that was kind of interesting was that in the early days again kind of focusing on his character and in terms of expanding him around marvel had considered throwing him on the brotherhood of evil mutants this was done by way of magneto approaching elektro and actually asking him to join the team ultimately this didn't really happen because magneto didn't consider electro to be a mutant but at the end of the day saw the potential of his power in the aftermath of this with regards to amazing spider-man 422 he also had the ability to tap into the electromagnetic spectrum which again seemed to focus on the fact that magneto saw that electro could become a wildly powerful being right a non-mutant equivalent to an omega level character and so because of that electro was one of these guys were again kind of beefed up routinely in marvel but not a whole lot was done with regards to giving us this full on total display of the kinds of things electro could do now a lot of this really came to a head when you got to the early to mid 2000s and the launch of the new avengers now to kind of sidetrack here for a second we're not going to go super in depth into why this happened we've done this before but with regards to to the launch of the new avengers because i i treat every video like somebody's first video the new avengers was the desire by marvel to basically rework the avengers team and the reason for this is that while you might look at that and say why didn't they just change the roster the truth was this has happened a million times before right you had the original avengers team the roster changed relatively frequently and actually got pretty massive in size this led to the splitting of the avengers insofar as you had avengers west coast and then you had avengers east coast which was basically the main avengers team you had other stories and other other events that kind of focused on that but at the end of the day marvel didn't want to do what they'd done before marvel wanted to completely shift things up and so basically disbanding the avengers in the avengers disassembled story and then relaunching it and reforming the team as a new avengers which even in the confines of the story itself was designed to kind of correct the end team mistakes they experienced basically led to a whole new avengers roster right captain america wolverine iron man spider-man so on and so forth the first real story that you saw with the new avengers was called breakout and this of course written by brian michael bendis brought in the character of elektro by this point in time bendis had basically built on the existing power boost electro had and he was contracted by elektra who was secretly a scroll at the time kind of setting the stage for secret invasion to basically take down the raft or take down power to the raft to free all the different villains who were there to operate as a kind of distraction while the scrolls continue their campaign of replacing villains replacing heroes and just normal humans with scroll replicants and the heroes being totally unaware that it's happening elektro of course did exactly that but it was a massive display of power it was huge when it happened now we had seen things happen like that before to a degree elektro trying to destroy the world on several occasions and coming relatively close to it with the combined efforts of the avengers the fantastic four and spider-man having to take him out it's one of these things where it was been just kind of building on a lot of the stuff that we've seen with his character over the years but again following that you didn't really see a whole lot with his character a whole lot being done by marvel with regards to kind of displaying the fact that elektro was every bit the credible threat that we knew he was however a lot of this really changed during the run of dan slot and this is one of the reasons why i say dance slot spider-man run is probably one of the greatest runs that i've ever been written about the character and a lot of people don't really like it right a lot of traditional spider-man fans don't really like it um i kind of consider them hipsters right they're like spider-man was better in the 1980s i don't think he was i love dan slot's run especially superior spider-man but one of the funny things about this is that you had a story called ends of the earth right and this really took place in spider-man 682 through 683 and if we're being honest with ourselves was already a part of dance slot spider-man run but one of the things that had happened here is that you actually had elektro face off against thor which was cool right it was something that we hadn't really seen before now again of course elektra was ultimately defeated but this went into the superior spider-man run and specifically this was avenging spider-man issues 18-19 and then you also saw a lot of involvement in superior spider-man team-up issues 5-7 one of the things to kind of specify here is that during the superior spider-man run because in a lot of ways it was kind of landmark we'd never really seen an instance where somebody had taken over the body of peter parker and replaced him for any real measure of time the closest you got was the clone saga um that you actually saw marvel spitting out a bunch of different superior spider-man uh stories right superior foes of spider-man uh avenging spider-man superior spider-man team up there were some pretty cool stories that went on there but one of the things that took place here is you actually saw elektro essentially returning and then facing off against superior spider-man only to be defeated eventually this led to him basically escaping alongside the other five members of what we're called the superior six as opposed to the sinister six and then in turn again you know more or less being defeated by uh by spider-man but it was one of these things where routinely he would kind of pop up and dance slots run really seemed to focus on elevating electro now one of the things that happened here in 2015 it came with mike costa and you actually saw something that was introduced called the electro verse but what was done here is that the idea of electroverse was designed to introduce this notion of electro having something that was a compliment or something that kind of existed in the same capacity as like the council of kings and the since you had like a council of electros it was short-lived not a whole lot came out of it but it was still a cool concept it was still a cool idea so again a few efforts being made here and there by marvel to kind of beef the character up but whether it's because of the fact that the efforts simply weren't enough the stories weren't significant enough or there was just wasn't a whole lot of interest in the character there really didn't seem to be a lot going on with the character of elektro and so what you ended up getting was basically the demise of his character and amazing spider-man vol 4. again kind of coming towards the tail end of danslot's run when you actually had a character named francine frye who had come up on the scene now francine frye had actually been around since 2014 and she was somebody who had accidentally been killed by electro and it was one of the aspects of danslot's run focusing on the mental state of maxwell dillon the idea of remorse regret the fact that he felt bad for having killed her accidentally but during the whole idea of the jackal the the clone conspiracy event that francine fry was brought in as an effort to try to convince maxwell dylan to undergo a procedure with regards to his powers ultimately the process ended up leading to francine fry absorbing the power of maxwell dylan maxwell dying in the process and francine becoming the new electro the response to this was pretty divisive this took place during that era of marvel comics when you had people who had kind of claimed to have read marvel comics for a long long time but couldn't really answer any rudimentary questions about them and so it's one of these things where people seem to get bent out of shape over the fact that electro had quote unquote been killed now anybody who reads comics for any real measure of time will tell you there's no sense in complaining over character changes because they all go back to the status quo in the end right everything goes back to normal that captain america was a hydra agent until he wasn't until he went back to being captain america again right that sam wilson was captain america until he went back to being falcon that everything always usually goes back to the status quo very rarely does that not happen and so the results of this really came to fruition with uh amazing spider-man vol 5 issue number 69 now that's currently part of the ongoing run that's written by nick spencer right nick spencer basically took over spider-man following the end of dan's slots run specifically during the chameleon conspiracy event so it actually happened uh earlier this year but essentially electro's been brought back right that maxwell dylan has returned and ultimately his powers are back as well so elektro it's back to being himself now i imagine this is being done because of the fact that electro is going to appear in spiderman no way home that's basically why you're seeing him return but regardless of the reason it would have happened anyway so those of you guys who are new to comics just keep in mind that when they change characters don't get bent out of shape right i've been reading for 25 years very rarely has there ever been an instance where a character has been changed and not gone back to the status quo right it's just one of those things where everything just kind of switches around and everything gets changed if for no other reason to shuffle up things so they don't they don't become mundane and then everything goes back to being normal right jane foster with thor odin's son is thor again so don't don't get caught up in the politics of it all right and don't let the internet talk you into being mad about it right just take it for what it is to you know enjoy the ride and then just let things go back to normal when they do so with that being said guys we're gonna bring this to an end uh thank you guys for watching and i will catch you all later peace

Channel: Comics Explained

Views: 56,202

Rating: 4.9366655 out of 5

Keywords: comics explained, comicsexplained, marvel explained, fluidic beats, comics, comic books, marvel, dc, infinity gauntlet, world breaker hulk, crisis on infinite earths, comic explained, infinity war, the batman who laughs, doomsday clock, Electro, Max Dillon, Spider-Man, Peter Parker, Clone Saga, Superior Spider-Man, Avenging Spider-Man, Electroverse, Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU, Sinister Six, Sinister Seven, Superior Six, Doctor Octopus

Id: Ufo_Fa5SLT0

Length: 22min 42sec (1362 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 02 2021