First Appearance: The Amazing Spider-Man #172 (1977) An oddly recurring and annoying trope at Marvel Comics is the "well-intentioned genius black villain". Marvel has few black characters and the easiest way to introduce one without effort is to shove them into a rogues gallery. But because writers don't want to offend the four black people who read comics, the villains are always "victims of circumstance" rather than evil. For example: Thor has Thunderball, a nuclear physicist who finances experiments through robbery. Luke Cage has Chemistro, a chemical/mechanical engineer who seeks revenge upon the company that stole his ideas. Spidey's version is Robert Farrell, a brilliant-but-poor inventor who turns to crime to pay for his inventions. Someone really needs to explain patent law to these guys. As if he wasn't bad enough, the invention that gives him his namesake is a rocket-powered skateboard that gives him super speed and wall-skating abilities. Totally radical. His skateboard actually outmaneuvered Spidey on his first encounter, a failure that should've made the wall-crawler contemplate suicide. Of course, Rocket wasn't "really" a bad guy: once Spidey found out he was a fellow scientist, he convinced him to go to college. Because lord knows a guy who invented a physics-defying skateboard would never think to go to college.
I'm a nice dude, with some nice dreams
See these ice cubes, see these Ice Creams?
Go to http://blackcomicguy.wordpress.com/ to read some of my thoughts on comics, film and television.
