"Man Reversible The" Moore's Alan

Here’s a great little "Time Twister" from Alan Moore, originally written for 2000 AD. Before Watchmen and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moore worked on short science fiction stories for the the long running U.K. weekly, even then playing with time and sequence in his storytelling. Of course, the idea of a person living his life backwards isn't completely Moore's - I'm sure I've read an old science fiction story somewhere with the same premise, at least - but Alan Moore always manages to make great comics from whatever he starts with, and "The Reversible Man" is no exception:

"The Reversible Man"
Script: Alan Moore
Art: Mike White
Story scanned from The Complete Alan Moore Future Shocks, Rebellion, the Studio, 2006

Some Less-Than-Spectacular Spider-Man Foes

Hey, Pennsylvania readers! Did'ja know Spider-Man once made a visit to your friendly neighborhood? Too bad he only had time to visit a prison and the Appalachian backwoods. This was during a story that had Robbie Robertson imprisoned for covering up some past crimes of Tombstone, his lifelong tormentor. Since, as far as big-city comic book writers know, Pennsylvania is crawling with inbred hill-folk, it only stands to reason that Spider-man's one recorded visit to the state would lead him head first into the buck-toothed, in-bred-ed-est hillbilly clan possible. "BANJO" was actually a ten year old kid mutated by radiation from Three-Mile Island into a hulking disfigured brute, seen above. Don't you love that custom logo, like this guy was ever going to be used again?

DISCLAIMER: At no point in this story is Spider-Man ordered to "Git them panties off! Git 'em right on off now, y'hear?" a la Deliverance. More's the pity.

SKINHEAD was a (lower-case) skin head racist who ran afoul of Spidey and his one black friend, the Rocket Racer. Later, while escaping the authorities, he ran into the Empire State University lab and found some bad web-fluid Peter had been working on. He got drenched with the stuff while fighting Rocket Racer, and it turned him into a protoplasmic horror in short order. Yes, apparently bad web fluid can make mooks into monsters. It's entirely possible Jameson was right!

Daredevil #300, in which Daredevil finally, decisively, defeated the Kingpin was barely off the presses before Web of Spider-Man was trying to cram a half-assed NEW KINGPIN down our throat. Kingpin's son, Richard Fisk rapidly gained 300 pounds and shed his hair to take over his father's empire in the much reviled "Name of the Rose" storyline before quickly disappearing. Not to worry though: the Web of Spider-Man guys couldn't backpedal fast enough, and the new Kingpin's next appearance revealed him to be Richard's friend, who had undergone plastic surgery as part of some convoluted scheme. Then of course, the real Kingpin returned soon enough, and the whole thing was ignored. That's commitment to your story, guys!

P.S Pretty much every version of the Rose sucked, too. Especially the "Blood" one.



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