"You've been very bad -- so I'm turning you loose!" (Cases from the Marvel U?)

[Lorendiac]

I'm looking for cases where a Marvel superhero let a known criminal, probably with outstanding warrants on him, walk away free so that he could commit his crimes again in the future if he happened to feel like it.

I'm not counting stuff where the hero did the very best he could, but failed to make a good arrest because he couldn't do everything at once. For instance, the villain might be losing his fight, but then managed to make a clean getaway after the hero dropped the villain in order to run off and carry helpless civilians out of a burning building before the roof collapsed. (Yeah, I'm probably remembering Amazing Spider-Man #261 in particular. Looked like Spidey had the mysterious Hobgoblin on the ropes, but in the end he had to abandon him -- without even taking time to rip his mask off, unfortunately -- in order to save some other people.)

I don't care about those times. I want cases where the hero obviously made a deliberate decision to let the bad guy walk away, for whatever reason. Instead of the hero just getting distracted in the heat of the moment by other people screaming for help, or whatever.

Here are three examples that sprang to mind, to illustrate what I'm looking for:

1. Fantastic Four #244. Reed Richards has the chance to let Galactus die of hunger, and instead turns him loose on the universe so that he can continue to commit genocide in the future. Over and over and over and over again. Apparently, Reed was willing to fight hard to keep Galactus from devouring the Earth and killing billions of human beings . . . but if the big G wants to give the same treatment to lots of other inhabited planets, as long as they aren't inhabited by Reed's own species, that's fine and dandy!

2. Amazing Fantasy #15. A very young and foolish Spider-Man lets a thief run right past him to the elevator and escape. On that occasion, Spidey comes to regret it after the same crook later kills his Uncle Ben. As a result, Spidey learns an important lesson (which other writers have frequently had him forget): "With great power comes great responsibility!"

3. Amazing Spider-Man #40. Spidey and the original Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) have just learned each other's identities. Then they struggle and the Goblin is knocked unconscious by sudden exposure to a combination of chemicals and electricity. When he wakes up, the Goblin persona and memories have fled and poor old Norman doesn't have a clue what's going on. Spidey takes it upon himself to burn the Green Goblin costume and keep everything that happened under his hat, instead of doing anything sensible like making darn sure that Norman got confined by the authorities while he received psychiatric care.

(So does it really come as any great surprise that Norman later reverted back to his nasty Green Goblin persona and killed Gwen Stacy? Didn't Peter learn anything from the mistake he made in letting that robber run around loose?)

[randomguy]

The one I always remember is from X-Men, Vol. 1 #9, written by Stan Lee with pencils by Jack Kirby. It's an awful sequence, which is why it always sticks out in my mind.

The X-Men fight and defeat Lucifer, an evil alien planning to blow up the world, and also the nasty baddie that originally crippled Xavier. At the end of the story they let him go, because "we X-Men are pledged never to cause injury to a human being." Apparently they can't be bothered to hand him over to the police or anything.

God it's dumb, even by Silver Age standards. Lee and Kirby were really slacking on that one.

[Shawn Hopkins]

The worst one I've seen is just from a crowd scene in an issue of Deathlok, when a bunch of superheroes, most of them with cybernetic parts, are gathered. Wolverine and some of the Fantastic Four are there. But so is Bushwacker, and none of them seem to make any attempt in that book to bring the mutant murdering menace in. I like to think Wolverine "Snikted" him right after, but the book gives no indication of this.

The one that affected me most isn't from a Marvel comic. It's when Animal Man lets B'Wana Beast go in the fourth issue of Animal Man, instead of bringing him in "like a good little superhero." He's starting to realize he agrees with B'Wana Beast's animal rights stand.

There's also an issue of Paul Jenkin's Spider-Man that establishes that superheroes have a weekly card game and villains are sometimes included.

Finally, how about all the time Spider-Man and everyone else that wasn't Daredevil kept letting the Punisher go? At least make some show of trying to bring him in.

[Frank White]

Seeing as how Cassandra Nova has apparantly re-appeared in Astonishing X-Men I guess the X-Men let her go in New X-Men

[Sandoz]

Seeing as how Cassandra Nova has apparantly re-appeared in Astonishing X-Men I guess the X-Men let her go in New X-Men It's not as simple as that. In New X-Men, Cassandra Nova was reverted to a young girl named Ernst and was undergoing a process of psychic rehabilitation with no memories of her previous actions. Unfortunately, this detail was overlooked by Chuck Austen and (apparently) Joss Whedon, who have since treated Nova and Ernst as two completely seperate characters. Austen wrote that Nova was being kept in a prison cell in the school and escaped when Xorneto attacked it, only to become the "imaginary friend" of Nurse Annie's son Carter in a plotline that was quickly dropped. Cassandra Nova's of course appearing now in Astonishing, and Ernst had a cameo recently in Academy X. So who the heck knows what the deal is with this character.

[Doop]

It's not as simple as that. In New X-Men, Cassandra Nova was reverted to a young girl named Ernst and was undergoing a process of psychic rehabilitation with no memories of her previous actions. Unfortunately, this detail was overlooked by Chuck Austen and (apparently) Joss Whedon, who have since treated Nova and Ernst as two completely seperate characters. Austen wrote that Nova was being kept in a prison cell in the school and escaped when Xorneto attacked it, only to become the "imaginary friend" of Nurse Annie's son Carter in a plotline that was quickly dropped. Cassandra Nova's of course appearing now in Astonishing, and Ernst had a cameo recently in Academy X. So who the heck knows what the deal is with this character.

Concerning Nova escaping; they only assumed she escaped because there was no body when they went to check; there wouldn't be a body if she was now Ernst. And if Xorneto didn't truly know the whole deal about Ernst (see NXM #150), how could the rest of the X-Men know her connection to Nova?

And it never explictly said that Carter's imaginary friend was Nova. Even if that's what Austen meant it to be, nothing was confirmed (my first thought was Malice, actually). As for Nova appearing in Astonishing; maybe Whedon will deal with her connection to Ernst.

----
Concerning Reed letting Galactus go; though Reed didn't know this when he did let Galactus go, Galactus is the only thing that keeps the entity Abraxas (the concept of Eternity that embodies destruction) in place. When Galactus did die, Abraxas went on a reign of terror that was only stopped when Galactus was brought back.

[Doop]

While Spider-Man was wrong in ultimately letting Norman go, Norman was amnesiac and Spidey assumed that his GG personality was gone, and he didn't want to cause any more harm to Harry by having his father arrested (especially if he no longer posed a threat).

[90'sCartoonMan]

Finally, how about all the time Spider-Man and everyone else that wasn't Daredevil kept letting the Punisher go? At least make some show of trying to bring him in.

Not to mention The Hulk. They should just, shoot him into space or something.

...d'oh!

[Invidente 7]

Not to mention The Hulk. They should just, shoot him into space or something.

...d'oh!
That always has puzzled me, at least in the ultimate universe they do show him as genuine threat and therefore they treat him as such, but still I wonder what kept the punisher from killing him. (He coulda just put a tracking device on him and shoot him on his sleep like he did in the Punisher kills the entire marvel universe special):confused:

[Mackaybear]

Actually in an early sixties issue of the Hulk General Ross tricked Rick Jones in luring the Hulk onto a rocket only to see him shot into space. After learing he'd been tricked Jones sabotaged the rocket's guidance controls and it came back to earth. I think it was Hulk #2 vol 1, circa 1962/1963.


As far as I know it's not been tried again since.

[Xurk]

Maybe it hasn't been released yet, and I saw it in an online preview, but it actually has been tried, it's how "Planet Hulk" starts off, after the Hulk is launched into space but not retrieved by the Illuminati[?]
I guess that's why 90'sCartoonMan ends his post with "d'oh!" ;)

[Frank White]

Actually I think it was released, but no they tried to send him to a peaceful planet but he broke the spaceship and ended up on a "warworld" like planet.

[Anthonynotes]

>>
There's also an issue of Paul Jenkin's Spider-Man that establishes that superheroes have a weekly card game and villains are sometimes included.
<<

Yeesh... how does that work out? "Ah, hi, how's it goin'?" "Not too bad---that bank I knocked over last week took a lot out of me...but so did your kinetic punch, you ol' so-and-so, you!" "Awww, go on..." ;-)

>>Finally, how about all the time Spider-Man and everyone else that wasn't Daredevil kept letting the Punisher go? At least make some show of trying to bring him in.

Agreed.

>> If Batman keeps Anti-JLA files does his protégé write Anti-Young Justice recipes in his cookbook?<<

Well, since Tim isn't a stupid a**hole unlike the guy in the Batman costume currently running around, I'll wager "no". :-\

-B.

[90'sCartoonMan]

Yeah, what Xurk said.




Yeesh... how does that work out? "Ah, hi, how's it goin'?" "Not too bad---that bank I knocked over last week took a lot out of me...but so did your kinetic punch, you ol' so-and-so, you!" "Awww, go on..." ;-).

The way I rememebered it, Spidey, Reed, Dr. Strange, Warren, and...uh...Johnny and Black Cat, possibly, have a regular card game (I guess this is different from the one Ben has? My memory is fuzzy), and as an irregular turn of events, The Kingpin shows up and decides to try his luck.

[Xurk]

The way I rememebered it, Spidey, Reed, Dr. Strange, Warren, and...uh...Johnny and Black Cat, possibly, have a regular card game (I guess this is different from the one Ben has? My memory is fuzzy), and as an irregular turn of events, The Kingpin shows up and decides to try his luck.
One of Jenkins' best Spectacular Spider-Man issues! :)

[Anthonynotes]

Yeah, what Xurk said.



The way I rememebered it, Spidey, Reed, Dr. Strange, Warren, and...uh...Johnny and Black Cat, possibly, have a regular card game (I guess this is different from the one Ben has? My memory is fuzzy), and as an irregular turn of events, The Kingpin shows up and decides to try his luck.

The *Kingpin*?! Was expecting a low-level villain, but, ooookay... ;-)