The Origin of The Shocker

[demonprawn.insanejournal.com]

This is my First Post so I thought I'd keep it simple and easy. I've read the rules and I hope this all goes right.

Here's the origin one of my (inexplicably) favourite C-list villains, The Shocker.

The Issue Starts with Spidey casually wall-crawling when it starts violently vibrating. He investigates the source and is greeted by the Be-quilted visage of The Shocker.





Spidey's arm is in a sling courtesy of the Lizard last issue.





Spidey fights back but in his injured state he is ultimately no match for Shocker. Later we get to see Shocker's back story through some traditional villonious soliloquy.








Spidey later, using his crack detective skills, overhears a conveniently present cop announce over a call box that the Shocker is robbing the federal reserve. (To Spider-Man's credit he does comment "If it had happened that easy in a movie, id say it was too phony") He's also been able to ditch the sling by this point.

Battle ensues and Shocker shows of his special brand of vibrator tricks...










There you have it. The battle is won by some thumb bondage and a well placed BTOK!

Comments

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

You missed the best part, the fact that "The Shocker" wasn't his original name. His name, as originally written was "The Vibrator", until someone pointed out to Stan Lee that this might be... misconstrued by parents.

Don't believe me? Check out his belt buckle, which they never redesigned, that's a honking big "V" right there.

[demonprawn.insanejournal.com]

A fact I'm sure he does not keep from the ladies.

And now the term 'shocker' has similar connotations.

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

I suppose that we should consider ourselves lucky that Stan never created supervillains named "The Terrible Teabagger," "The Cleveland Steamer" or "Dirty Sanchez."

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

And to give credit to Bendis when it's due, he actually played with this in USM, when Ult!Spidey met Ult!Shocker, and said to him, "Who are you - the Vibrator?"

Of course, Stan himself has since done an episode of Robot Chicken in which he acknowledged the current slang behind the Shocker's name:

"The Watcher is called that because he WATCHES people," Stan said, before making the "shocker" hand gesture, "and the SHOCKER is called that because -"

"CUT!" one of the other characters yelled. :)

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

And now the term 'shocker' has similar connotations.

Really? This I did not know...

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

I'd ask what the "shocker" hand gesture looks like but I'm not sure I want to know...

Certainly I've never heard of "shock" with a sexual connotation before. I clearly have more residual innocence than I thought... which, all things considered, is impressive.

*Donning my top hat and monocle to explain*

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

The "shocker" hand gesture is synonymous with the sexual move itself - the index and middle fingers extended, the third finger curled in, and the pinky finger extended, so that the first two fingers can penetrate a woman's vagina at the same time that the other finger penetrates her anus - or, as it's more informally known, "two fingers for the pink, and one for the stink." It's named the "shocker" because it's intended to give women an unexpected thrill during the course of normal digital foreplay, given that simultaneous vaginal and anal stimulation tends to be less common.

And lest you doubt my word ...

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

... It even has its own entry on Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shocker_(hand_gesture))

[statham1986.insanejournal.com]

Never before have I been so terrified of a man wearing quilt!

Seriously, though, I remember how they tried bad-assing this guy up for the 90's animated show and they failed miserably.

[vignettelante.insanejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever seen him in 616, just in Ulty and the cartoons.

...And no wonder. He talks it up like friggin' Doom, but really, really can't back it up. As smug a snake as you'll ever see.

[vignettelante.insanejournal.com]

Heh, yeah. The way they took the opposite tack in Ultimate (by making him a running gag) and in Spectacular (by making him a...cowboy, who at least got a forcefield out of the deal) worked much better.

[vignettelante.insanejournal.com]

Also: you set out to make something that could discretely break safes? Um, you failed.

[tahngarth.insanejournal.com]

Nooooooooo, my thumbs! My one weakness!

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

"Say, what's that big huge thing that prisoner's making?"

"Oh, some science project or something. Guy's screwy. Used to be a supervillain. The Quilt or something."

"What about that part that looks like a cannon aimed at the wall of his cell?"

"Geez, you ask a lotta questions. You must be new. "

"HEY! Hey you! What are you makin' in there?"

"An EZ-bake oven. I despise the filth you fools feed me in here."

"Oh, okay, then."

"Fools! You'll never suspect what I'm really making!"

"Huh?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, okay." (walks away)

(yells through bars, cackling) "FOOLS!"

[arilou_skiff.insanejournal.com]

Yep, that's pretty much how it goes.

[starwolf_oakley.insanejournal.com]

I can't remember the exact issue, but a character called the Shocker "A refugee from a mattress factory." The Shocker responded that if he didn't have a padded costume, the vibrations from his gauntlets could hurt... "LIKE THIS!" The he fires some blasts.

Anyone remember the issue?

[thanekos.insanejournal.com]

Prison workshops: the easy way to supervilliany!

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

Google the name. It's quite common in the US.

"Two in the pink, one in the stink."

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

EVERY SILVER AGE COMIC BOOK PRISON EVER

Silver Age supervillains are like the blue-collar NYC versions of the guys in Victorian and Edwardian pulp literature who always went THEY LAUGHED AT MY IDEAS AT THE ACADEMY BUT I SHALL SHOW THEM ALL

It's like seeing Phantom of the Opera recast as a sitcom pilot for Dave Attell and Ron White.

[sir_mikael.insanejournal.com]

It amuses me to no end that in Spectacular, they took the Enforcers, a group of kinda silly out-of-date-villains really (at least for Spidey) that had some retro significance (hey they were right there when Spidey first met Greeb Goblin for instance) and made them into the more famous classical supervillains such as Shocker and Rhino. They really hit a bird with two stones.

D'OH

[sir_mikael.insanejournal.com]

And of course that's supposed to be two birds, one stone...

[sir_mikael.insanejournal.com]

Aww I like The Shocker. He's one of those guys who's just interested in getting the job done, grabbing the cash and get out of there, but keeps getting distracted by heroes mid-robbery. Which might frustrate him/piss him off.
He's not that big of a villain but he deserves some credit I think. He's been at this for a while and he's not actually stupid.

It really makes me laugh how in his flash back speech he openly calls himself a two-bit loser. Out of nowhere. Ok, that's kind of expositionary and not something you'd expect when someones cracking a safe.

He really seemed to have gone through a personality change when he got to prison. Shocker does not strike me as whiny. Perhaps this is cus of the empowerment of his new weapons, not just having them, but also the sense of having created them. Let's be honest that requires some innovation and skills.

[sir_mikael.insanejournal.com]

Oh and BTOK! sounds like klingon or something. :P

[sir_mikael.insanejournal.com]

Heh.
Thing is though, couldn't he just slam his other hand on the button? They don't look that restrained. Then again, I would probably be shocked and dumbfounded too for a bit which is all Spidey needs.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Wrong Lon Chaney movie. You're thinking "He Who Gets Slapped."

There's an Iron Man story starring the Melter that was reprinted recently in that Gene Colan benefit comic. What's funny is watching the Melter's syntax shift from Ben Grimm to Dr. Doom(the two basic Lee syntaxes) sometimes within the same sentence. "Willya" and "Miserable fools! don't belong in the same mouth.

And yes, we laugh at your ideas, Marvel villains! Your ideas are hilarious! Stop making them so funny and we might be more solemn.

[box_in_the_box.insanejournal.com]

I think part of the reason why the superhero genre often seems so schizophrenic is because so much of it was created by guys who were stealing indiscriminately from both historic melodrama and contemporary-setting penny-dreadful pulp novels. I mean, when you consider that Stan Lee was basically equal parts Shakespearan homages and Dashiell Hammett settings, fused together with sci-fantasy deus ex machinas, it's amazing that it's all held together as well as it has.

[demonprawn.insanejournal.com]

BTOK! is the sound of justice meeting face.

[rabican.insanejournal.com]

Shocker is awesome. He's mean, straightforward, and utterly, utterly gay for Spidey's "villainous" alter ego, Dusk.