The Blue Wail

A quick little thing I'd like to share. The MC2 introduces a lot of new 'lore' to the established characters of the Main Marvel Universe, much of which is only referenced or hinted at. One such piece of lore is Phil Urich's alter ego after he was forced to hang up the mantle of the 'good' Green Goblin. I'm referring, of course, to his least loved  super hero identity (even by him, it would seem): The Blue Wail! *crickets* Oh, just look at this...

Spider-Girl #3 is the first and to date, only appearance of this costumed identity. Yup. Not only do we never see this identity of Phil's again, unless I'm mistaken it's never mentioned again either. Interesting to note that when he lost his Goblin gear, Phil still seemed to have an affinity for the sonic motif. This would help to explain how Phil appeared to have his Lunatic Laugh sonic abilities in Spider-Girl #5 without the use of any equipment. Did Phil gain sonic scream powers in the unseen years between giving up the Green Goblin role and his present day civilian self in the MC2? Or did he always have them?


On a side note, the Blue Wail costume design bares more than a passing resemblance to another MC2 sound-based super: Reverb. Reverb was the name one of the Hobgoblin's henchmen -Rudolph- gave to himself when donning the high-tech sound-based suit (Amazing Spider-Girl #2).

At first I thought the resemblance must be more than mere coincidence. However the origin of the tech appears to be the Brotherhood of Scriers, who gifted a sonic device to the Hobgoblin when he was tasked with killing Spider-Girl. The sonic device would be utilized to fatal effect when Hobgoblin killed the former Venom symbiote when she -the symbiote- defended the recently wounded Mayday in Spider-Girl #100.

Still, it's possible a connection could exist between the Blue Wail suit worn by Phil Urich and the sonic technology the Scrier's possess which the Hobgoblin later repurposes. There's a potential story in there somewhere, I'm sure. The untold story of Phil Urich's failed attempts at playing hero.


Until I figure out where Phil got that scar, I remain


frogoat

Luke Cage in the MC2

With more recent years, Luke Cage has gained a great deal of exposure and recognition, with both his own self-titled Netflix series and the crossover mini-series The Defenders being notable examples. Much of the recent surge in popularity can likely be attributed to the Brian Michael Bendis run on the Avengers, during which Luke first joined the team in 2005 with New Avengers (vol. 1) #3.
Despite his long-time crime-fighting partner and friend Danny Rand aka the Iron Fist appearing on a few occasions, Luke Cage has only had one brief appearance in the MC2 and it's not even really him...let me explain.

In Avengers Next #1 (January 2007) the MC2's current roster of Avengers are unable to stop the theft of various Avengers blood and tissue samples by the teleporter known as Warp. These samples are delivered to Sylene, a sorceress and the daughter of Loki, who uses the samples to create 'magical clones' to attack the Avengers as a diversion.  

Logically, if these were samples from past and present Avengers members and Luke Cage's 'magical clone' appears amongst the shambling monstrosities, Cage was at some point a member of the team in the MC2. This is likely a nod to Cage's longstanding membership over in the Main Marvel Universe. We get the only mention of the real Luke Cage shortly after, when American Dream points out that the monstrosities can't be actual corpses, 'Not with duplicates of Haweye, Cage and the rest of us who are alive.'

And that's about all we know of the Hero for Hire. He's still alive in the MC2 and he was a member of the Avengers prior to the current team founded in A-Next #1. It also seems Luke is known simply as 'Cage', in the same way he was referred to in the 90's. To stray into the world of wild speculation, the most likely placement for Luke's time on the team would be at some point between the (admittedly vague) divergence point between the Main Marvel Universe and the MC2 before the original team was almost entirely wiped out on their last mission. Alternatively, Cage may have served as a member of the interim team that existed for some 18 months afterwards alongside members such as Speedball, Nova, Jolt, Jubilee and the Steel Spider.

Possibly completely irrelevant, but I felt I should point out that Cage's copy is wearing a version of his original costume, complete with tiara. Whether this indicates when the sample was collected from the hero or that he returned to his original costume at some point is unclear. Considering other 'magical clones' aren't wearing their heroic counterparts current costumes, this is probably nothing more than an artistic choice.

If anyone has any insight on this, admittedly very minor point of continuity, please let me know! Until I stop picking apart the very fabric of the MC2-niverse, I remain

frogoat