Now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. After covering Justice in the
MC2 and Firestar
beforehand, I’ve gotten a taste for covering the former members of the New
Warriors, so today I wanted to show some love for everyone’s favourite heroic
bouncing ball of energy, Robert ‘Robbie’ Baldwin aka Speedball in the
MC2.
While he made his first published appearance in Amazing
Spider-Man Annual #22, Speedball’s origin is depicted in his solo title
with Speedball #1 wherein Robbie is accidentally exposed to
energy from an other-dimensional source while working at a science lab which
gifts him his kinetic energy abilities. Eventually, Speedball teams up
with other young heroes Marvel Boy (later known as Justice), Nova,
Namorita, Firestar and Night Thrasher as the New
Warriors beginning with their formation in Mighty Thor #411.
Now let’s jump ahead to the look at Speedball in the MC2.
While Robbie’s first MC2 appearance is in What If #105 as
a cameo which depicts Speedball as member of the new Avengers
when Peter Parker comes seeking aid.
However, in terms of chronology this brief cameo of Robbie
would seem to take place shortly after the events of A-Next #1, wherein
we see the formation of this next generation of Avengers. Robbie
is revealed to have been a former member of the Avengers, but now mostly
prefers to be a solo act and so declines membership in this nascent team. While
he’s not actually seen in the pages of A-Next #7, we learn that following
the tragic
final mission of the original Avengers (which claimed the lives of Robbie’s
fellow former New Warriors Firestar and Justice) a new
team formed and operated in their wake before eventually falling apart.
Next showing up in Spider-Girl #15, Robbie
teams up with the titular web-head to battle the malleable villain (and avid DC Comics collector)
known as Mr Abnormal. While we don’t learn a great deal about Robbie in
this issue, we do get to see him in action solo and learn that he is a
well-respected superhero by this point in his career.
Later, we learn from the Steel Spider (Ollie
Osnick) that he had been a member of the team of Avengers who assembled
after the aforementioned original team’s membership was nearly all killed. In
addition to the Steel Spider, this ‘interim’ Avengers team included
Jolt, Jubilee, fellow New Warrior Nova and, of
course, Speedball (Spider-Girl #32).
We don’t see Robbie again on-panel in the MC2 until
the events of Last Hero Standing, when Speedball is one of the
many heroes who gather at Avengers Compound to investigate the disappearances
of various other super heroes. Here, he
and former team mate Nova are briefly seen as they prepare to head out
on a mission to rule out former New Warrior foe Terrax, joined by
Bluestreak and Argo in the process (Last Hero Standing #2).
Off-panel their mission is a dead end and at some point Nova is captured
and ensnared by the dark magical influence of Loki,
before being sent to stir up conflict between the assembled heroes. Despite
this, no other members of this team appear to have been influenced by Loki,
including Speedball (Last Hero Standing #3-#4).
Speedball doesn’t actually appear on-panel for his
final cameo appearance, instead his energy matrix duplicate created by the
magic of Sylene makes an appearance in Avengers Next #4-#5,
indicating that Robbie Baldwin fell victim to this spell before the Avengers
managed to save the day.
It’s nice to see that
some of the younger heroes of the Marvel Universe like Speedball
rose to prominence in their later careers within the MC2 even if others
like Firestar and Justice met an untimely end. I like to think that Robbie
joined the ‘interim’ Avengers team alongside Nova in honour of their
fallen friends. It’s very interesting to me that Speedball generally shies
away from working in a team in his adult life, almost certainly a reaction to this
loss and perhaps additional unseen events which led to the collapse of this Avengers
team.
Until I master the art of throwing myself violently at
objects without doing any harm, I remain
frogoat