By in large, tee hee, Superpowers would
be awesome. Even something as simple as having inhuman hand-eye coordination,
or comprehending all languages would be pretty cool. There are only a handful
of situations where powers would kind of suck. Being a Powered in Super Powereds
by Drew Hayes is one, where you had zero control over your powers. And the
other is if your abilities were physically deforming. Like with out next
villain, The Blob. How much would it suck to have superstrength and agility,
but having the BMI of five people put together? I imagine quite a bit. Let’s
get to it!
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| Keep in mind, despite his mass, he could probably keep pace With Usain Bolt. |
Fredrick “Freddie” Dukes was born
in Texas and spent his early career as a member of a circus Sideshow. His
shtick was that he could remain fixed in place regardless of how hard someone
tried to move him. It’s more impressive than it sounds. Freddie was eventually discovered
by Xavier and Cerebro, and brought to the X-Mansion. The Blob, as he was
already known at his circus, was put through a battery of tests and was determined
to be a Mutant. His powers include superstrength, durability, and the ability
to manipulate gravity around himself. He could really only use it to make
himself impossibly heavy, but it’s still impressive. Xavier offered Freddie a
place on the X-Men, much to his team’s displeasure. Turns out, Freddie was a mean-spirited
jerk with an overinflated ego on par with his immense girth. Thankfully, his
inflated opinion of himself made him believe that he could do better than the
X-Men and he told Xavier to stuff it. Realizing it was a lost cause, Xavier
tried to erase Freddie’s memories of what had happened to him over the last few
days and the X-Mansion overall. Unfortunately, the tubby titan legged it. Hank “Beast”
McCoy tries to stop him, but the Blob proves to be too tough. He escapes
through the sewers and returns to his circus.
He mutinies and takes over the circus.
He reorganizes the circus into his new team and attacks the X-Mansion. He plans
to defeat the X-Men and steal their technology to help him take over the world!
Wow, Freddie went from zero to sixty on the crazy-meter. Blob’s circus attacks
the X-Mansion in force. While the X-Men battled, Xavier was in the lab working
on a device to erase people’s memory in mass. Shockingly, the Circus was able
to overpower the X-Men and tie them up. They left the X-Men on the Mansion’s lawn
and broke into the mansion. While they searched for Xavier, he used his
telepathy to rally Jean and have her use her telekinesis to free herself and
the others. Round 2 ends with the Circus performers getting their memories wiped
and Dukes returns to the Circus.
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| He got a poster, but was only in it and recognizable as the Blob for about five minutes. And is only referred to as the Blob once by accident. This is why X-Men movies piss me off some times. |
Shortly after, Magneto sought out
the Blob and recruited him for the original incarnation of the Brotherhood of
Mutants. Want to know how Magneto restored the Blob’s memories? He hit him hard
on the head. He only remains with Magneto’s team for a short time, as it became
apparent early on that Magneto wasn’t concerned with his safety. But, that kind
of marked the end of his days as a Circus performer. He would regularly work as
superpowered muscle for various groups, including a new Brotherhood, a group
called Factor Three, and as part of the Secret Empire.
He’s eventually imprisoned, but
freed by Mystique to be part of her Brotherhood. Blob just can’t seem to get
away from that group. He joined up as part of Mystique’s plan to kill Senator
Robert Kelly as punishment for his Anti-Mutant platform. Said attack would lead
to the Days of Future Past dystopian future if it’d had succeeded, but the
group was thwarted.
He sticks with Mystiques version of
the brotherhood for several years, including when the group is reorganized into
the Freedom Force. I imagine he was damn near giddy when he found out their
first mission for the US government was to capture Magneto. He helped with several
other missions, like capturing multiple X-Men, battling Daredevil, and stopping
a jailbreak from the super-max prison the Vault. After Mystique left the team,
and a disastrous mission during the Gulf War, the group dissolved and Blob
became a free agent again.
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| And you thought comics didn't deal with dark topics like this. |
Things took a turn for Blob after
M-Day. Remember, Scarlet Witch first created a world where Mutants ruled, but
then reset it minus Mutants. Unlike former teammate Avalanche, Blob lost his
powers, which had kind of a weird side effect. Blob lost his hundreds of
pounds of fat, and his skin didn’t shrink back down to compensate. Horrified by
his loose floppy skin, Dukes tried to kill himself, but his skin folds made it
impossible for him to cut deep enough to hit any major blood vessels. He would
go on to join X-Cell, a group of depowered Mutants that blamed the government…
somehow… for losing their powers. I don’t think Dukes knows how to function
without being some kind of supervillain. X-Cell attacked Mutant Town; a
district of New York filled with the worlds few remaining Mutants. A series of
high jinx lead Dukes getting arrested.
A short time late Dukes returned,
but somehow lost his excess skin. I imagine some plastic surgeon made a boat
load on him. Now going exclusively as Freddie Dukes, Dukes became a weight-loss
guru in Japan. I feel like that’s both fraud and yet a brilliant way to cash in
on losing his powers. But, turns out that wasn’t fulfilling enough for him. He started
working with Mystique again, whom started giving him Mutant Growth Hormone (MGH)
which would temporarily reactivate his powers. Mystique was planning on turning
the fictional country of Madripoor into a new Genosha, a Mutant Nation. When he’d
heard that Magneto was in Madripoor, Dukes took his former boss to Mystique. He
thought the master of magnetism would be into it. Magneto was instead
infuriated by their actions, which included flooding the streets of Madripoor
with MGH to fund their operations. He beat the crap out of the group and turned
their bases into rubble.
Dukes was then kidnapped by Miss
Sinister. She is kind of the daughter of insane geneticist Nathaniel Essex aka Mr.
Sinister. Miss Sinister had been experimenting with Mothervine, a virus that was
designed to be injected into pregnant women to turn their fetuses into Mutants.
She’d been experimenting on adult Mutants with it, and she’d decided to see how
it would work on a depowered Mutant. Turns out, it did reactivate his powers permanently, causing him to balloon up spectacularly. When the X-Men came to investigate, Blob
woke up and attacked. Mothervine triggered a secondary mutation, giving Blob
stretching powers. Things started going out of control, though, and Blob was
reduced to a literal Blob and went down a drain. It took a while, but the Blob
is back, baby.
The Blob’s powers are tied to his immense
level of obesity. His body can absorb the impact of pretty much any projectile
imaginable, bullets, cannonballs, missiles, and even a meteor once all bounce
off. His skin can’t be cut or punctured by conventional means. He could alter and
increase his personal gravity field. Basically, when he focuses and plants his
feet, he can be virtually immobile. It’s difficult for even Marvel’s heavy
weights like the Hulk or Juggernaut to move him. He’s superstrong, being able
to lift up to five tons. Which is kind of necessary when you consider just how
heavy his body must be. He’s also much, much faster than you’d expect a fat guy
to be. More then once he’s gotten the drop on folks that assumed fat = slow. The
Mothervine virus has caused him to develop the power to stretch his limbs to
unspecified lengths. The power is somewhat unstable, though, and he’s been
reduced to a liquid puddle at least once.
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| The Blob's hairstyle always looks odd to me. Be he bald, shaggy, or sporting a sort of Mohawk. |
The Blob has appeared in a few series
outside of the comics. Though it’s only the animated versions that he is
anything more then a background character.
He appeared as one of Mystique’s
regular henchmen in X-Men: The Animated Series. He usually worked with Pyro
and Avalanche.
A teenage version of the Blob appeared
in X-Men: Evolution. And unlike Avalanche and Toad, he got to keep his
original name. He was introduced in “Mutant Crush,” as a strongman at a monster
truck rally. He holds back and slams two monster trucks together with his pure
strength. But then falls on his face, causing the crowd to laugh at him. After
flipping out in his locker room, Mystique approaches him and offers him a place
on her team. Just minutes before Wolverine and Jean were going to make an
offer. He transfers to Bayville High, but doesn’t adjust well because he’s,
well, a dick. Jean is nice to him and offers to help him out, but he takes that
bit of kindness as romantic interest. Jean tries to set him straight, but Fred
goes full crazy and kidnaps her to be his girlfriend. The X-Men try to free
Jean but Blob is able to overpower them. He’s only stopped by Rogue stepping
him. While being on the same team, technically, I guess even Rogue was fed up
with Fred’s antics. She uses Cyclops eyebeam combined with Blob’s own strength
to send him flying. He lands in a junkyard and ‘laughed at’ by seagulls. He
remains part of the brotherhood as their strongman for the rest of the series.
He is still a dick, but gets along well with the rest of the Brotherhood. He initially
refuses to help in the series finale along with the rest of the Brotherhood,
but joins in at the last minute to save teammate Scarlet Witch and stop
Apocalypse’s Horseman, Magneto. In the show’s epilogue it’s revealed that Blob
will go on to be part of a SHIELD taskforce with the rest of the Brotherhood.
He’s part of Quicksilver’s banished
team in Wolverine and the X-Men. This iteration of the Brotherhood is
trying their best to get back in Magneto’s good graces and return to Genosha.
Fred Dukes appeared as part of Team
X in the abysmal X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He’s portrayed by Kevin
Durand. He’s portrayed as a muscular super soldier with near invulnerability. His
big contribution to the teams one shown mission was to stick his fist in a tank
barrel and causing it to blow. After the team breaks up, he develops an eating
disorder and get’s his usual physique. His friend and former teammate John Wraith
got him into boxing to try and get back into shape. He and Wolverine duke it
out when he mishears Wolverine’s usual “Bub” as “Blob.” Wolverine knocks him
down and learns that his “brother” Sabertooth is working with former boss
William Stryker on a Mutant experiment. He’s killed off screen by Sabertooth.
Words cannot describe how much I hate this movie.
The Blob has a cameo in X-Men:
Apocalypse as a defeated opponent of Warren Worthington. He’s portrayed by
wrestler Gustav Ouimet. Not much more to say about this, other then pointing
out the logical inconsistency of showing massive cuts on a man famous for being
virtually uncuttable.
Much like Avalanche, Blob’s history
is a bit spottier than I’d have expected before this write up. He’s a goon,
though, so it’s not shocking that he hasn’t done much personally that’s noteworthy.
That being said, he is one of the more visually interesting characters. You don’t see many characters that are morbidly
obese and yet still effective fighters. Honestly, I can only think of him and
Kingpin off the top of my head. He’s got the same powers as guy’s like the Hulk
or Juggernaut, but the physique of Dudley Dursley. I can’t think of a less fun
combination. It’s a shame that he hasn’t been shown serving either of his big
bosses on the big screen. But, considering how little he’s appeared in recent
years, Disney’s acquisition of Fox might mean that he has another chance to be
big and scary on the big screen. Here’s hoping.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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