#benedict stark

[knight-a3]

Humanformers: the rogue Decepticons

Starscream: Adam Sylvester Stark

Slipstream: Sylvia Stark

Thundercracker: Benedict Stark

Skywarp: Skylar Stark

Sunstorm: Stanley Stark

Ramjet: Ramsey Stark

Elita-One/Black Arachnia: Amelia Webb/Ariana Blake

Notes under the cut

Starscream is definitely the shady lawyer type. Prosecution, probably. I also get the sense he would ride a motorcycle or fancy sports car. Maybe a cybertruck to flaunt his wealth.

I didn't draw the other seekers(because they look exactly like him). And I just never felt like coming up with various similar-but-different human designs for them either.

Slipstream always struck me as being Starscream's ambition in the same way the others represented his various traits. I doubt that was the intention, but it's better than the alternative imo.

Anyway, she seems like the type of person to become a lawyer and oppose Starscream in every case she could. If he's a prosecuting attorney, she's a defense attorney. She's just petty like that.

Elita is the adventurous to the point of recklessness type. Black Arachnea is more femme fatale.

The human AU lore is still sorta vague. But the idea is that she got in some kind of accident that caused her to go bald(she wears a wig) and lose weight. Something involving radiation, maybe? Her health is bad, basically. Still toying with the idea of making her some kind of vampire-esque mutant. But idk how supernatural I want to go.

[maxwell-grant]

You've talked quite a bit about Shiwan Khan, would be OK with talking about the other villains who show up more than once, Benedict Stark and The Voodoo Master?

The Voodoo Master tends to get overshadowed by Khan by virtue of being less prominent and because, in a lot of ways, Mocquino does feel a bit like a prototype for Khan. Like Gibson was testing the waters of what kind of major supervillain he wanted the Shadow to have, and was gradually figuring details like the hypnotic traps and unique henchmen and mystic background and a fraudulent dark magician figure with Mocquino, before Khan blew it all up to bigger proportions. Twice already we’ve had instances where Mocquino was set to appear in a Shadow adaptation after Khan, and said adaptations got canned before he could show up (and I don’t think it does either character a favor if Mocquino comes after Khan). And of course Mocquino has the problem of being an ethnic supervillain whose identity and name are tied up to grotesque prejudice that twists cultures and beliefs into Hollywood boogeymen, and the novels sadly treat vodou beliefs far less charitably than how the other novels approach tibetan/asian mysticism. He isn't as bad as Khan, but it's still not good by any means.

Putting that aside, The Voodoo Master trilogy is very fun, the first novel in particular was the number one rated Shadow novel in a fan poll back then. Personally, my favorite is City of Doom because of it’s blend of gothic, urban and industrial settings, great battles even for a Shadow novel, and a spectacular finale, but they all have very strong points. And I do like Mocquino himself as a character. He is historically significant as the first true supervillain of Shadow Magazine (if you don’t count other odd criminals like The Black Master or The Cobra). He is different from Khan personality-wise in the sense that he is more of an old-school supervillain, who likens his conflict with The Shadow to a “game” they play, who likes to boast and brag about his powers and whose goals largely revolve around extortion. He has a vendetta against industrial society (although he himself employs industrial tactics, because he is a hypocrite), and said vendetta being largely just him trying to destroy it so he thinks people will fall in line with his cult more easily. Unlike with Khan, there’s no delusions or aspirations of grandeur and greater purpose here, it always comes down to crime and profit with Mocquino and he barely bothers to pretend otherwise.

He is resourceful and insidious and racks up a bigger body count than Khan on City of Doom alone, and there’s a real creepiness to his zombie minions as they are regular people stripped of all identity and forced into becoming walking meat shields. I think one way to make him work better on his own could be by playing up his ruthlessness and charm, and focus on the mind control/cult leader aspect. Make him the Jim Jones of Shadow villains.

Justice Inc redesigned him to look like Boris Karloff, divorced him of racist trappings, played up his dark magician persona and ballooned up his abilities into outright superpowers, all of which worked quite well as the closest he's ever had to an update And interestingly, there’s some odd Joker-esque aspects to him in his final appearence in Voodoo Trail:

Though almost silent, the explosion was forcible. The tank disgorged a greenish gas that spread like an expanding monster, filling the entire room that the trio had just left. 

There was something parched and withery in his face, particularly noticeable when The Shadow saw the Voodoo Master's profile. Mocquino bore the scars of flame, not only on his face, but upon the scrawny arm he extended from his robe. Those burns showed like livid brands: a fitting mark for a supercriminal.

That hissing sound in the zombi cave! It was gas, leaking from underground pipes that led into Manhattan. Filtering through the porous stone, it gathered other chemical elements. Mocquino must have discovered that leakage and noted its effects. He had put the discovery to his own use. 

...lips formed a grin so jagged that it was difficult to note where his mouth ended and his scar began.

Mocquino's shrill laugh told that he expected his men to overwhelm The Shadow through force of numbers.

Honestly, “Doctor Mocquino” I think is a better name for him than Voodoo Master. A Rogues Gallery isn’t complete without a major Doctor in there, and divorcing Mocquino of “Voodoo Master” and all that implies could be the better way of making this character work again. Maybe play up the fact that he’s exploiting Caribbean religions and citizens for personal gain and roping them into his crime ring, maybe even have him use similar theatrics as The Shadow to paint himself as this great master, but in the end, he’s always just Doctor Mocquino, an evil, rotten shyster who puts his knowledge to use for evil and evil alone. 

Responsible for the first and only cliffhanger of Shadow Magazine with the kidnapping of Rutledge Mann, Benedict Stark is easily the single worst scumbag out of all Shadow supervillains. Just this completely horrible, wretched monster who ends up being somewhat dissappointing and frustrating of a villain in my view. Despite having quite a bit going on for him, Stark is not really interesting enough to warrant the 4 novels he gets, and where as Khan and Mocquino usually escape The Shadow thanks to prior planning and last-minute escape and strokes of luck, Stark seems to get away with it only because the narrative says so, not nearly as impressive as the other two despite being far, far worse, which makes it you don’t want The Shadow to match wits with him, so much as you just want The Shadow to kill him as soon as possible. In fact, here’s what Stark gets away with in the first ten pages of The Prince of Evil alone:

He gaslights a man named John Harmon into thinking he was developing amnesia

Gets Harmon to sign away enough money to be bankrupted for life, and no one, not even his wife, believe him when he says he was conned

Causes Harmon to commit suicide. 

Then, while Cranston's talking with a friend of Harmon named Jackson who wanted to help him, the two go to Jackson's house to find it completely destroyed, his priceless belongings acid-ruined. 

Then, they find Jackson's dog dead, with it's throat slit, and a Bible scattered nearby with the story of the good Samaritan marked, making it clear that this all happened because Jackson tried to help Harmon. 

And then, as Cranston tries to stop one of Stark's goons from brutally assaulting a boy who was just paid by Cranston to watch his car, he gets attacked and knocked unconscious.

And THEN, the henchman gives the kid a brain concussion and then hauls him in front of a coming truck, with Cranston just barely saving the kid in time as the henchman escapes.

This is just the first 10 pages. Not even Spider novels usually start with this many atrocities happening all at once. Whatever problems Tinsley has as a Shadow writer, I’ll give him this: He definitely knows how to go from 0 to 100 in ways Gibson never would. The book obviously doesn’t keep this up forever (thank goodness), but The Prince of Evil is really all about building up Stark’s presence as this new ultimate Shadow villain, and I think the build up is quite solid up to a point.

He’s established as possibly the richest man in America. Where as Cranston is a millionaire, Stark is a billionaire, who owns “ailways and steamships, factories and mills all over the United States". Nobody knows what he looks like, nobody’s ever seen a picture of him, and Cranston, who knows everyone and everything, has never once laid eyes on the man. We also know in advance that he uses drugs delivered by chewing gum to turn his thugs into bloodthirsty savages who desire only terror and torture and inflict those at his beck and call, and we get a passage where Clyde Burke ingests one of these gums, experiences it’s effects, and ends up chasing down a mouse and killing it, for no reason other than it was the only living being nearby, much to his horror. And it very nearly develops into something even worse:

He could hear the snoring of a man sleeping inside a cellar apartment. Clyde halted. His fingers tightened on his iron bar. He guessed that the man asleep inside was the building janitor. He fought against a hot impulse that flared anew in his blood.

He wanted to kill that janitor! He wanted to smash at him with the iron bar until the man was battered and dead! Murder seemed so exciting. And so easy! Clyde could picture the terror of his victim as he struck at him. It would be sheer delight to maim the fool before he killed him.

The thing that saved Clyde was the thought of the chewing gum. He knew that the savage whisper that urged him on to murder was not his own brain talking, but the voice of a powerful drug.

Laying the bar on the concrete floor, he ran for the cellar exit. He didn't glance back. He was afraid that if he did, he'd be tempted to pick up the bar and commit a senseless and brutal crime.

The cold bite of the breeze was like a draft of cooling water against his parched lips. He began to get a grip on himself. Once more he was Clyde Burke, a normal human being who would go out of his way to avoid hurting a fly.

Stark has weaponized and mass-produced a drug that creates an army of Mr Hydes at his beck and call, that can turn even one of the kindest and most heroic characters into the series into a sadistic maniac itching to main and murder anything that’s in front of him, and that alone is not just a much more viscerally horrifying kind of mind control than what Khan and Mocquino use, it’s also got a an edge to it more suited for gritty urban drama. It’s an idea I definitely would have liked to see used again even after Stark’s out of the picture.

And then we actually get to see Stark for this first time, and he’s described as a grotesquely deformed baboon man leering at his beautiful secretaries, who deliberately employs the most attractive people to make his own deformities stand out further, and who is cartoonishly vile everytime he opens his mouth. He never really displays exceptional cleverness, compared to other Shadow villains, except for the fact that he keeps suspecting Cranston is The Shadow, and sometimes just seems to get really lucky. Stark tends to get much, much less interesting as the build-up evaporates and he has to stand on his own feet as a character, I barely remember anything he did in the following books. At the time, I thought Stark’s characterization was weak, and I still do. 

This text blurb here was used on a promo S&S did for Prince of Evil, and it starts by talking about incredibly well-liked people who are kind and how Stark is the opposite because he's evil. Of course, as we all know, evil and well-liked are not opposites. 

Stark may have been a tad more interesting had they went with the angle of him being a horrible monster who's also incredibly popular and beloved and friendly. About 70% of The Shadow’s villains are already middle-aged to elder rich businessmen pretending to be good, so maybe Stark being young and attractive and initially sympathetic-looking, atop being the richest and cruelest of them all, could also help set him apart. Sort of an evil Harry Vincent maybe. 

But instead he's so obviously and viscerally awful all the time he shows up, so incapable of restraining himself, that it's impossible to buy him as a deceiver who’s pulled the wool over society’s eyes. At the time, I thought to myself that he was just painfully obvious of a villain and too brutish and stupid for me to buy that he’s supposed to be the richest criminal genius in America. 

But then again, nowadays we are all aware that wealthy and respected figures of society, who are cartoonishly horrible even openly in public, is just what billionaires are like, so maybe Tinsley had a point here. 

[maxwell-grant]

The only thought I've ever had for Benedict Start is "Well, if they ever do a Shadow/Iron Man crossover, this guy is the villain for obvious reasons"

Maybe. You could make it about a toss up between Khan and Mandarin but they get the lion’s share of adaptations as is (or at least used to), so having different villains is preferable. 

I’ve seen some WNU pages that speculate on the potential relationship between Benedict Stark and the rest of the Stark family, usually with the theory that The Prince of Evil is not actually a Stark by birth but instead killed and replaced one of them, which seems about right for him. He certainly has enough money to match Tony’s and if you wanna do a story where Iron Man again has to dwell into unethical aspects of his past, discovering the Stark fortune owes a portion of it from the dealings of a being as wretched as Benedict (not even that wretched by billionaire standards, just unusually loud and gleeful about it) could be one way to get a story going.

Although if I was going to base a story around Iron Man’s potential relationship with a pulp character, I would make it about The Iron Man, one of The Spider’s most famous villains. A crimelord who leads a gang of thugs clad in massive robotic armor to crush cities and slaughter hundreds. Said suits employ hand cannons, and yes that image in the middle below was in the original story, with the robot blasting a wall open with an outstretched palm, long before that became Iron Man’s signature move. It’s also believed that this story may have inspired Superman’s own battle with giant robots. 

The name Stark is attached to a bloodthirsty billionaire with an army of Mr Hydes on speed dial, and the name Iron Man is attached to a maniac who led an army of robot titans on a genocidal campaign. Not even the first or last time The Spider would have a villain that shared a name with a prominent superhero, as he also had The Bat Man, who let loose a plague of vampire bats while dressed in a flying outfit. 

[theshadowsanctum]

Pulp column for The Spy Ring, promoting the upcoming “The Prince of Evil”

[oldschoolcrimefighters]

What is your favorite Shadow villain ?

John Lone’s Shiwan Khan. Most versions of Khan I can take or leave, but John Lone is just delightful.

Of the books I’ve read -- not quite half -- my favorite bad guys have been the ones that take Shads’ own gimmicks and run with them, but for crime. The Cobra and The Shadow’s Rival, and to a lesser extent The Third Shadow, all come to mind.

The ones that made themselves particular threats to Shads’ operation also stand out, like the guys from Gray Fist or Crime, Insured who took down the entire agent network, or even The Black Master who was able to break the secret of the disappearing ink.

As far as his handful of recurring rogues go, I’ve read two each for Mocquino, Khan, and Stark. While they were decent, if I didn’t know they were supposed to be important, I doubt they’d stick in my mind much. Mocquino and Khan are basically the same hypnosis gimmick in different wrapping, and while they have the potential to be extreme threats they didn’t use their gimmick to its full potential. Stark was great in concept but badly executed and felt like he was protected by plot armor more than by his own intelligence and machinations.