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Living Eraser

Not every interdimensional warlord can have the success of Blastaar or Annihilus. Some lack strategic brilliance or raw power, and some, like the Living Eraser, just bite off more than they can chew. Nevertheless I’m proud to welcome this obscure Silver Age villain into my Eaglemoss collection. Introduced in the early days of the Marvel Universe by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Living Eraser debuted in 1963’s Tales to Astonish #49 as an invader from Dimension Z. Using a palm-sized “dimensionalizer,” which transported people to Dimension Z by “erasing” them with several swipes of the hand, he abducted several Earth scientists, with the intention of forcing them to reveal the secrets of atomic power. Unfortunately one of the scientists he targeted was Henry Pym, a.k.a. Giant-Man of the Avengers. As if that wasn’t enough, the Wasp happened to be standing on his finger when he got erased, so both heroes got teleported to Dimension Z. Very quickly they turned the tables and ran am
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Tombstone

Tombstone is a hard man – in every sense of the word. A lifetime of criminal activity had already hardened Lonnie Lincoln’s soul, before a freak scientific accident rendered his skin as cold, hard, and durable as… you guessed it, a tombstone. Tombstone first appeared in a cameo in Web of Spider-Man #36 (March 1988), by writer Gerry Conway and artist Alex Saviuk. Conway teased a connection to the Daily Bugle's editor-in-chief, Robbie Robertson, which he went on to reveal in the pages of Spectacular Spider-Man #139 (June 1988), drawn by Sal Buscema.  Growing up together in Harlem, Robbie discovered Lonnie's criminal activities and planned to expose them in the school newspaper, but the thuggish Lonnie intimidated him into silence, even after he witnessed Lonnie commit a murder. Thus, years later when Lonnie re-emerged as an underworld hitman, Robbie’s guilt over his past inaction led him to confront his old acquaintance—only to receive a broken back for his trouble. Insp

Nightshade

Like the poisonous plant she’s named for, Nightshade is beautiful and easy to underestimate, but extremely deadly. Although a relatively minor villain, Nightshade’s scientific and criminal genius have made her a thorn in the side of many Marvel heroes – including Captain America, whom she once turned into a werewolf!       Nightshade premiered in 1973, during the “Blaxploitation” phase that sparked a surge of black heroes, villains, and storylines. This trend was a great leap forward in terms of representation and diversity (giving us Falcon and Luke Cage, for example), but it also often relied on negative stereotypes of black culture as lower-class, urban, and criminal (both Falcon and Cage emerge from this kind of environment).  The story of Nightshade parallels these trends as well. Created by writer Steve Engelhart and artist Alan Weiss, she was Marvel’s first major black female villain, and from her very first appearance in Captain America #174, Nightshade was a force