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Spider-Man Encyclopedia
- Spider-Man Villains
- Electro
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Electro was created by Stan Lee and
Steve Ditko and made his first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #9
in 1964. Electro's real name is Maxwell Dillon.
Max's father deserted the family when
he was just 8 years old. His mother became too protective of him giving
him an inferiority complex. She even went as far as to tell him to not
go for being an electrical engineer, just in case he might fail. So Max
became a lineman for an electric company instead.
While he was repairing a power line,
a freak lightning accident resulted in a mutagenic change in his nervous
system, transforming Dillon into a living electrical capacitor. Taking
the name Electro, he turned to a life of crime, his first victim being
J. Jonah Jameson. Electro broke into the Daily Bugle Building and stole
from Jameson's safe right in front of him.
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Jameson accused Spider-Man of being
an alternate identity of Electro, prompting Spider-Man to prove the
publisher wrong. During his confrontation with Electro, Spider-Man was
nearly killed when he touched the electrically charged super villain.
Spider-Man eventually used a fire hose to short-circuit Electro.
Electro has fought Spider-Man many
times, on his own and as a member of the Sinister Six.
One of Electro's weaknesses is water.
This has been used to defeat him many times. Electro has also fought
other heroes besides Spider-Man including Daredevil, Fantastic Four and
the New Avengers.
As a result of his frequent and often embarrassing defeats, Electro
tried to take over New York City's power supply in an attempt at glory
and respect. Spider-Man thwarted this plan, however, and convinced
Electro to quit his criminal career. When the insane Spider-Man clone
Kaine started killing enemies of Spider-Man, Electro began to fear for
his life and temporarily joined Mysterio's Sinister Seven, which had
been formed to combat Kaine. This group was quickly disbanded, and
following Kaine's subsequent disappearance, Electro returned to
retirement.
This changed when The Rose agreed to fund an experimental technique that
would amplify Electro's abilities, in exchange for Electro's services as
an enforcer. Seeing this as a chance to rise above the string of
failures that had made up so much of his life, Electro underwent the
procedure. After paying off his debt to the Rose by defeating several
members of The True Believers (an offshoot of the famous ninja sect The
Hand), a group of ninja assassins who had been interfering in the Rose's
operations, Electro attempted to demonstrate his newly amplified powers
to the world, once again attempting to take control of New York City's
power supply. Wearing an insulated suit, Spider-Man stopped him.
Electro, in an effort to make a final grand gesture, threw himself into
the Hudson River while his body was highly charged, seemingly killing
himself in an explosion.
Somehow surviving, Electro resurfaced later as part of the re-formed
Sinister Six. His powers had seemingly reverted to their
pre-amplification level, and he wore a new blue-and-white costume. When
Venom betrayed his fellow Sinister Six members, attempting to kill them
one by one, he attacked Electro and left him for dead. Once again,
Electro survived, and when he next appeared had returned to his
yellow-and green-costume.
In the mid-2000s, Electro was working with the Vulture when they
were attacked by Spider-Man, who thought they had kidnapped his Aunt
May. Electro managed to bring Spider-Man to the edge of defeat, using
his powers in more intelligent ways and blowing up a large number of
cars, including some with children in them. After a devastating battle,
Spider-Man defeated him by fighting him to a gas refinery. The badly
wounded Electro recovered fairly quickly, and shortly afterwards joined
the Sinister Twelve, assembled by the Green Goblin, though he was
defeated. Later, separately, he was hired by Brainchild to free Karl
Lykos (also known as Sauron) from The Raft, a maximum-security prison
for super villains. After causing a riot, Electro tried to run away with
his waitress girlfriend, but was captured by the New Avengers.
Cartoons
Electro made an appearance in the
1960s Spider-Man animated series.
In the
1990s Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Electro (voiced by Philip
Proctor). made an appearance in season five. Here he was Rheinholt
Kragov, instead of Max Dillon. During the course of the episode arc in
which he appears, it is revealed that this version of Electro is the Red
Skull's son. In this portrayal, Electro is much more powerful than his
comic book counterpart (or at least capable of using his powers more
intelligently), as he is seen taking over the circuitry of vast machines
and essentially brings all of S.H.I.E.L.D. to its knees. He is only
defeated when Spider-Man tricks him into connecting himself to a machine
made to generate a void in the space-time continuum, which traps him
inside a time loop. Electro appeared in most of the episode arc in the
episodes, Unclaimed Legacy and The Secrets of the Six before he became
the villain and as the villain, he only appeared in The Price of
Heroism. (Electro appears so late and so different in the show because
during the show's creation, a Spider-Man film helmed by James Cameron
was in production. Electro was to be one of the film's villains. This is
also why Spider-Man's origin story was not told until much later into
the show).
A gecko who is Counter-Earth's version of Electro appeared in the
Spider-Man Unlimited animated series. He appeared in the eighth
episode of the series titled "Ill Met by Moonlight" where he resided in
a power plant.
Max Dillon/Electro in Spider-Man: The New Animated Series In
MTV's
Spider-Man: The New Animated Series in 2003, Max Dillon was a nerdy
college friend of Peter Parker. Bullied by members of a fraternity he
was pledging, Dillon, after being humiliated at their party, goes out
into the rain and is struck by lightning. He becomes Electro and plans
revenge on the primary bully, Doug Reisman. He kills Doug by
electrocuting him and is later defeated by Spider-Man in battle when the
hero used grounded power cables, sucking him into the city's electrical
system. At this point, Max Dillon was presumed dead. However, he returns
several episodes later, attempting to make Sally, a girl with whom he
became infatuated at the party, go through a similar transformation.
Spider-Man defeats him again, this time by trapping Electro in an
electric generator box provided by Harry Osborn's OsCorp and tossing it
into the river, effectively destroying Electro permanently.
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