Some photos from the set of Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ series have been leaked, so Ironheart, reveal that Anthony Ramos will bring to Parker Robbinsalso known as The Hood, who will enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and since The Hood He doesn’t have the pop culture profile of iconic Marvel Comics villains like Doctor Doom, Magneto, or even Kang the Conqueror.
However, for a time in the early 2000s, he was one of the Avengers’ greatest foes and a unique foe among the rogues gallery of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and if you’re wondering why fans of Marvel are excited about The Hood’s debut in Ironheart, let us walk you through the Parker Robbins story.
You see, Brain K. Vaughan, Kyle Hotz, and Eric Powell created The Hood to marvel comicsParker Robbins first appeared in The Hood miniseries, published under Marvel’s adult-only imprint MAX Comics in 2002, where the series sought to present Parker as a much more gray and conflicted villain than the typical Marvel villain and see what happens when a common criminal like this gains some of the superpowers that are common in the Marvel Universe.
Let’s start with the fact that Parker’s father worked with Kingpin and he witnessed a superhero vs supervillain battle as a child and it left a mark on his psyche so as he grew up he became a mixture of virtue and vice so he would commit crimes to care for and provide for his hospitalized mother and pregnant girlfriend, but would lie about where the money came from and continue to secretly solicit sex workers.
Parker’s fate changes when he encounters a demon (later retconned to be Doctor Strange’s nemesis, Dormammu disguised) during one of his jobs, he kills him and steals a magical cloak and boots, plus the cloak allows him to become invisible while the boots allow him to walk on air, for which the authorities call the unidentified criminal “The Hood”, and Parker uses his new abilities to betray allies, commit crimes and evade capture.
After the original miniseries, The Hood languished in obscurity for years, appearing only in the 2006 miniseries Beyond, which tried to push Parker in the direction of becoming an antihero, but didn’t quite stick, so Brian Michael Bendis, the writer who ran the Marvel’s Avengers franchise for years after giving it a soft reboot with Avengers: Disassembly and New Avengers, and saw the potential in The Hood.
Bendis reintroduced The Hood in his comics from avengersWith the heroes distractedly fighting each other during Civil War, and Wilson Fisk out of the picture at the time, The Hood built a criminal empire, uniting various underworld factions and becoming the new Kingpin of Crime, for which his profile would continue to rise. until he eventually became part of The Cabal, the Illuminati’s villainous counterparts, during Norman Osborn’s “Dark Reign.”
This would prove to be the apex of Parker’s villainous rise, and since Norman’s downfall and the end of the era “Dark King” in Siege, The Hood has made plays for the Infinity Stones and formed an evil new Illuminati, however, he has mostly been vying for prominence in the underworld, unable to rebuild the criminal empire he once controlled after the return of the Kingpin.
And he’s been a villain for street heroes ranging from Hawkeye, Punisher, Black Cat and Foolkiller, and now it will be interesting to see if his star rises again after appearing on Disney+ in Ironheart.