The Untold Truth Of The Abomination's Support Group In She-Hulk: Attorney At Law
Emil Blonsky, aka Marvel's one and only Abomination, has been sitting in prison since he tangled with the Hulk. He hasn't been resting on his laurels, however. In the Disney+ television series "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law," Blonsky is shown attending a reformed supervillain support group. This band of misfits includes the armored Porcupine, would-be Robin Hood (and mutant) El Aguila, cynical mercenary Saracen, and a highly unfortunate result of mad science known as the Man-Bull.
As diehard Marvel Comics fans know, these bad guys have long and complex histories of evil-doing to their name. Some are infamously unlucky, like perennial loser Porcupine and the deeply unfortunate Man-Bull. Others, like El Aguila, are as known for their style as much as their substance. One of their number, Saracen, is so slippery, he's simultaneously worked on opposing sides of international conflicts multiple times. From their most colossal capers to their least impressive schemes, we're taking a look at the untold truth of the members of Abomination's support group.
El Aguila, the hero who isn't for hire
Alejandro Montoya is a swashbuckling swordsman who calls himself El Aguila, which translates to the Eagle. A mutant, El Aguila channels bioelectricity through his sword while pretending said sword is gimmicked, to hide his mutant status. Unlike the other members of the support group, he's more of a well-meaning rogue than an actual villain. In fact, he's an occasional frenemy of Power Man and Iron Fist.
In their first encounter, El Aguila fights the heroes for hire because they're employed by a reprehensible slumlord named J.P. Preston. After Luke Cage saves his life, they part on good terms. El Aguila shows up again to root out corruption in the office of Jeryn Hogarth, Iron Fist's lawyer — and steal a kiss from his secretary, Jennie Royce. The swordsman also helps the heroes battle Sabretooth in one of his early appearances, and assists in fighting Iron Fist's arch-enemy, Master Khan.
El Aguila is a warrior of the people, and never takes money for his work — though he is known for redistributing drug dealers' wealth. He's so socially conscious, he chastises Hawkeye for working as head of security for Cross Technological Enterprises when they're making a deadly radiation weapon right under his nose. Where he gets his information and how he funds himself are kept entirely secret — but no one can deny El Aguila gets results.
The pernicious Porcupine
Alex Gentry, aka the Porcupine, debuted in 1963's "Tales To Astonish" #48. A military weapons engineer, he bases his suit of armor on the porcupine's ability to combine offense and defense, packing it full of razor-sharp projectiles, flame capabilities, and chemical nastiness. Eventually, he decides to use the suit for himself instead of turning it over to the government.
His first idea is to rob a bank, and the various knock-out gases he uses prove effective in this goal. However, Ant-Man and the Wasp soundly beat him by pouring liquid cement on his armor. The Porcupine actually gets the drop on Hank Pym (then operating as Giant-Man) in their next meeting, and steals what he thinks are growth capsules from the hero's belt. He swallows all of them at once, thinking they'll turn him into a colossus — but they turn out to be shrinking capsules, and he zips all the way down to the size of a microbe.
At this stage of his career, the Porcupine is a typical megalomaniac, prone to crowing that he's going to be the greatest criminal in the world. Little does he know that the losses will soon pile up, changing his fate forever.
Saracen's mercenary missions
Muzzafar Lambert, better known as Saracen, is a mercenary with shrouded origins. Notably, he maintains a swaggering presence, no matter the circumstances. But like the other members of the support group, he slowly but surely starts to lose his self-confidence as he faces setback after setback, courtesy of his arch-enemy. In his case, that nemesis is the Punisher.
In his first appearance, Saracen is actually a good guy. Or rather, his interests intersect with the Punisher's, instead of being in opposition to them. Both he and the Punisher infiltrate an alleged ninja training camp with a distinctly fishy aura. The Punisher is looking for information on a woman who was murdered, while Saracen is there on behalf of the Free Armenian Army. The two warriors eventually team up to go after the camp's shifty leaders. Saracen gets shot, but the Punisher saves his life. The baddie pays the Punisher back by warning him about a vicious attack dog. It's the last time they get along.
When Saracen and the Punisher meet again, the latter man is on the run in Sicily, where he discovers his long-lost uncle is alive. Saracen is working for said uncle's arch-enemy, and is looking to get U.S. citizenship from a corrupt senator. Eventually, Saracen kills the Punisher's uncle, and the Punisher kills the senator. The good times between these two are officially over.
The monstrous Man-Bull
William Taurens, aka Man-Bull, is a hulking fellow who refers to himself in the third person. In his first appearance, he's just a run-of-the-mill lout known as Bull who's searching for guinea pigs on behalf of a mad scientist and expelled Cambridge student known as the Professor. Unfortunately for the smarmy brute, Daredevil stops him from kidnapping a young couple.
In light of this failure, the Professor decides to use Bull as his test subject. Bull is sanguine about this, figuring if he messes up, it's on him to take the fall. He's soon transformed into the monstrous Man-Bull, who's so strong, he manages to tag Daredevil and send him into the river.
Man-Bull proceeds to track down his original targets and bring them back to the Professor. Daredevil finds that he can't hurt him, but he can use his agility and billy club to slam the rampaging Man-Bull into a wall. This impact reverses the serum's transformative effects. The slightest application of skill would have resulted in an easy victory for Man-Bull; luckily for Daredevil, he has none.
The Porcupine attempts to retire
The best thing about Alex Gentry is that despite getting his butt repeatedly kicked by a variety of superheroes, he's still prone to delivering long monologues about his genius. He does, however, get tired of being stomped. Thus, he eventually contacts a new version of the Secret Empire in order to sell them the Porcupine suit. He tries to convince them to mass-produce it, which would allow him to retire from the supervillain game in style. Gentry wasn't exactly a young man when he started out, so it makes sense he quickly grew tired of being punched in the face.
The Secret Empire is skeptical of Gentry's boasts about his updated suit, so they demand a test. He tells them he plans to defeat Captain America, and they tell him to call back if he wins. Porcupine defeats Cap's sidekick Nomad and then goes after Cap himself. But Cap has no time to waste on the Porcupine, as he wants to go visit a dying friend. The star-spangled hero goes after the obvious weak point in the Porcupine's suit: the helmet. Cap knocks him out, and once again, the Porcupine is defeated.
Hilariously, when the Porcupine seems to be winning, he not only leaks the Secret Empire's existence to Cap, he brags that he's going to keep the suit himself and conquer the world. That's about a minute before he's knocked unconscious. He just can't win for losing.
Colonel Hawk
Determining what side Saracen's on is a little bit of a shell game. At one point, the mercenary is embedded so deeply within the Middle Eastern country of Trafia, he's made a member of their military and takes the title Colonel Hawk.
Things get hot when an American scientist and arms designer named Dr. Brattle creates a weapon for Trafia that will give them martial superiority over the nation of Zukistan. The Punisher gets mixed up in this when he saves Brattle's life in New York. The American antihero eventually goes to Trafia, gets captured trying to buy a gun, and is tortured by Saracen, who immediately recognizes his old frenemy.
Punisher eventually gets free and meets an old friend of his who happens to be an Israeli spy. When he tells her that Brattle's under his protection and that he wants to kill Saracen, she tells him Brattle must die and that Saracen is, in fact, working for Israel. Things turn on a dime, and Saracen and the Punisher engage in a brutal fistfight. The Punisher is about to kill him when Microchip stops him: Saracen has cut yet another deal, this time with Zukistan. For a black-and-white thinker like the Punisher, a chameleon like Saracen is incomprehensible.
Man-Bull's many betrayals
William Taurens bides his time in prison until he learns that Daredevil has been spotted in San Francisco. He arranges to have the Professor shoot a vial of transformational serum into his prison cell and becomes the Man-Bull once again. Man-Bull and the Professor proceed to cook up a plan to poison San Francisco's water supply with the serum and blackmail the city for the antidote. But eventually, a deranged Man-Bull turns on his partner Itch, then tries to kill the Professor. He's decided that he wants to make people suffer like he has more than he wants to make money. Luckily, Daredevil dispatches him before his evil plans can come to pass.
After getting trounced by the Cat, Man-Bull decides to go the togetherness route. He joins the Death Squad alongside Whiplash and the Melter, and promptly gets whipped by Iron Man. Never one to back down, Man-Bull then teams up with a Daredevil villain known as the Matador, and turns on him after their scheme goes awry. He gets a third chance when the Owl busts him out of prison to be his bodyguard, but Man-Bull turns on him too.
If this seems like an especially huge amount of treachery, you're not wrong. However, Man-Bull does help Hercules against the villainous Kyknos and Hecate. It's only one good deed against a mountain of bad ones, but it counts.
An all-time loser
After recovering from yet another defeat at Hank Pym's hands, the Porcupine realizes he shouldn't fight heroes on his own. Thus begins a long and unfruitful partnership with the Eel, the Plantman, and the Scarecrow. They join up with Count Nefaria and work as his thugs. The Porcupine shows flashes of competence when he easily beats the Beast, but he still manages to lose the larger fight.
The Porcupine decides to try his luck as part of Batroc's Brigade, and then as a member of Crime Wave. Neither gig goes particularly well. In a brutal twist, just when Crime Wave seems to have Cap and the Falcon defeated, Cap suddenly gets super-strength and trounces them.
At this point, the Porcupine, the Eel, and Plantman realize they're not very effective criminals. Thus, they join Celestial Mind Control, a popular self-help cult. This turns out to be a bizarre front for the old Defenders villain Nebulon, who calls the hapless villains bozos, brainwashes them, and makes them attack the Defenders. Nighthawk manages to take out Porcupine and Eel with one shot, even as the Porcupine sneers at him for not being as enlightened as he is.
A team-up with the Zodiac and employment as a member of Justin Hammer's D-list army of supervillains just leads to a new string of failures for the Porcupine. Is his unwillingness to give up admirable or pathetic? That's for you to decide.
An honored foe of the Avengers
Somehow, the Porcupine manages to survive his many defeats, and gets out of prison. But he has no desire to wear his Porcupine suit again. Sitting in a fleabag motel, the de-quilled Alex Gentry tries to sell it to HYDRA, the Kingpin, the Secret Empire, A.I.M., the Tinkerer, and finally the Serpent Society. Its leader, Sidewinder, informs him that porcupines aren't snakes and that they aren't interested.
Gentry finally hits upon a new idea: Why not sell it to the Avengers? His old nemesis Captain America appears to discuss terms, and when Gentry tells him he contacted the Serpent Society, he's roped into a sting operation. Cap promises Gentry he won't have to do any fighting as part of this plan, which involves the Porcupine calling the Serpents up and saying he's captured Cap.
Of course, when the Porcupine is involved, things always go wrong. In this case, the Porcupine panics and runs. He's attacked by Diamondback, who damages his armor with acid. In the scuffle, he accidentally impales himself on his own quills. Even as he struggles for breath, Gentry bemoans his status as a loser. When Cap tries to reassure him, Gentry insists he's nothing more than a failure, and dies. Moved by this tragedy, Cap displays the Porcupine's armor in Avengers Mansion, alongside a plaque that declares him to have been an "honored foe of the Avengers."
Man-Bull becomes the Minotaur
Like many other characters on this list, Man-Bull goes from being a serious threat to a second-rate loser to an openly tragic figure. Things get brutal for the bovine baddie when the sorcerer Declan Dane powers him up and makes him think he's the actual mythological Minotaur. He runs loose on the Greek isle of Santorini, killing all who hunt him. As Dane has made him invisible to his hunters, Man-Bull is even able to kill members of the military, mercenaries, and the Greek superhero Jon Ajax.
The Greek goddess of magic, Hecate, calls in the Scarlet Witch for help. In exchange for getting rid of the Minotaur, Hecate is willing to owe her a favor. Wanda hunts down the creature and eventually realizes he isn't the Minotaur at all. She strips Man-Bull of his magical powers, causing him to remember who he really is. He can't stand it. For a little while, he was a god — now he's back to being a nobody.
Things don't get better for him after that, sadly. Man-Bull is made into a hunting target for Kraven and Arcade, and though he survives, it's only to become a "patient" of the villainous Ravencroft Institute.
El Aguila joins the Penance Corps
Later on in his career, El Aguila falls on hard times. When the Scarlet Witch takes away most mutants' powers on M-Day, El Aguila is one of the victims. His vanity keeps him tied to his identity as a swashbuckling hero, however. When Joseph Duffy, the head of a for-profit prison company called Penance Corps, invites him to sit on their board alongside several other super-types, he can't help but say yes. The metahuman group includes time-traveling Professor Justin Alphonse Gamble, Black Tiger, Thunderbolt, and the corrupt hero Crimebuster.
Iron First investigates Penance Corps when his old friend Jennie Royce gets framed for the murder of Crimebuster. Aguila is there as something of a show pony, engaging Iron Fist in combat even without his powers. But the swordsman has no clue as to his leader's real identity. In truth, Joseph Duffy is Gerry Kammill, leader of a white nationalist group that runs prisons and is looking to expand their operations nationwide. Between this and M-Day, El Aguila just can't catch a break.
Saracen meets his end
Never one to be picky about his employers, Saracen really gets his hands dirty working for drug kingpins in Peru. The Punisher catches up with him, intent on revenge, but finds an invitation to a huge terrorist convention in Saudi Arabia. He captures Saracen and turns him over to the Bolivian government, telling them to keep him in prison until further notice. Then the Punisher disguises himself as Saracen in order to gain admittance to the malicious expo.
Soon, the Punisher learns that terrorist groups working under the auspices of a man called the Jackal are planning something big. Each of them is going after a target that isn't normally associated with their demands. Meanwhile, Saracen escapes prison and makes his way to the convention. The Punisher manages to blow it up, but Saracen challenges him to a duel of honor. He even spares Rose, an Israeli agent and longtime ally (and occasional love interest) of the Punisher.
This proves to be the last honorable act of his life, as the Punisher soon runs him through. Saracen is intelligent, skilled, and has a lot of clout, unlike many others on this list. But he wastes it all and dies in the desert on his enemy's sword.