Tarantula (Marvel Comics)
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Tarantula is the alias of a number of fictional characters appearing in publications from Marvel Comics.
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[edit] Clay Riley
The Tarantula is a Zorro-like western era villain equipped with a scourge and has a mysterious Mexican accent. He first appears in Ghost Rider #2 (April, 1967).
[edit] Anton Miguel Rodriguez
Anton Miguel Rodriguez, known as the Tarantula, is a latino supervillain who wears a red stretch costume with a black tarantula on its chest. He's equipped with poisonous stings attached to his soles. He was first introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #134 (July 1974).
[edit] Fictional character history
As a revolutionary terrorist and government operative, Anton Miguel Rodriguez is expelled from his small organization after murdering a guard without reason during a robbery. This is when Anton went on to the other repressive side of the government where they created the identity of the Tarantula for him and to serve as his country's counterpart to Captain America. He clashes with Captain America and Spider-Man and the Punisher.
He is hired by the Brand Corporation to kill Spider-Man. In an attempt to bestow him with spider powers, he is injected with a mutagenic serum and placed in an electrolyte bath. Unfortunately for Rodriguez, Will o' the Wisp disrupts the mutagenic process, causing Tarantula to start transforming into an actual giant tarantula.
Rodriguez remains relatively humanoid at first (at the least, he functions on a bipedal level). However, after several more skirmishes with both the Wisp and Spider-Man, he rapidly continues to mutate into fully arachnid appearance. Horrified and disgusted with what he has become, he leaps off of a tall building, begging for the police officers gathered below to kill him. In a hail of gunfire, Rodriquez strikes the street below and dies.
[edit] Powers and abilities
In addition to being a great athlete with incredible agility and leaping skills and being excellent in hand to hand combat, Anton wore gloves with retractable razor blades and boots with retractable razor sharp points loaded with drugs that would render his victim unconscious. When he was mutated into a giant Tarantula like creature he gained superhuman strength and the ability to adhere to surfaces. Also just before his death he gained the ability to shoot organic webbing from his backside.
[edit] Luis Alvarez
The next Tarantula (real name Luis Alvarez) wears a costume identical to that of Rodriguez and is also a government operative but not given to terroristic activities. He acts more as a death squad/government enforcer. He was sent to kill Spider-Man for what happened to the first Tarantula. He teams up with the Punisher during the EuroHit story, more specifically in Punisher vol. 2, #64-67. Eventually he is caught by the Jury and has his neck broken by Whysper.
[edit] Maria Vasquez
The new Tarantula, Maria Vasquez, debuted in the new Heroes for Hire series. Even Misty Knight, her team leader knows nothing about her history. Tarantula has a bad attitude and is highly skilled using the blades on her wrists and the toes of her boots. She indicates that she enjoys inflicting pain. If instructed not to kill, she will seriously injure an opponent, to the chagrin of her teammates. She has been observed licking her bloody blade after slicing through an enemy in Heroes For Hire vol. 2, #1. Maria has also been shown to be highly intelligent with knowledge of biology and engineering (issue #2 of the same series). In issue #4 she states that she decided to become a hero to avenge her sister, who had been killed in the Stamford Incident. This is against the wishes of her father, who would have preferred that she find a safer profession (such as a doctor or a lawyer) and where she could put her intelligence to good use. Shortly after this revelation, her father is killed by ninjas, though she had been the one marked for death by Ricadonna (along with the rest of the Heroes For Hire). After they murdered her father, Tarantula kills the entire team of ninjas herself.
[edit] Ultimate Tarantula
Writer Brian Michael Bendis stated in Wizard Magazine that an Ultimate version of Tarantula is set to appear in the "Clone Saga" arc of Ultimate Spider-Man.[1] Although the story arc has introduced several new spider-powered characters, none have been identified as the Tarantula. The black costume worn by a six-armed Spider-Man clone (reportedly dead as of Ultimate Spider-Man #103) bears a spider-logo similar to Alvarez's.
