We recently talked about The Spot in our latest episode of Weird Lore Bullshit Corner, a podcast where we talk about Spider-Man’s weirdest dealings. You can find that here, or check out his origins below:
Jonathan Ohnn, who would later become The Spot, first appeared in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #97 in 1984, written by Al Milgrom and with art by Herb Trimpe – before making his cover debut in #99.
How did The Spot get his powers?
Jonathan Ohnn is a lowly scientist working for the Kingpin, hoping to create more power sources after their machinery was wrecked by a battle with Cloak & Dagger.
Ohnn manages to pick up some residual radiation from Cloak, whose power allows him to trap people in the darkforce dimension.
Ohnn keeps how far his research has come on the down-low from The Kingpin, while he tries to recreate Cloak’s abilities.
He creates a black hole (albeit one without any gravitational pull) and says, screw it, let’s jump inside!
He’s transported, not to the darkforce dimension, but to a polka dot dimension of a sort. I don’t think it has a name, or is visited on purpose by anyone but The Spot.
He manages to make it back, but not before several of those inter-dimensional portals stuck to him, giving him a new appearance entirely… now with pale white skin with white polka dots…
What are The Spot’s powers?
Ohnn soon realises all the spots on his body act as portals to other spaces via the polka dot dimension, and he can also remove these spots from his body and throw them out to be suspended in the air or attach to objects.
He can also teleport himself via these spots, and extend the reach of his body via the portals.
He has the ability to move the spots all over his body, concentrating them on one spot so he can mostly regain his regular joe look.
There are, however, some limitations. As we’ll see later, he only has a limited amount of spots he can hold at one time, presumably collecting more from within the spotted dimension when he needs a reload.
This all leads through to a showdown with The Kingpin in #100, with The Spot acting as a minor and baffling obstacle for Spidey and the Black Cat.
Their meeting goes down similarly to when Spidey met The Gibbon way back.
Once they start fighting, however, Spidey quickly finds out that The Spot’s powers aren’t much to laugh at… for now at least.
The Spot can punch him through the portals, trip him, teleport him anywhere, take his blows…
And he can just escape…
They have a couple of fights before the winner is decided, during which Spider-Man is briefly pulled into the spotted dimension before thrown elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Ohnn is still working for Kingpin – hoping to become a freelance criminal without Fisk knowing it’s him – or using his technology for himself.
Eventually, Spidey gets in close enough to hit him when enough of his spots have been thrown out that he’s vulnerable.
And considering without the spots he’s just a regular guy, that one punch is enough to scare him to death.
He’s still pretty frightened of Spider-Man when Black Cat later shows up with no clue what his deal is or what is happening.
He next turns up in Spectacular #245 (1997), over ten years later. This time, he’s pulling bank heists along with some other low-rent supervillains we’ve met before in Weird Lore…
We’ll get to those guys another time though.
Fantastic Four vol 3. #38 (2001), he is captured by The Gideon Trust, who hook him up and use his powers to open a portal to the negative zone.
This won’t be the last time this sort of thing happens to Johnny.
Then, in Spider-Man’s Tangled Web #16, The Spot gets involved with Tombstone.
Playing the good cellmate, he manages to get Tombstone out of prison without incriminating himself… but it’s not worth it after what Lonnie Lincoln pulls when they’re home free.
That darn neck-snapping Tombstone.
But if you thought this was over, you’d be wrong. And if you thought his return to life would be explained, you would also be wrong!
John is alive and well, somehow, in Wolverine vol. 3 #26 (2005). But not for long.
Funnily enough, it’s in this issue that he witnesses the murder of our other Weird Lore favourite, Slyde! Elektra and The Hand do not let him live long.
I haven’t been able to spot (heh) The Spot in costume the following issue, but The Spot becomes part of a brainwashed raid by The Hand on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier – where he is apparently taken down (maybe killed) off-panel.
Aside from a brief Civil War cameo, The Spot (alive and well, again) next turns up in Super-Villain Teamup: MODOK’s 11, a 2007 miniseries written by Fred Van Lente, and with art by Francis Portela.
This series sees MODOK playing some insanely convoluted 4D chess with AIM, who have abandoned him for a new leader.
He ropes in a bunch of D-Lister villains to help him pull off a heist – and The Spot is an obvious choice. At least his powers are…
It doesn’t take long before The Spot betrays them all.
He even gets in a scuffle with a character we previously talked about this season: Rocket Racer!
His predictable heel-turns are seen by MODOK and, well, everyone.
It turns out his real employer is the new Mandarin (the Mandarin’s son), who pays him for his trouble before using his dark light ring to trap The Spot in his own polka dot dimension – so he doesn’t betray him first.
While we do see him as a background character in the bar with no name, his proper (and more canonical) return is in The Amazing Spider-Man #589 (2009).
It’s here that The Spot’s MO gets a hell of a lot more violent.
A wordless Ohnn is going through the mob members responsible for the shooting of a young boy, and he is finally putting his powers to good use.
The human dalmatian causes all kinds of trouble for Spidey before he figures out what Ohnn is doing this all for.
But before they understand each other, there’s plenty of murder, and this embarrassing moment for the wall-crawler:
It’s later revealed that the boy is Wyatt Ohnn, John’s son. He’s in hospital, where Spider-Man sends a copy of a book the family read together before The Spot got trapped in the polka dot dimension for several maddening years.
Those years really did a number on him.
We see him again in Dark Reign: Mr. Negative, a mini-series where we see a more abstract look for his portals.
Something that’s quickly thrown out the window in subsequent appearances, with a notable appearance in the great Daredevil vol. 3 #1 (2011), written by Mark Waid, where he is employed to kidnap a mob boss’ daughter from a wedding.
Paolo Rivera’s art works wonders here, especially when we see how The Spot shows up in DD’s radar sense…
And we also see an absolutely rad neck-snap from under the tie.
What a move!
The next stage of The Spot’s story comes in another one of Waid’s Daredevil issues, this time with art by Chris Samnee.
In #20, DD comes across some portal-related smuggling, trafficking and murder. But it’s not The Spot anymore, it’s…
Oh yeah, so this is an entirely new villain with the same powerset of The Spot – but instead of failing to rob banks, Coyote is using the power to sell people into the most horrifying kind of slavery while making it very easy to smuggle things across borders.
His favourite pastime is to use these collars to maintain a portal and keep slaves and enemies separated from their own (still fully-functional) heads.
And he just throws them into a cupboard. What a nice guy!
As Daredevil soon finds out, the source of the Coyote’s power comes from The Spot – who is hooked up to a bunch of machines.
Yeah, there are wires… going… places…
Soon enough, DD turns the tables on coyote, frees the slaves, and frees The Spot too – but The Spot is not happy. And he is not quite human anymore.
For listeners of the podcast, the above is the image that Henry noped out on.
Daredevil uses feedback from the collars to stop The Spot and Coyote, but can’t react in time to stop the OG Spot from killing the pretender…
Neck snaps! It’s so hot right now.
Unfortunately, this will be the last we see of Coyote – who was a pretty great villain to be quite honest.
Past a few more group cameos in the Sinister Sixteen and Black Cat’s gang, The Spot in turns up in Spider-Man 2099 vol. 2 #11 (2014).
And yeah, he’s still in his monster form. YAY!
We also see some fun appearances by The Spot in Jessica Jones vol. 2 (2016). She does not like him.
In this series he’s managed to reverse that monster form somehow, and is back to being a super-powered lackey.
It’s pretty great.
Then there’s his appearance in the issues following Spider-Man #234 (2018), written by Brian Michael Bendis and with art by Jan Bazaldua.
Ohnn becomes part of a new incarnation of the Sinister Six, led by The Prowler (now Iron Spider) and coming up against Miles Morales.
It’s a great storyline actually as the team attempt to steal a helicarrier.
There are some great moments like this throughout.
“There’s a Hulk in there!” Jeez indeed.
From this point on, there are a hell of a lot of minor cameos as he goes back to becoming a henchmen for anyone who’d pay.
But there is a decent fight between him and Bucky Barnes in Winter Soldier vol. 2 #3 (2018), which I’ll include here mostly because Rod Reis’ design for him is great.
In general it’s a great look, and I love the evolution to having just the one black spot on his face.
That’s pretty much it for The Spot’s comic book history – Make sure to check out our discussion of the comics in our latest episode, which you can find right here.
That’s all for this week, folks! Make sure you check out our Patreon for more bonus episodes!
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