Iron Man 2: Whiplash

It seems like only yesterday that Iron Man flew into theaters and stole our hearts. Aww. The first film was enough of a rousing success that a sequel was warranted and this time, there's more of everything. Some of the new characters you may not be familiar with, so every Tuesday and Thursday until the film's release Omnicomic will be profiling one of the characters in the film.

Real Name: Mark Scarlotti

Origin: Born in Cleveland, Ohio

Abilities: Scarlotti was an expert with nunchakus, whips and an assortment of different fighting skills in addition to being a top weapons designer and engineer. His main weapon is two custom built cybernetic controlled whips that can transform into poles or into nunchakus to rain down some pain. He also has the ability to charge up those whips, making any thing he hits explode in pain or outright blow up. On top of that he was packing armor that can stop bullets and take punches from the mighty Iron Man himself.

First Appearance: Tales of Suspense #97 (1968)

Backstory: Whiplash has a long and varied background, but I’ll give you the short and good parts of it. An exceptionally smart man, he excelled at all his courses in college while getting top honors and landing a job with Stark International Cincinnati Branch working on his future. Along the way he got mixed up with some of the wrong kind of people and begun to make weapons for the Maggia crime syndicate and eventually working for them in a number of ways, such as assassin and weapons designer. It’s at this time when the Whiplash persona comes out during his work for Maggia and the start of numerous run-ins with Iron Man. After so many defeats and subsequent jail time Whiplash vows to get improved weaponry and upgraded armor, thus becoming Backlash.

A new name and gear didn’t help him much though, with constant defeat still coming to him at the hands of Iron Man. The final insult however was being beaten in front of the Maggia syndicate, making him useless in their eyes. He attempts to reform himself by trying to be not a criminal anymore, but it doesn’t last long and he bounces around from being Whiplash for the Maggia again to trying his luck as Backlash again. For Whiplash his entire criminal career is a mediocre one with Iron Man always being there to stop him in most cases. It was Iron Man who killed Whiplash during a battle, after Iron Man upgraded his armor to a type that was sentient that basically pummels Whiplash to death. The interesting part of it is that Tony Stark didn’t want it do go down that way, but the suit didn’t listen to him and beat Scarlotti to death.

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