Wednesday, January 28, 2015

5 Reasons You Should Care About... The Purple Man



Earlier this week, it was reported that David Tennant, the 10th Doctor himself, has been cast as Zebediah Killgrave, aka the Purple Man, in A.K.A. Jessica Jones, Marvel’s second Netflix series, after Daredevil.
The Purple Man is the perfect villain for a series starring Jessica Jones, to be played by Krysten Ritter (Breaking Bad, Veronica Mars). In Brian Michael Bendis’ Alias series (not to be confused with the 2001-06 ABC series), Killgrave tortured Jessica and used his mind-control powers to force her to live with him and do his bidding. This led to her being ordered to kill Daredevil and getting beaten up by the Avengers before they realized she was brainwashed.

Before the series is made available for streaming later this year, here’s a quick study in Purple:

1. He’s an OG Daredevil villain: The Purple Man was created by Stan Lee and Joe Orlando and first appeared in Daredevil #4, way back in 1964. And just like the Man Without Fear, Killgrave’s powers and purpleness were the result of a chemical accident.



2. He’s got beef with the whole Jones family: At the end of Bendis’ New Avengers #2, amid the breakout at the Raft supervillain prison, Killgrave tries to take control of Jones’ boyfriend/father of her child, Luke Cage (“Do me a favor. Kill all these other ‘hero’ friends of yours, and then kill yourself”). However, Purple’s caretakers put drugs in his food that negated his mind-control powers. So instead, Cage starts punching the crap out of him, stopping only because Captain America ordered him to.

3. He once helped Dr. Doom enslave the world: In the graphic novel Emporer Doom by David Michelinie and Bob Hall, Doom hooks Killgrave up to a machine that allows him to control every mind on Earth. The plan is thwarted by Wonder Man, who snaps out of it due to time spent in a sensory deprivation tank.



4. He was in one of the last episodes of the ’90s X-Men cartoon: In the Season 5 episode “No Man Is an Island,” Cyclops takes a sabbatical from the team and returns to the orphanage where he grew up, only to find it being funded by Killgrave, who hides his purpleness under the same makeup used by shows filmed in HD. Killgrave later appeared on Disney XD’s Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, voiced by Brent Spiner (Star Trek: The Next Generation).

5. His kids are every bit as messed up:  The latest volume of Daredevil reveals Killgrave has a number of Purple Children, born of different women he’d mind-controlled over the years but with the same skin color and power set. The children united against their father and used their powers to make him walk in front of a moving train, and went on to wreak havoc in DD’s new home of San Francisco, stealing a police car and taking over an arcade. They’re not all bad though: Killgrave’s daughter Kara was a member of Alpha Flight who went by the codename Persuasion.

Read this: Alias #1-28 by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos

Watch that: Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Season 2, Episode 19: “Emperor Stark”

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