Electro (Marvel Comics)
Electro is the alias of two supervillains appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.
Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, the first and best-known version of Electro is Maxwell "Max" Dillon, who first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #9 and has since endured as one of the superhero Spider-Man's most recurring enemies, belonging to the collective of adversaries that make up his rogues gallery. In the Marvel Universe, Max Dillon is a lineman who gains the ability to generate and control electricity after being struck by lightning. He turns to crime as the self-proclaimed "Master of Electricity", and has undergone several design changes throughout his comic book appearances. Electro's original design comprised a green-and-yellow costume with a lightning bolt-shaped mask, while modern stories depict him with blue skin and a bald head. Electro is a founding member of the Sinister Six, and the leader of the original incarnation of the Emissaries of Evil, the first supervillain teams to oppose Spider-Man and Daredevil, respectively.
Created by Dan Slott, Humberto Ramos, and R.B. Silva, the second Electro is Francine Frye, who first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man vol. 3 #2. After being accidentally killed by Dillon, she is revived by Ben Reilly and similarly accidentally kills Max, absorbing his powers as a side effect of Reilly's resurrection method. Over the follow years from 2016 to 2021, Francine served as a solo Electro in a green-and-yellow costume; on Dillon's revival, the two independently continued to serve as Electro, before eventually in The Spectacular Spider-Men going to war over the name, culminating in the two falling in love and vowing to be wed as Mr. and Mrs. Electro.
Outside of comics, both Dillon and Frye have been featured in various media adaptations of Spider-Man, including feature films, television series, and video games. Most notably, Jamie Foxx portrayed Dillon in the live-action films The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Publication history
The Max Dillon incarnation of Electro was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, and first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #9. The character is also known as the member of the Frightful Four battling the Fantastic Four. He is also the first major Marvel villain to be written in publication history as battling Daredevil, even being the founder and leader of the supervillain team that oppose him, the Emissaries of Evil.The second incarnation of Electro, Francine Frye, was created by Dan Slott, Humberto Ramos, and R.B. Silva, and first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man vol. 3 #2 by Slott and Ramos, though she did not become Electro until The Amazing Spider-Man vol. 4 #17 by Slott and Silva.
Fictional character biography
Max Dillon
While Maxwell "Max" Dillon, an electrical engineer and lineman, is repairing a power line, a freak lightning accident causes a mutagenic change that transforms him into a living electrical capacitor. His powers are initially weak, so he spends some time stealing electrical equipment from Stark Industries to charge himself. During this time, he is approached by Magneto, who considers him a potential recruit for his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, claiming that Dillon's power rival his own, but Dillon refuses. The following day, Dillon is confronted by a small-time thug from whom he was borrowing money to pay for the machinery he needed. When the thug draws a gun on him because he did not pay back the money yet, he responds by shooting a blast of lightning through the thug's chest—the first time Dillon ever kills anybody.Soon taking the name "Electro", he turns to a life of a professional crime, his first victim being J. Jonah Jameson. Electro breaks into the Daily Bugle Building and steals from Jameson's safe right in front of him. Jameson accuses Spider-Man of being an alternate identity of Electro, prompting Spider-Man to prove the publisher wrong. During their first ever confrontation, Spider-Man is nearly killed after touching the electrically charged villain. Spider-Man eventually uses a fire hose to short-circuit Electro while wearing rubber gloves to protect himself.
Electro next confronts Daredevil for the first time when trying to break into the Baxter Building. He is again defeated. Electro later joins the original Sinister Six led by Doctor Octopus, and is the first member of the group to fight Spider-Man, battling him at a Stark plant. Spider-Man enters the fight believing he lost his powers, however after dodging a bolt of electricity from Electro he realizes his powers returned. Electro loses his power when the power is cut off by Spider-Man, who gets a card from him that leads him to fight Kraven the Hunter. Electro attacks the Fantastic Four at the wedding of Sue Storm and Reed Richards, under the influence of Doctor Doom's mind-control machine, but he has no memory of this due to the actions of Mister Fantastic. He later recruits the Emissaries of Evil in a plot of revenge against Daredevil for previous defeats. This group consists of Gladiator, Stilt-Man, Leap-Frog, and the Matador.
Electro is later hired by J. Jonah Jameson to defeat Spider-Man on national television. He encounters Daredevil again in San Francisco, at which time he temporarily dons a modified costume. He then takes control of a Protarian android seeking the destruction of Omega. Electro then teams with Blizzard against Spider-Man and Daredevil. Electro then attempts to aid a band of criminals escaping the Defenders. Electro later joins the Frightful Four. As part of the Frightful Four, he uses Spider-Man as bait to trap the Fantastic Four. Subsequently, he battles the Falcon but is defeated, partly because he does not consider the Falcon to be a serious threat. Electro later learns that he can electro-statically disrupt Spider-Man's wall-crawling ability. Chameleon and Hammerhead then send the Shocker to try to recruit Electro into their organization. Instead, he later accepts Doctor Octopus' invitation to rejoin the Sinister Six, and battles Spider-Man.
Electro fights Spider-Man countless times, either on his own or as part of a group such as the Sinister Six. He also fights such other heroes as Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, and the New Avengers. Despite his immense power, he almost always is defeated, usually as a result of his foes outsmarting him or taking advantage of his weakness to water while charged. As a result of his frequent and often embarrassing defeats, Electro tries to take over New York City's power supply in an attempt at glory and respect. Spider-Man thwarts this plan, however, and convinces Electro to quit his criminal career. When Kaine starts killing enemies of Spider-Man, Electro begins to fear for his life and temporarily joins Hobgoblin's Sinister Seven, which were formed to combat Kaine. This group is quickly disbanded, and following Kaine's subsequent disappearance, Electro returns to retirement.
This changes when the Rose agrees to fund an experimental technique that can amplify Electro's abilities, in exchange for Electro's services as an enforcer. Seeing this as a chance to rise above the string of failures that made up so much of his life, Electro undergoes the procedure. After paying off his debt to the Rose by defeating several members of The True Believers, a group of ninja assassins who was interfering in the Rose's operations, Electro attempts to demonstrate his newly amplified powers to the world, once again attempting to take control of New York City's power supply. Wearing an insulated suit, Spider-Man stops him. Electro, in an effort to make a final grand gesture, throws himself into the Hudson River while his body is highly charged, seemingly killing himself in an explosion.
Somehow surviving, Electro resurfaces later as part of the re-formed Sinister Six, formed to kill Senator Stewart Ward and Doctor Octopus. His powers seemingly reverted to their pre-amplification level, and he wears a new blue-and-white costume. When Venom betrays his fellow Sinister Six members, attempting to kill them one by one, he attacks Electro and leaves him for dead. Once again, Electro survives, and returns to his yellow-and green-costume. Electro is working with the Vulture when they are attacked by Spider-Man, who thinks they kidnapped his Aunt May. Electro manages to bring Spider-Man to the edge of defeat, using his powers in more intelligent ways and blowing up a large number of cars, including some with children in them. After a devastating battle, Spider-Man defeats him by fighting him to a gas refinery. The badly wounded Electro recovers and shortly afterwards joins the Sinister Twelve, assembled by the Green Goblin, though he and the rest of the team is defeated thanks to the intervention of the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Captain America, Iron Man and Yellowjacket.
Later, separately, he is hired by the Skrull Pagon to free Karl Lykos from the Raft, a maximum-security prison for supervillains. After causing a riot, Electro tries to run away with his waitress girlfriend, but is captured by the New Avengers, subsequently fainting when faced with the prospect of being beaten up by Luke Cage, using Spider-Man's webbing to protect himself from Electro. Later, Electro joins Chameleon's "Exterminators", seeking to take advantage of Peter Parker and his loved ones. During the "Civil War" storyline, Electro is among the villains in Hammerhead's unnamed villain army when Iron Man and S.H.I.E.L.D. raid the hideout. In "Secret Invasion," Electro appears as member of Hood's crime syndicate and attacks a Skrull force. After the Skrull posing as Edwin Jarvis kidnaps the baby of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four begin going after everyone who is associated with the Skrulls. Because of this, Electro is confronted by Wolverine in an alley where, after a battle, he leaves Dillon beaten and unconscious.
Electro returns in issue 612 starting The Gauntlet, with a new look as his face is now scarred with lightning bolts and sporting a trench coat. The revamp was explained by writer Mark Waid, stating that artist Paul Azaceta "tweaked the design a bit, adding some burn scars to reflect Electro's current situation. As Electro gets older, as his body chemistry starts to shift into middle age, his powers are becoming more erratic and less easy for him to control. So he turns to a surprise Marvel villain – someone rarely, if ever, seen in the pages of Amazing – to level up." During his appearance in "The Gauntlet", it is revealed that Electro has lost control over his powers: besides the physical disfigurement, his touch is now 100% lethal. Depressed and angry at the world because of this, Electro begins gathering other outcasts and misfits into a group known as "Power To The People", which targets right-wing newspaper baron Dexter Bennett and the New York Stock Exchange in the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis. Electro's group manages to gain positive coverage in the media, hampering Spider-Man's ability to convince Electro's followers of his true evil nature.
Electro's duplicitous nature causes him to betray his followers to align with the amoral Bennett in exchange for help finding a way to restore his powers to a controllable level. The Mad Thinker is able to come up with a process to cure Electro, but Spider-Man interferes with the process, turning Electro into an artificial electrical thunderbolt. Furious, Electro double-crosses Bennett and ultimately uses his new powers to destroy The DB building, crippling Bennett in the process. In doing so, Electro uses up so much of his newfound power that Spider-Man is able to neutralize him with his webbing. In the epilogue, Electro runs into Sasha Kravinoff and Chameleon in his new jail cell. In the following issue involving Sandman, it is revealed that Electro has escaped. Under the orders of the Kravinoffs, he breaks the fourth Vulture out of prison.
During the "Heroic Age" storyline, it is suspected by the Young Allies that Electro had a discarded and disavowed daughter named Aftershock who is a member of the Bastards of Evil. When Young Allies members Firestar and Gravity fight Electro, he defeats them and lets them live so that they can spread the message that he does not endorse Aftershock and the Bastards of Evil's terrorism. He also says they can look up how and when he got his powers on the internet and there was no way a girl of Aftershock's age could have been conceived after he got his powers: It is impossible for him to be Aftershock's father. Electro is later present at the scene where Mattie Franklin is sacrificed by Sasha Kravinoff as part of a ritual that resurrects Vladimir Kravinoff as a large humanoid lion creature.
During the "Origin of the Species" storyline, Electro is among the supervillains invited by Doctor Octopus to reestablish the Sinister Six, where they are promised that they will receive a reward in exchange for securing some specific items. Electro goes after Spider-Man for Menace's infant. Anticipating Spider-Man's plan to deliver the infant to a hospital, Electro waits at the nearest hospital in Spider-Man's area until Spider-Man shows up. The two begin to battle until Sandman interferes and Spider-Man tricks Electro into electrocuting Sandman, turning him into glass. Flying shards of glass hit Electro, temporarily stunning him and allowing Spider-Man to escape. Spider-Man goes on an angry rampage against all the villains after the Chameleon tricks him into thinking the infant is dead. He defeats Electro in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn.
In the Big Time storyline, Electro becomes a member of Doctor Octopus' new Sinister Six and helps Chameleon break into an air force base in New Jersey. Electro was with the Sinister Six when it came to fighting Intelligencia. During a conflict between the Intelligencia and the Sinister Six, Mad Thinker was able to briefly deactivate Electro's powers, but was caught off-guard when Electro physically attacked him instead, the surprise of the attack allowed Electro to defeat Mad Thinker. During the "'Ends of the Earth" storyline despite the Sinister Six being prepared for a fight with the Avengers, Electro was the first of the team to be defeated, being hurled into the upper atmosphere by Thor while distracted by his inability to attack Spider-Man's new hi-tech armor.
Electro returns to Earth and attempts to avenge himself on Thor by forcing an A.I.M. scientist to convert him to generate protons instead of electrons, but he is defeated when Superior Spider-Man manages to convert him into a stream of protons and traps him. Superior Spider-Man places Electro in containment next to Sandman in his hidden underwater lab. Electro, Chameleon, Sandman, Mysterion, and the Vulture are later seen as part of a team led by Superior Spider-Man called the "Superior Six". Superior Spider-Man has been temporarily controlling their minds to redeem them for their crimes. He does this by forcing them to do heroic deeds against their will, some of which almost get them killed. Every time he is done controlling them, he puts them back in their containment cells. They eventually break free of Superior Spider-Man's control and attempt to exact revenge on the wall-crawler, nearly destroying New York to do so. With the help of Sun Girl, Superior Spider-Man is barely able to stop the Superior Six. Electro is later seen battling the Punisher in Los Angeles.
Sometime after Spider-Man regains his body, Electro comes into the Bar With No Name and is introduced to the Hobgoblin's servants by his friend and bartender, Deke. The villains start joking about the gloomy Electro. One mentions how Thor launched him into space, another about how "Spider-Man" made him part of the Superior Six, and yet another about how Electro was taken out by the Punisher, despite the latter's lack of powers. Electro gets angry and starts sparking, but the bartender gets the situation under control by commenting on how bad the Punisher is and with compliments like breaking so many villains out of the Raft, which earned him the respect of Crossbones and Count Nefaria. This does not stop the others, however. Determined to get respect, Electro heads back over to the Raft, ready for another breakout despite the Green Goblin having done the same just recently and the fact that it was re-christened as Spider-Island II. Electro sends a blot of electricity around, but it grows excessively big and he cannot turn it off. He finally exhausts all of his power but when this happens, he passes out and many of the villains he tried to break out are now dead. Vowing revenge, Electro soon realizes what caused this to happen to him: experiments conducted by "Spider-Man".
Electro later visits his friend, Francine Frye, and keeps his distance because of his uncontrollable powers. Francine starts to kiss Electro, only to end up dying from electrocution. At Peter Parker's behest, Parker Industries is testing out an anti-Electro netting that can capture Electro. Electro is later seen with Black Cat when they raid Eel's hideout where Electro defeats Eel. Electro and Black Cat later crash the meeting between Mister Negative and Phil Urich where they throw Eel's body into the area where the meeting is. During Peter Parker's interview on the Fact Channel, Electro attacks the security team on the channel and the Black Cat arrives, announcing her demand that if Spider-Man does not show up in 15 minutes, Peter Parker will be dead. Electro complains about the plan but Black Cat stays determined that Spider-Man will show up, but then Silk arrives to confront them both, giving Peter the time to change into Spider-Man and jump into action, aiding Silk. As she battles against Electro and Spider-Man deals with Black Cat, J. Jonah Jameson remains on the channel forcing the cameraman to film the action. Electro fails to stop Silk, but the Black Cat redirects one of Electro's bolts into hitting Spider-Man, knocking him down in the process.
Electro pressures Sajani into telling him how effective the anti-Electro traps will be in removing his powers, but the Black Cat interrupts their talk to ask her how the device works. They both infiltrate the demonstration, suiting Electro into the "Fake Electro" costume while Black Cat disguises herself as one of the operators. Black Cat starts the machine, further enhancing Electro's power, only to be interrupted by Spider-Man and Silk. Electro tries to escape but his insulated webbing protects him by allowing Silk to cover Electro with her webbing. Black Cat changes the plan, using the wiring to overload Electro by putting his powers way out of control, shooting his lightning bolts against the helicopter. Silk saves the helicopter and Spider-Man jumps into the machine, using his webbing to cover Electro to take him out of there. Electro asks to let go, but Spider-Man remains determined to hold him until they are both saved by Silk who pulls them out of the machine and away from the explosion which failed to kill Spider-Man as Black Cat wanted and she escapes. However, Electro was apparently de-powered and taken into custody.
As part of the "All-New, All-Different Marvel", a de-powered Max Dillon is shown as an inmate at Andry Corrections Facility alongside Lizard. Upon being sprung out of the prison by Rhino, he meets a mysterious red-suited man who offers to restore Electro's powers in exchange for his services. Jackal and Lizard work on the procedure that would re-power Maxwell Dillon. When Dillon was reluctant to go through with the procedure, Jackal brings in a woman who Dillon recognizes as Francine Frye minus the piercings and tattoos that are on her body. Dillon agrees to go ahead with the procedure. The Jackal cloned Francine from DNA taken from her charred cheek. Francine observes the Jackal's attempt to restore Dillon's powers, but the experiment fails, charging his suit but not his body. Unexpectedly, the DNA in Dillon's saliva that was mixed in with Francine's own DNA attracts the electrical energy to Francine. Desiring more, Francine leans in to kiss Dillon and kills him in the process while absorbing his powers as the resulting action burns Dillon's body.
Upon building a special machine, Doctor Octopus resurrects Electro with his powers intact as Kindred comments on Electro's abilities while stating that Doctor Octopus is getting closer to his true self. Doctor Octopus and Electro find Kraven the Hunter in the Savage Land hunting a dinosaur. Electro shocks the dinosaur as Doctor Octopus is instructed by Kindred to entice Kraven the Hunter, stating "The best way to entice your fourth recruit is to offer him your fifth".
Electro was among the villains who were captured by Ultra Living Brain. After Spider-Man defeated the Sinister Six-type Super-Adaptoid, Ultra Living Brain teleported the villains away.
Electro battles Spider-Man again, which affects his spider-senses. During the battle, Spider-Man's long-lost sidekick Spider-Boy shows up. To Spider-Man's surprise, Spider-Boy reveals his fangs and subjects Electro to his paralyzing venom. Spider-Boy advises Spider-Man to web him up for the police and leave a "Courtesy of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" notice.