Speedball - Marvel Comics' Most Tragic Hero 

never heard that before but it's literally the perfect comparison

@@alexlennen thanks

But jar jar was, jar jar is literally a sith Lord 😂

@@primal1723 ah a fellow man of culture I see

@@themangoman9315 of course of course I sat through a whole documentary about it.

I don't think he trained. It's been a while but I think I remember there was some other plot stuff that said nitro never blew up like that before and there was some sort of power enhancing drug he was on? Plus nitro only had one hand for the rematch. And confusingly, penance literally let him take a free explosion shot at him to start the fight, and got blown up again later, and it just...didn't really do that much.

@@FFKonoko in Wolverine's story arc following Civil War, he found out about a drug that supes up a mutant's power by like ten or hundred-fold (I forget the exact number); it's essentially steroids for mutants Wolverine kills the guy manufacturing it and considers the civilians avenged. I wish he knew Iron Man was secretly behind Civil War because THAT would've been a great story to see

I remember reading the reveal of the suit the week the issue came out and we all at the comic shop were laughing at how stupid it was. It was so over the top and asinine.

@@jjgarcia156 What did Ironman do?

@@DaDualityofMan I would also like to know

Also, with such characters, their history is less extensive & therefore easier to track.

God if only other franchises would do stuff like this (not the making edgy crap part, but rather making a minor character more interesting)

That's why the MCU started with Iron Man. In 2008, no one cared about Tony Stark, so if they bombed, oh well. No big loss

SNOWFLAME

Shit. You deserve at least a few more likes. Imho.

Everyone has a superhero they can look up to on a personal level, & it's always always empowering to find that hero you can look at, see them be freaking awesome, & think "That's me." Thanks for sharing who & why that hero was for you.

That's really cool that you were able to derive some strength from your pain through penance. Are you still going through that amount of pain these days?

As a kid I too had great pain, luckily only on occasions, I had strong phases of growth and as my doctors explained it "my body can't quite keep up" so I used to have like a week in a Month where my own body was litterly ripping itself apart. I had periods of crying, laying in bed and honestly just wishing to be put down from exhausting into sleep from the pain. I imagine your pain was at least similar and I congratulate you for staying strong. I can't imagine that pain but all the time.

Ive told people for years this is why speedball is the best superhero. I feel the same way man. I think for all of us who suffered trauma or pain Robbie is a way for us to see that as strength.

Pls elaborate

@@zachariahsawian335 it wasn't revealed that speedball was penance at the time

Actually I only found it out because of this video, and I read both civil war and thunderbolts when they came out

@@zachariahsawian335 how do you need elaboration for that dude

It was in civil war frontlines

I can't believe Marvel unintentionally did The Boys better than Garth Ennis' The Boys without even trying.

But unlike Vader, he got a much more substantive redemption.

The vader suit is meant to hinder vader not help him.

​​@@eyjay1508They're talking about how his hindrance and thus even further suffering than he already feels increases his connection to the dark side.

also I think he didnt want to teach students while bleeding out on the floor

@@stressedinmotion even if he wasnt using his old costume, Nitro was currently occupying the masochism suit. So, dunno, maybe he'd just dress in normal teacher clothes.

to me it seemed more like it was him saying "no, I did it, I'm not going to change who I am to hide from it". I mean lets be honest, no-one would look at Penance and recognize him as the same person, but EVERYONE would recognize Speedball, it'd be him putting a banner on himself admitting what he did. To everyone else it might look like a campy way to get out of it, or moving on like nothing happened, making them all the angrier at him.

And maybe to keep from being made fun of by the students for his edgy OC? :P

@@robonator2945 there’s an actual writer statement which states the new speedball suit, while being spiked is much less than penance suit, basically having the new pain powered energy attacks while doing the same message of speedball being redeemed

Same for me. I legit walked into his fight and was like who the hell is this guy later being baffled at A. How much of a punch he had and B. How readily he chose to help us. Later got to the audio recording collectible where it's clarified he was Speedball(first heard of that moniker from Ultimate Spider-Man racing Human Torch), and was having a new costume commissioned to reflect his guilt and details how the larger spikes represented the 60 children. Just trying to picture Robbie having 612 spikes jammed into his entire body 60 of those being big enough to seriously lacerate organs, kinda made me stop playing the game for a while so I could process it. They took a joke and made it grounded and serious. I have to hand it to games as a good story telling media for adapting Penance in like they did.

@@newfoundwisdom8532 Yeah that sounds pretty damn impactful.As a kid I didnt really care much for aspects like that,but now that I'm older and able to understand these things,it's just pretty messed up to hear.

i main him in that game even tho i didnt know his lore lmao maybe its bc of his sick design and name

I first learned about his existence in the game too, and then I read some New Warriors comics I had at home. Also, dope game.

dang you just made me wanna get out the playstation 2 from storage

Fucking loved that game. It was a great fight. I remembered the character during it, but I hadn't known the backstory until now

That game came out while I was going through my edgy phase, so penance was my favorite character without a doubt.

copy and paste from my comment: being a teacher seems perfect to me, being a hero is much more difficult than being a super, and due to his experience he seems to be the right guy.

Do u know the comic

Yeah Nova was in space during this event, probably banging Gamora who I think was his gf back then

redemption

To be honest I'd consider it Edgy Well Done

@@emackenzie fr fr tbh tbh ngl ngl

being well done doesn't stop It from being edgy

@@Gabe600 it's edgy of course, but in a good way

Ballpeen

Bal-ance

ballpoint pen

Ball pen

Speedance

Came here after watching specifically to reference this Squirrel Girl instance; was hoping Alex might mention it, but it was such a niche issue/appearance.

It took me a couple reads of this comment before I realised it wasn't Petulant Piss

Man I just looked at a picture and poor cat he looks so sad!

Seems like standard squirrel girl honestly. Theres 2 kinds of joke characters. Dark and broody, or upbeat and chipper. Also deadpool, who’s a mix of the 2

GLA 4 Lyfe!!!!!

Is the beat from Nujabes' Feather or i'm just imagining things?

@@KaantheKaan u may be onto something

I've always thought it odd that marvel has a character named after shooting up heroin and cocain

@@alexlennen +q+qq+

Qq!qa

Underrated comment

I loved it when Speeball said "It's ballin time" and then he indirectly killed 612 people, 60 of which were children.

@@aaronking2020 I mean technically they had to have come back one of the 70 times the timelines and universes were revived and reset.

You're stupid ...i like ya

@@aaronking2020 i cant believe he put the new forgis on jeep, how could he?

copy and paste from my comment: I see that you don't like the change back to speedball as a mutant teacher and I understand you, but I differ with that opinion, the story of speedball is a story of arrogance, where a young man thirsty for fame and attention makes an egregious mistake that hurts others and himself (basically, any teenager with tik tok who does stupid challenges for likes), the guilt is so great that he decides to punish himself, eventually, he realizes that it's no use, punishing himself won't bring back those who are already gone, it won't ease the pain of broken families and it won't change anything. the fact that he has returned to his identity as a speedball and put aside his perpetual punishment is the final stage of his growth, demonstrating how he has now left his meaningless suffering to try to make a real change in the world by striving for redemption, even if he does not deserve it, even if doing so is impossible. being a teacher seems perfect to me, being a hero is much more difficult than being a super, and due to his experience he seems to be the right guy.

Yeah, even though it was a short time between "speedball is dead" and "call me speed ball". People forget that time can change someone's opinion. It's just the writers didn't do good enough to emphasize on why he decided to resurrect the persona speedball. But yeah, that part shows he knew being speedball and holding onto his mistakes wouldn't make anything better. And him picking up being speedball was really inspiring as a true hero to keep being a hero, even if he's not perfect. He'll take his mistakes to make him stronger

And penance had a good underlying idea, but in the end it was a very edgelord tryhard execution. People grow over that just as much as depression. And likewise, it is experience that can be used to help others.

a part of me wants him to make a third and final identity. I don't know, maybe a bit too cheesy.

@@afasdfasafd314 he never said that

I'm not the only one!?!?

Polka-dot man

And he even had Calendar Man bully tf outta Polka-Dot Man 😂 It was great!

Bro, that movie was honestly super good, a lot better than I expected it to be

Ikr

and it was way less expensive to commission a normal, speedball costume, than to commission another penance suit

A++ for the song at the end.

That's why most comics and stories based on them are for little kids. You expect me to believe that when super villains attack an entire city, explosions galore, no one suffers horribly? Everyone that is important always has a swift and meaningful death while all the background characters have off-screen deaths.

The proper way of saying it is "with great power must also come great responsibility". If you watch the new Spiderman movie they said it right.

@@booklover311 both phrases are correct because they're both officially used by marvel. Just because it's the original doesn't mean the others aren't also correct.

@@randomvideoboy1 This is a comic though? Comics are for kids because they don't show the thing this story literally shows?

Speedball was meant to be introduced into the MCU ages ago but his show got cancelled :(

@@alexlennen As does all the good Marvel shows :(

@@funnyfunnyvalentine7991 at least Agents of Shield ended on its own terms, love that show so much

Yeah warning flares that he’ll start a real civil divide between the MCU

@@alexlennen RIP Daredevil

love it when things like that happen

They ripped you off bro

You should sue marvel.

A yes American love sueing.

@@starwolfcyberlight4546 I do indeed love sueing.

When is it teased?

@@marmato9332 right here 11:25

@@jonatasgrolli Huh

So it’s foreshadowing a feet video too?

In the ultimate spider-man villains video in the end musical bit there's feet, just saying

The Civil War cannon goes really deep into alot of different groups and people in the marvel universe

Wow the plot keeps getting better.

Wolverine ends up finding the person who makes this steroids for mutants and kills him and considers his job done: he killed the guy responsible for Civil War. What he doesn't realize is that Iron Man was the person he actually should've killed since he set it all into motion and even helped into creating the drug (implied anyways)

@@jjgarcia156 iron Man causes almost 90% of the Marvel plot. XD

@@Manganization on the MCU sure

69 likes

Its like when flash takes his costume off despite the fact that it is made from speed force

@@valletas Exactly!

@@valletas What?

Interesting

Speedball has like 5% of the blame for urging them to catch the villains. Its like blaming a cop for suggesting they should arrest people making homemade bombs and blaming the cops if one of those bombs go off. You can argue that the way it was handled was incompetent but its not like he himself set the bomb off

@@lazerfruit2121 I feel like its because the main narrative the media in this story pushed (in this case probably CNN) is that it was Speedball that "triggered" Nitro's explosion, because for all we know Nitro and his gang were not planning to attack the school, but because Speedball and the New Warriors pushed for the attack, they preassured Nitro to go completely bonker and explode.

TOO HARSH ON A GUY WHO CAUSED 600 PEOPLE TO DIE. HITLER WOULD LOVE YOU.

@@lazerfruit2121 DOOFUS, NO IT'S LIKE AGGRAVATING A GUY WITH POWERS TO KILL MILLIONS BECAUSE YOU WANTED RATINGS.

copy an paste from my comment: a lot of people complain about how nobody blames nitro but to me they miss the point. A) while nitro was the one who caused the explosion, if speedball and his crew hadn't tried to arrest them on their own instead of calling the pros in the first place that wouldn't have happened, think of it this way, if you discover the mob hideout and decide to attack them head on instead of calling the cops, if something bad happens it's your fault. B) nitro was dead (or given by) as well as the rest of the speedball team, people couldn't blame it on a dead body, so they went to the closest thing they had. when you are suffering a loss all you want is someone to take it out on, a target to release all your anger on, and if you can't find it, create it. god, fate, yourself, whoever it is, as long as you can blame them for what happened they will be valid targets, because being mad is easier than being sad.

Wow. And *Speedball* gets all the hate, blame, & guilt for the attack instead of that guy. What the heck?!

Damage Control was manufacturing it on behalf of Tony Stark..who was doing it to create a tragedy so he could push his Registration Act. so ultimately, the whole thing falls on Iron Man and the Illuminati.

@@warhorse03826 That is absurd. Where was there any indication whatsoever Stark drove and was in turn responsible for the 600 dead in Stamford? Wolverine took out the head of Damage Control and certainly would have come for Stark if he had any reason to believe he was responsible.

@@epobirs it's not absurd. it's canon. Civil War Front Line #11. Stark is confronted by the newspaper reporter Ben Urich with the facts of MGH production and everything else.

@@warhorse03826 I don't have the issue at hand but find this extremely dubious. There would be an army of very powerful people seeking to take down Stark if the information were widely known. Yet this never comes up anywhere in the aftermath.

Ikr. Like, would you blame a cop for fighting a bunch of street assholes and one just so happens to go boom? Like Dude he would have went boom one way or the other

@@toolatetothestory Vigilantes are a whole different can of worms than a cop.

The people needed someone to blame. Incarcerating Speedball was obviously a political decision, but it makes sense that the public would still react with outcry. If speedball had never fought them in the first place, six hundred wouldn't have died. (of course, this isn't acknowledging the fact that if literally anyone else took on Nitro, the same exact incident would happen, but that falls deaf on the ears of the public). Don't forget, this is the US government, they are willing to violate someones rights to appease the masses (or companies).

nah, it's actually kinda realistic how they put more blame on Speedball than Nitro. Somewhat of a parallel is Waco, most of the reaction I heard growing up was more "remember when the government screwed up and killed those kids?" rather than "remember when david koresh killed all those people?".

Well, we see it IRL. Some nutter shoots up someplace, and people rush to blame white supremacy, or a lack of gun control, or Pewdiepie, or literally anything but the choices of the actual person responsible. They often turn out to be wrong, but never admit it.

@@asscancer9510 what's scp 3000?

@@asscancer9510 goddamnit not again

To me it’s more like the horrible state security and safety measures. A month ago in Texas a school shooting happens and 16 kids YOUNGER THEN SEVEN!! We’re killed. And you know shot and killed the shooter? Not the police but a solder from the border who heard the call and drove over to the school. The police wouldn’t go into the school to get the shooter afraid to get shot and the solder just ran in and immediately gun downed the man. I got some serious connections between Robbie’s accident and that tragedy.

@@asscancer9510 Sorry Dr.Cancer I’ll get him of the internet

@@beartheconfused6798 Both, I'd say. There's a lot of problems with the american justice system

They should probably do what Spider-Man did to the dude and have him explode close to a warehouse full of riot gas... And THEN siphon his gas form into two separate cylinders, before shooting one of them into the sun. I mean, Nitro is a special kind of batshit insane and he's a walking weapon of mass destruction, I'd say he deserves the death penalty by now.

I literally forgot nitro existed halfway through the video and thought robbie was at fault for the initial explosion.

@@sparklee5044 That's how they getcha

@@sparklee5044 You're the public in the comic lmao

@@sparklee5044 basically same as those people its nitros fault 100%

I implore you, go back and read civil war & civil war frontlines. CW was done so much better in the books and it became a pissing match between Capt America and Iron man, when there’s so much more going on… then go read dark reign followed by siege. Marvels story writing was impeccable over those arcs.

"I've read since infinity" well yeah that's your first mistake, ofc you wouldn't know abt him marvel is always awkwardly the best on every non-mainstream product of theirs

Damn how much have you spent on comics? I only read the X-Men comics and it's draining my wallet so badly, and I see the like other hundred comics that get released by marvel every week how do you do it

oh there's definitely some twitch streamers who've done bad stuff on stream lmao

@@alexlennen dudes beat their girlfriend up for a $10 tip

Literally who?

I mean....pretty sure Pokimane broadcasted a federal crime

@@alexlennen Don't mean you are the one to blame when you didn't create the explosion. Yes he was overconfident for taking on Nitro... BUT IT STILL WAS NITRO WHO CHOSE TO EXPLODE. This is one of the things I never could stand with stories like CW.

Eh. I've always been an X-Men ,personally

Holy shit, Salty's here.

sup Salty, thank you❤️

Big Salty!

Yo!

oh wow!

Yoo! Me too I got introduced to him through ultimate alliance 2 back then

@@divoltious you too? Same! Ultimate Alliance introduced me to Penance as well. He was really cool

mainly bad optics due to the clips somehow not being destroyed and getting released. but if we're being objective he's definitely guilty of those deaths too, he wasn't fighting to save people but to climb up that hero ladder. he had no uncle ben so he went ahead with it and learned the lesson the hardest way possible. heroing ain't a game unless you're saitama lol

Because people need someone to blame, and Nitro wasn't around to point the finger at.

ooh, the new warriors parts of Civil War are so hard to get through I hate the art style so much like....ew.but also yeah, it's optics and the fact that it was easier to blame Speedball. idk if the general populace even knew who Nitro was, but they definitely knew Speedball as he'd been filming a reality tv show non-stop

@@walkermcmullin8665 Nitro was alive. He got hunted by Wolverine in his book at this time, IIRC. Blaming the NW made zero sense.

They are both responsible. Why is it so hard for people these days to understand that not everything is "one side vs the other side" ? Both sides can be worng, both sides can be right. In this case, both Nitro and Speedball are responsible.

Pick up some comics man, there's lots of characters outside the movies that have great stories like this

@@toons8744 "now that I'm not a comic books geek" implies that at some time they were.

Same and he's so much different from anyone on the game

He was always on my team because I was an extremely edgy kid and also just cause I liked his backstory. Never would have known about speedball without ultimate alliance 2, one of my favourite marvel games

It took a while for people to forgive Speedball actually. They actively blamed him.

Ultimate Alliance 2

@@anthonyescobar8695 Yup, it was that game

That's the only reason why I knew who he was, the Ultimate Alliance games introduced me to a lot of characters.

I did. I read the Civil War comic like 10 times with my sister as a kid because it's amazing. Penance/Speedball was one of the best characters in the story.

It was his because he insisted on attacking the villains in a populated place, knowing that they were out of their league... He basically put everyone in danger by starting a fight they couldn't control. Shoulda walked away.

@@Wingededge the villain still chose to explode wtf😂

It's really complicated because he was the one who insisted they do it, but everyone else agreed to do it, (all his team mates and the camera people) and he can't control whether or not someone decides to blow up and possibly didn't know what their powers were. BUT if he had been okay with just going home, none of it would have happened. So it's nuanced, but the general public doesn't like that, because all people have the instinct to find someone to blame when crap goes wrong, it seems.

@@marymohr2799 I mean, it was everyone's involved fault, but it was really irresponsable to try anything in a place like that, just right next to a school. Not knowing the capabilities (both powers and how far they're capable of going) of the people you're going to battle against can just cause as much harm as Nitro did.

Yeah, I'm not saying Speedball isn't responsible at all, but saying that it wasn't at least partially the villain's fault is just wrong. The explosion also would never had occurred had the villain chosen not to explode either. Honestly my comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek, I just saw the opportunity for a joke and took it.

They've all been brought back in one way or another and while the original run started in 1990 the cumulative years the book actually ran was way less than 20. I wish it was 20 though. New Warriors was a good comic.

That would be Joe Quesada’s idea, Penance came about when Paul Jenkins (writer of Civil War Frontline) most likely said to Joe “Killing off Speedball is too easy, I have something more twisted in mind”

Speedball did nothing wrong, those kids would have died anyway. It's a school in America for goodness sake. The country that doesn't care about people because weapons of mass destruction are more important than human lives?

He's one of the only survivors and Nitro got away, so everyone blames him. Tis' the sad truth.

I juat wonder why nitro decided to just blow himself up

@@thegoldengamer9315 I also hate that Nitro didn’t suffer any actual consequences for what he did

@@carlbloke8797 fr like he didnt think to just kill the hero he just wanted to cause destruction.

thank you, that's kinda what I strive to do❤️

But invincible started out as a comic and so did the boys where similar stuff happened. The invincible comic especially continues way past where the tv show has left off and is super good

@@jacksonbrickmedia939 I'm aware, but both are meta criticisms of the superhero genre and not trying to be a part of genre. Invincible definitely fits the superhero theme better and as the comics goes on finds that little bit of camp rather than all out gore too. The boys comics though just reads like emo torture porn.

@@fireball111121 never read the boys and from what I have seen it is just extra for the sake of it. Invincible comics find the perfect balance of gore, dark, camp, character and wholesome

Except the people causing the collateral in this comic are both indifferent or straight up evil. Both Nitro and the people who got him hopped up on Mutant Growth Hormone.

@@fireball111121 Invincible is hardly a "meta criticism of the superhero genre" but the TV show sort of frames it in that manner. It's really a slightly different but at its core normal superhero story

Did you skip the cutscenes or something? You see a scene with Speedball and Nitro blowing up Namorita with the school in an early cutscene.

Oh yeah, I remember him. Well, I do for now

@@ABronyNamedBurnie I see what you did there and I love it! XD

He’s a mutant. Was basically the X-Men’s mvp and no one in said team even knew he was there.

No more song

Hahahah sure pal, whatever you say but guy

@@TrueGamer22887 it's true he has genuinely been waiting for this