Spot (Marvel Comics)

Did You Know?

• An alternate universe version of the Spot from Earth-1610 is a former Roxxon employee named Frank who was mutated into a white body with black wormholes of anti-matter.
• An alternate universe version from Earth-2149 appears in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days.
• An alternate universe version from Earth-6160 gained his powers from a stolen Stark Box intended for Tyrone Johnson.

Creation

In an interview, Milgrom recalled that the Kingpin wanted to understand Cloak's teleportation power, and Milgrom thought a different character accessing that interdimensional space would be interesting. He then conceived the Spot and designed the visual, drawing the cover first. One inspiration was Warner Bros. cartoons where Bugs Bunny moved a rabbit hole like an extradimensional object. Milgrom named the character Johnathan Ohnn, intending him to be "Johnny Ohnn the Spot." Years later, he saw a Warner Bros. cartoon with a mad scientist who could produce black holes and jump through them, and realized he may have inadvertently borrowed that idea from a childhood memory.

Fictional character biography

Dr. Johnathon Ohnn, a former MIT scientist working for the Kingpin, was assigned to replicate Cloak's abilities. He created a portal to another dimension, but as he escaped, countless portals attached to his body. When Spider-Man and Black Cat confronted the Kingpin, Ohnn appeared and warned them to leave. He later lost a second battle against Spider-Man after being tricked into throwing too many spots. The Spot formed a short-lived team called the Spider-Man Revenge Squad, also known as the Legion of Losers, with Gibbon, Grizzly, and Kangaroo, but the group fell apart when Spider-Man captured Spot and Kangaroo. The Spot was later captured by the Gideon Trust and forced to open a portal to the Negative Zone, but the Fantastic Four defeated them. He helped Tombstone escape prison, but Tombstone snapped his neck; however, the Spot reappeared alive months later. He and Slyde were captured by a brainwashed Elektra, recruited into Hydra's army, and taken out by Wolverine. The Spot joined MODOK's 11 but defected to Temugin, who later trapped him in the dimension he originally gained his powers from. In Brand New Day, he began killing Russian mafia members because his son was injured in a drive-by shooting.

Powers and abilities

Using his space warps, the Spot can instantly move himself or any part of his body over theoretically unlimited distances via a dimension called "Spotworld." He can control the warps, expanding or shrinking them, joining multiple spots into one, and placing them against surfaces or suspending them in mid-air. He can designate which spots lead to Spotworld and which lead to another location in this dimension. He can create new spots or close them by retreating into his dimension. By concentrating, he could revert to his human appearance, with the spots merging into one black void in his chest. His preferred attack is surrounding an opponent with spots to punch or kick from unexpected angles, which proved effective against Spider-Man's spider-sense. He can also move spots on his body to protect himself, causing attacks to pass harmlessly through a warp. The number of warps is limited, as he primarily draws on those on his body. Due to his connection to Spotworld, he appears to possess immortality, surviving decapitation and reconstituting his body if killed.

In other media

Dr. Johnathon Ohnn appears in a self-titled episode of Spider-Man: The Animated Series, voiced by Oliver Muirhead. This version is a Stark Industries scientist fired after Venom and Carnage steal his technology, then hired by the Kingpin. He accidentally falls into a portal and gains the ability to create portals at will. He becomes a thief, but later works with Spider-Man to stop the Kingpin, and sacrifices himself with his assistant Sylvia Lopez to close a portal. An alternate universe version appears in a flashback in the episode "I Really, Really Hate Clones," where he completed his portal technology without becoming the Spot, but accidentally brought the Carnage symbiote into his universe. The Spot appears in Spider-Man (2017), voiced by Crispin Freeman. In the Spider-Verse trilogy, he is voiced by Jason Schwartzman. An unnamed scientist, retroactively identified as Ohnn, makes a non-speaking cameo in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) when Miles Morales throws a bagel at him.