There's More To Jimmy Woo's Past Than Atlas

The Gorilla Man back-up story in Avengers vs. Atlas #4 caught me off guard initially, mostly because of the tone. Ken Hale (aka Gorilla Man) always seems to be having so much fun with Atlas' operations that I forget his origin could have been a horror story, or at least a Twilight Zone episode*. Gain eternal life (though someone could kill you), but spend it as a gorilla. There are worse things to be, but Ken does have to contend with all the people that are like the man he used to be: obsessed with living forever. Plus, he probably gets attacked by people pursuing what they'd deem "oddities". From outside the Marvel universe, a talking gorilla might not seem so strange, but people in the Marvel Universe don't seem to really get how much strange stuff is out there, so a Gorilla Man might be a shock to them. Throw in a few wannabe big game hunters and that's a full dance card of people who don't have Ken's best interests at heart to contend with.

Still, the first time I read it, I thought about how I would have more readily pictured Gorilla Man in a story like the one featuring Jimmy Woo in Avengers vs. Atlas #2 (where Jimmy goes to an evil restaurant to retrieve an important package which turns out to be really great dumplings). It seemed like the sort of thing Gorilla Man might enjoy, with the opportunity to beat up evil chefs and mutated octopi.

Then I thought about how Jimmy could work in a story similar to Ken's. He couldn't have people coming after him trying to gain immortality through his death (not literal immortality, anyway), but this is Jimmy Woo from the 1950s, from the last impression Marvel Boy had of him before the team originally split up. In between then and when he was nearly destroyed trying to enter Master Plan's lair decades later, he was a member of FBI and SHIELD. There have to be any number of people he stymied over that time who haven't forgotten, or forgiven. That their old nemesis has regained his youth, and taken control of a vast criminal organization would likely only gall them further. Throw in the fact his reaction to their appearance would probably be along the lines of "Who are you?", and they'd be boiling.

I don't know who Jimmy Woo might have dealt with in his career, besides Master Plan and Godzilla (I think), so a writer could take it as carte blanche. Revive old HYDRA or AIM villains (maybe it could play off this new SHIELD book, or Secret Warriors), or bring in hyper-intelligent cousins of the big green lizard, or make someone up entirely. Then point them at Jimmy Woo and Atlas, and see what happens.

* Somehow when I was a kid, I came into possession of a little paperback that collected several stories from a horror title called Creepy. The twist for one of the stories was a man kills a werewolf terrorizing the area, only to become the werewolf as the result. Same deal as with Ken and the gorilla curse.