Parker Robbins Can Lose, But He Won't Learn

It's a little weird to me to see the Hood as the big wheel behind this new Illuminati (really, it's more the new Masters of Evil as I saw one person point out). I have this reaction of, "Are they still trying to convince us this character is a major player?"

I know Bendis tried really hard to make that happen, and since he was writing Avengers' titles at the time, that meant it pretty much became fact. I had already bailed on New Avengers by the time he started that, though, and since one of his earliest attempts to sell us on the Hood was that whole thing where Tigra got pistol-whipped while crying and pleading, well, that wasn't much encouragement to pay attention to what he was doing.

So I only have vague impressions of the Hood from that stretch, and they mostly revolve around him trying to make a big play, and coming up short. Which jibes with the Brian K. Vaughn/Kyle Hotz mini-series he was introduced in. Parker always thought he was more clever than he was, which is why he keeps trying get rich quick capers rather than actually working to support his girlfriend. He just kept trying to pull something off, getting himself in trouble, narrowly managing to twist his way out of it, but creating more trouble for himself down the line. He wasn't so much climbing a ladder of success, as climbing a ladder of increasingly bad people to have unhappy with him.

Which could happen here. He's tricked Titania into joining his crew, which certainly won't backfire on him somewhere down the line. I've been trying to decide if he pulled something similar with the other members of his party, but I definitely can't seem him outwitting the Mad Thinker or Enchantress, and probably not Thunderball, either. Which doesn't mean he won't try to double-cross them later. Whether that's a good idea or not remains to be seen (it's not). He seems to think stealing from the Asgardians is a smart play, which, considering there are plenty of them who won't hesitate to hunt him down and kill him, seems questionable. So he's still in the habit of digging deeper holes for himself.