Slingers
| Slingers | |
|---|---|
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Promotional art to the comic book series Slingers. Art by Mike Wieringo.
Top row: Ricochet, Hornet. Bottom row: Dusk, Prodigy. |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Slingers #1 (1998 December) |
| Created by |
Joseph Harris (writer) Adam Pollina (artist) |
| In-story information | |
| Member(s) |
Dusk Hornet Prodigy Ricochet |
The Slingers are a group of fictional superheroes in the Marvel Comics universe. They starred in their own eponymous short-lived comic book.
The Slingers were four teenage superheroes who had been inspired by Spider-Man. The group first appeared in Slingers #0, a free promotional comic book included in an issue of Wizard. Slingers #1 used a controversial sales gimmick: four versions of the first issue were produced, each telling a fourth of the first issue's story from the point of view of one of the four team members. The series failed to sustain sales, despite a small but loyal fan base, and the series was cancelled with issue #12.
The team's four members used costumes and codenames that had been used by Spider-Man during the "Identity Crisis" crossover. During "Identity Crisis", Spider-Man was wanted for murder with a five million-dollar reward posted for his capture. Instead of his normal costumed identity, he adopted four other costumes and created a different crime-fighting persona for each suit. After this crisis had ended, he discarded the four costumes, and they subsequently disappeared, reappearing in the possession of the Golden Age superhero called the Black Marvel. The Marvel gave the costumes to four youths, and trained them to become heroes.
Aside from brief cameos in New Warriors and Contest of Champions II—during which they were defeated by the New Warriors in a game of basketball, the teams reasoning that not every contest had to be a straight-out fight—the team made no appearances elsewhere, and in their own series only received a few brief appearances by their inspiration, Spider-Man. When it was revealed that the Black Marvel had received the costumes through a deal with the demon Mephisto, the Slingers broke from him, and then returned to free his soul from Mephisto. The Black Marvel died, free from Mephisto's grasp, and the team apparently disbanded. Ricochet has recently made several guest appearances in the Marvel comic Runaways as a member of Excelsior, a group of former teenage heroes whose goals are to help fellow teenage superheroes adjust to mundane lives, and to dissuade other super-powered teenagers from becoming heroes. They were introduced in "True Believers," the first arc of Runaways Volume Two. Recently, Ricochet (while attending their usual group meeting) followed both Darkhawk and the third Spider-Woman on their mission to take down the MGH dealers that once used Mattie as a source for the drug.
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Wikipedia