We all have our bad sides, some worse than others. Martin Li has a real nasty bad side that goes beyond mortal limits. He can get really negative, literally and figuratively. Two sides of the same coin, Martin Li and his sinister, Mister Negative. How does one man become two? What is the power that gives Mister Negative his inverted look? Let’s find out!
If you ask Martin Li where he came from, he was born in China and came to the United States, undocumented and on a slave ship, so he could be with his wife. The ship would nearly sink in a storm and Martin would be the only survivor and he would go on to become a self-made man creating a fortune and using it to help those less fortunate. If you ask Mister Negative where he came from, he would say that Martin Li was a slave on the ship that Negative was a crewman on. The ship sank in a storm and whoever Negative was before, he took the identity of Martin Li when he saw that man drown. He would then be picked up by the Maggia crime family, and experimented on for a new drug. This would lead to the creation of Mister Negative and his powers, fracturing this man into two identities, Martin Li, a caring individual who wanted to help people and Mister Negative, a villainous man with aspirations to become a kingpin of crime and access to extra-dimensional energies giving him the appearance of a photo-negative.
Martin Li and Mister Negative share one body but Martin Li seems to be unaware of this connection for quite some time while Negative leaves Martin to his work. Martin would have been able to start his shelter, F.E.A.S.T. (Food, Emergency Aid, Shelter, and Training) and he would help his community and be awarded many times over the years. Meanwhile, Negative would begin taking over gangs with his powers, which let him infect others with his negative energy and take control of them through their darker thoughts. While Martin made the world a better place by helping the homeless, Negative would be taking control of organized crime in New York City, making the city worse.
Realizing there was missing time in his life, Martin would figure out he was time-sharing his body with Mister Negative. The two agreed they would not interfere with the other, in fact, they’d do their best to assist only in keeping their identities secret. Martin would turn a blind eye to Mister Negative taking control of anyone who found out Martin’s secret so they would forget. Negative would gain access to a bio-chemical weapon that could target certain people through DNA, he would use samples his crew had collected from the major crime families to infect them with this plague, and only them so he could fill the power vacuum their deaths would create.
Things might have worked out had Spider-Man not stepped in, this was be their first meeting, but not their last. Negative would learn that his becoming a bigger threat would cause heroes to start interfering with his plans, he wasn’t able to slip under the radar anymore, he was seen. Not only was he dealing with heroes now, but the entire level of organized crime he was dealing with was filled with other people who had their own powers to oppose him. He had to go toe-to-toe with figures like the Hood, leading to a gang war that he would prove he was equal to the other super-powered crime bosses. Negative would eventually leave America and go to Hong Kong so he could grow his empires there. Heroes keep crawling out of the woodwork and the villains with powers keep creeping in too, it never ends.
There you have it! Mister Negative recently got noticed thanks to the Spider-Man video game, where he is one of the major villains. He’s visually a really interesting villain and his powers are dangerous and powerful. Martin Li’s work in the game is shown to be really helping the community but you also see Negative’s devastating presence in New York. Will we see Negative appear in TV or in a movie? Who knows? See you next time!
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Suggested Reading
The Amazing Spider-Man #546
Dark Reign: Mister Negative
Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net
