Beware Spaceships Bearing Gifts

I don't know why we're all sitting around reading comic books--because if we had any brains, we'd be out scouring the countryside looking for crashed spaceships, because then we could pick up some nifty super-powers! Just look at all the people in comics that seems to happen to--they just come across a spaceship or an alien, and voilà, they've suddenly got power beyond their wildest dreams. It's true what they say, folks: We just don't get out enough.

Take the Mandarin, who started out disgraced and penniless, when he decided to go hiking and wound up attaining almost unlimited power. And a good thing, too, because it's obvious he wasn't interested in getting anywhere by being nice to his countrymen.

Not only does the Mandarin come across a crashed spaceship--but we also learn the origin of the dragon legends in the far east, when we discover the pilot of the ship resembled one. Unfortunately, the primitive Earthlings it encountered reacted in fear and drove it off to its death--and in so doing, paved the way for the birth of one of the most evil super-villains in the world.

We've also seen the Puppet Master get lucky with a crashed ship, and its monstrous occupant.

And what about our old friend whom we've seen of late--Annihilus? Did he also acquire his power from a crashed alien vessel? That, and much more, as we see that his discovery helped him to escape his primitive and vulnerable beginnings and put him on the path toward becoming the Living Death That Walks.

In this case, Annihilus presumably originated from the ship he investigates, a vessel manned by an advanced race who were on a mission to seed other worlds with the beginnings of life--but, due to a tragic accident which ended both the mission and their lives, provided one of their seedlings with the power to cause untold death and destruction.

We don't really know why the ship's captain thought his people back on their homeworld were on their way to extinction--but if the Tyannans' judgment calls were as flawed as this one, perhaps it's understandable why they might have someday followed the crew of this ship into death. (If they were still around in 1000 years, it's even possible that Annihilus wiped them out--wouldn't that be a lousy form of kismet.)

But there are still plenty of ships that found their way to planet Earth, which has more than enough isolated areas to crash-land--such as the Savage Land, where Kraven the Hunter has returned to settle a score with Ka-zar and claim this jungle expanse as his own. And he finds within this ship a lone survivor which he believes will help him to attain far more.

Unfortunately for Kraven, Gog meets his end when he's tricked into stepping into a large area of quicksand--and Kraven doesn't fare any better against an angry Ka-Zar.

Stepping over to the African continent, we also have the twisted Roman centurion, Flavius, who once captured the Fantastic Four and recounted his own encounter with a wrecked spaceship--though the Invisible Girl obviously doesn't think much of what he did with the incredible power he gained.

And there's no doubt that prison escapees on the run are going to find a close encounter with a powerful alien beneficial--even though, in the case of Hammer and Anvil, the power that they're granted comes as a result of some slight miscommunication.

So, c'mon! To paraphrase Mulder and Scully, "the power is out there!" How hard can it be to find an alien ship that's carrying ultimate power, which for some reason can't be used to get it off the ground and back into space? Though considering how all of these guys have made out, maybe we should hold off on anything that reads PUSH THIS BUTTON and just settle for a general salvage operation on the ship itself, eh?