Welcome to Comics Wiki Adventures, a weekly deep dive into just how unhinged comics can be. I will randomly select a character from comics and read their Wiki each week.

I will then take only the choicest bits and serve them to you, over easy. What does that mean? I don’t know.

Anyway, today’s randomly generated character is: 

Marvel Comics Own: Taserface

Is that the comic relief villain from Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume II? It is. What an odd coincidence considering Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume III is coming out next week. Sure, mentioning the newest entry in a wildly successful film series in my article could boost engagement. Still, we have a tradition of unflinching and unexplainable dedication to random selection to uphold. You know what, give me a moment here.

Comicsputer, Please Report Status of Randomization Algorithm.

Sorry, gotta reboot this thing. Clearly, something is wrong. It only gets this clingy when it needs a nap. Unfortunately, that does mean we are stuck with Taserface. He seemed like a joke in Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume II. But that’s always the way. These directors take rich, complicated characters from the comics, and suddenly they’re ice-pun-slinging catchphrase machines smoking cold cigars. What even is that? Curse you, Schumacher!

Sorry, sorry. Breathe. So, Taserface…

He was some random guy the Guardians once fought who is part mechanical and has many guns. Whether he can fire a Taser from his face is strangely disputed. He’d claimed a planet of adorable/terrifying dog-people called the Courga, and the Guardians defeated him and freed them. Looks like that’s it. Huh. Well I guess

Kinda an odd color scheme, though. Looks almost like…wait. His species is listed here as Stark. It can’t be…

Ok, So This Gets Weird. Comics Weird.

Gonna take a big step back here, but I promise it will make sense eventually. So when the Guardians of the Galaxy first appeared, they were not in the central Marvel universe. Instead, they were in the future of an alternate timeline where Mars attacked the Earth. Yes, just like in the H.G. Wells novel. So much so that the Martian’s original invasion is mentioned as having been defeated by disease. 

The second invasion is more successful, and I could do one of these all about it. For now, though, the relevant part is Tony Stark is afraid that the Martians will steal his tech. To prevent that, he gathers every scrap of his armor and weapons and launches them into space. You know, the place Mars is? Totally tracks.

It doesn’t explicitly say if he was aiming the tech in any particular direction, but let’s be kind and say the plan was to drop it into the sun. I can’t think of a good reason not to blow it up on Earth, but as the Wiki puts it, “…writers would suggest that Stark was under the influence of alcohol.” I’d put it down to ridiculous billionaires’ desire to publically humiliate themselves with rockets. 

In any case, if he was aiming for the sun, he missed. Instead, the gravity boost from passing close to ‘ol Sol sends Iron Man’s life’s work out of the solar system entirely and into open interstellar space.  

Just a Reminder, This is About Taserface, Right?

I told you it’d make sense eventually, and while that is a lie, I’m also not done yet. 

Now I know this is comics, but this is where this story should have ended. Let’s say you stood in the center of a football field and tried to throw a piece of dust and have it pass through the goalposts. I am still working on the experimental procedures on how you’d even check to be sure you failed. But the point is, you’d still have a better chance of success than randomly hitting something in space.

But, of course, it does land somewhere. Specifically, a planet inhabited by humanoids with tribal culture and limited technical ability. They crack open the cache and figure out how to replicate the technology inside. They worship the creator of the tech as their new god and spread out among the stars, generally being crappy to whoever they meet. As the name Stark is written on the side of the crates that parachuted down to them, Worms style, they decide that will be their new name. 

Which is crazy since Stark must just look like a meaningless string of symbols to them. There’s no way they could pronounce it. When someone asked what the name of their race is, they must have just held up a charcoal rubbing of the name off the side of one of Tony’s missiles. Eventually, someone must have said, “Oh, Stark! Like Tony Stark.” Once they’d killed a dozen people for sacrilege, they probably just kinda rolled with it.

Oh, So Taserface is One of Them. Got It.

Yes, exactly. When he lost to the Guardians of the Galaxy on Courg, Taserface escaped to his home planet. But, unfortunately, he was so severely shamed for his defeat that his people took his name away. They also tortured him, but on the balance it was probably a win. Eventually, they took pity on him, gave him updated armor and weapons, and set him loose to take revenge.

He hunted down the Guardians, stalked them cooly and carefully, then attacked a completely different guy named Hollywood, apparently an alternate version of Wonder Man. He reveals his name is now Overkill and that he will finally have his revenge. To be clear, I don’t know what he says, as it’s not mentioned in the Wiki. You may think I owe the public some due diligence or even a basic amount of research. But you need to remember that further research would require me to pay to read a comic with a character named Taserface. Besides, it can’t be better than the idea that he convinces himself that attacking the first person he sees is revenge.

So Wonder Man wins easily, and Overkill nee Taserface tries to blow himself up to kill them both. He succeeds, but Wonder Man just absorbs the blast. And that is the true ending of Taserface, truly a dreamer. Or maybe pragmatic but just supremely dumb. We get so little time with him there’s no way to know. All we know is that he is such a loser that he goes out fighting a guy who doesn’t even have a Wiki entry. A fitting end indeed.

So That’s Taserface! Comics Most Memorable Total Sidenote.

He was terrible, but at least he didn’t come up much. Thanks for reading! If you liked this article, you might also like this previous entry on Iceman! Or if for some inexplicable reason, you want to check out something I didn’t write, you can check out this feature on games coming up in May. Will they be better than the games that came out this month? Seems like a low bar to clear so far.

Let me know in the comments below who the worst-named character in comics is and who I should randomly select for next week!