Albinism has been the one ailment that is commonly connected with the term “outcast.” Despite the fact that it is a rare congenital condition that can be devastating to a person’s health, creative figures have been more interested in exploring its metaphorical “otherness.” Albinism was utilized as an analogy for hidden strength by George R. R. Martin, with the direwolf Ghost growing up to be the most lethal of his entire pack.
The wayward monk Silas from Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code, utilized it to make his readers aware of the stigma it can carry. Gerry Conway opted to combine the two conceptions to create one of the most dreadful B-List comic book villains ever. Since most of the Sinister Six-level supervillains had been busy wrecking shop on the flagship Amazing Spider-Man comic in 1988, Conway needed a few new faces to fill his own run on The Spectacular Spider-Man.
He wanted to shift the spotlight away from Mary Janes and Aunt Mays and onto Peter Parker’s supporting cast. He also intended to bring in a fresh mob figure to tie up the web slinger’s loose ends. That figure would grow on to become Tombstone, the man we know today.
He first appeared in Web of Spider-Man #36 and has since evolved into one of Spidey’s most lethal (and popular) street-level adversaries. This is Tombstone’s Origins – Explored, and we are going to look into the Horror of Harlem.
“Cold as ice, hard as marble; what else would you call a Tombstone?” – Comic Book Origins
What started out as a Dutch village settled in 1658, has since become one of the most important locations in African-American History. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Harlem has touched the lives of African-Americans all across the United States. After the Great Migration of the 20th century, the neighborhood came to be defined by its litany of suave jazz bars, scrumptious soul food joints, and locations that are still synonymous with Black History.
It is also the birthplace of one of the most misunderstood comic book supervillains of all time. Lonnie Thompson Lincoln was born with a curse. As a black man suffering from albinism, he was ostracized from his community and made to feel like a freak. Growing up, people treated him like a monster because of his appearance; his pale flesh and ruby-red eyes would seem out of place in any setting, but in Harlem, he stuck out like a sore thumb.
His condition also affected his vocal cords, which forced him to talk in a whisper. Everyone would ridicule him, ravage him, and leave him feeling like he was an abomination when he was just a kid looking for companionship. So he decided to become the monster they so feared. Putting his body through intense, bone-breaking training, he gained immense strength, speed & durability, quickly becoming his high school’s most-feared bully.
The only person who escaped his extortion was Joseph Robertson, as he was the one guy who didn’t treat Lonnie with hostility, and he took that as a token of friendship. All that would come crashing down when Robbie was caught trying to write an exposé on Lonnie’s bullying exploits as the notorious “Tombstone”. This sealed Lonnie Lincoln’s fate as a brutal strongman and effectively marked Robbie Robertson for death.
Now a part of America’s criminal underbelly, Tombstone quickly rose through the ranks of the mob as a brutally effective enforcer and assassin who went virtually unopposed wherever he showed up for “a job”. Over the years, he has worked for top New York mob bosses like Kingpin, Hammerhead, and Arranger, going on to become a leading figure in the underworld himself after Kingpin was arrested. Lonnie continued to pursue his vendetta against Robbie well into adulthood.
He even went as far as to take out the Hobgoblin, who had been commissioned by Hammerhead to assassinate Robertson, after discovering his connection to Tombstone. Lonnie made sure that he would be the one to bring Robbie’s chapter to a close, chasing him into a chemical plant to finish off his perceived friend. Instead, he found himself trapped in a chamber filled with Diox-3 which caused his body to mutate and manifest superhuman physical traits.
Deciding that his newfound powers balanced out Robbie’s attempts at exposing/killing him, Tombstone put his vendetta with Robertson to rest temporarily. However, it has resurfaced since thanks to Lonnie’s continued association with crime and Robbie’s with Spider-Man. During his attempt to take over Hammerhead’s organization, Lonnie Lincoln almost became one of the biggest mobsters in New York City.
When that failed, he competed in a killing contest with Taskmaster for membership in the ninja cult known as The Hand. Though the contest would end without determining a winner, thanks to Daredevil and Punisher’s interventions, Tombstone would nonetheless prove his lethal capacity against a man so adept at hand-to-hand combat, he could copy entire move-sets with a cursory glance.
Since then, Tombstone has shown up time and again working against the interests of New York’s greatest heroes; Daredevil and Spider-Man. In the most recent issues of Spectacular Spider-Man, Lonnie’s life was thrown for a toss when he discovered his daughter Janice (aka Beetle) was in a relationship with Randy Robertson; the son of his childhood nemesis.
Both fathers tried to get their respective children out of the relationship, arguing against its validity in light of their blood feud. But they’d come to the realization that their children’s happiness trumps their squabbles, and called for a truce in situations that involved their children.
While that doesn’t exactly make them “friends”, that angle was explored with expert precision in 1994’s Spiderman: The Animated Series. That show introduced Tombstone to the mainstream audience and made his association with Robertson more personal than ever before.
“He was my friend” – Tombstone’s Origins from Spiderman: The Animated Series
“Tombstone: Come down here and fight like a man!
Spider-Man: I don’t suppose I could convince you to come up here and fight like a spider!”
Jokes aside, the animated version of Tombstone is somehow even more terrifying than his comic book counterpart. Lonnie Lincoln had always been rambunctious as a youth. The childhood friend of Joseph Robertson was the diametric opposite of the future Editor of the Daily Bugle.
Where Robbie was a serious, moralistic, upstanding young man, Lonnie was a complete delinquent. Prone to violence, mischief, and “sticky fingers”, Lincoln was the bullish yang to Robertson’s gentle yin, and for the most part, Robbie didn’t mind his friend’s company. But he should have known how things would unravel when Lonnie robbed a grocery store in their youth for ice cream.
Joseph Robertson would evade capture by the law that day and vow to never be associated with criminals like his old friend again. Lonnie Lincoln, on the other hand, would embrace the life of crime. When Robbie became a reporter for the Daily Bugle, he got a tip about a break-in at the Spaulding Chemical Plant and went to investigate, believing it could be his big break. When Robbie got there, however, he realized it was just a trap.
Lonnie had staged the entire thing in an attempt to frame Robertson for abandoning him all those years ago. He wanted his “friend” to feel the isolation and mirth of prison for himself and revealed that everything had been a set-up. As he chased Robbie across the chemical plant, Lonnie accidentally fell into a vat of toxic chemicals. The intensity and sheer quantity of chemicals should have been enough to kill him.
In fact, Robbie was convinced he would never see his childhood friend again, which was a bittersweet realization for him. If he’d done his job as a journalist, he would have discovered that his problems were just beginning. Unbeknownst to Robbie, Lonnie Lincoln survived his fall into the chemical vat, but it changed his life forever. The chemicals drained his body of melanin, turning his skin chalk-white, his eyes red, and his teeth filed.
It also imbued him with powers that allowed him to snap a regular person like a twig with his bare hands. Lonnie Lincoln would take on the moniker “Tombstone” and operate in the New York Underworld as its most-efficient enforcer and bag man. He appears first in the employ of Silvermane and is tasked with retrieving the Tablet of Life and Dr. Curt Connors. Tombstone makes short work of his assignment.
Knowing that Kingpin had the Tablet of Time, Tombstone cornered Kingpin’s wife, Vanessa, and kidnapped her. Later, after Spider-Man captured the Lizard and turned him back into a human by using the Neogenic Recombinator, Tombstone burst through the wall and attacked the Wall-Crawler. With his inhuman strength, Tombstone was able to drop a giant computer on top of Spider-Man and get away with Dr. Connors.
His actions caused a domino effect that resulted in Silvermane getting his wish, and Tombstone destroying the Mega-Slayer; a feat even Spidey would find hard to accomplish. After Silvermane is transformed into a baby by the Tablet of Time, his daughter Alisa hires Tombstone to get rid of evidence that implicates her in the activities of her father’s crime family.
This brings him back into conflict with his old pal Robbie, and Tombstone enacts a plan to satisfy his vendetta by making it as personal as possible. He recruits Robbie’s disillusioned son Randy into his gang and makes him commit crimes that he is secretly recording in order to frame him and make his father go through the same hell that he had to face.
Thanks to Robbie’s indomitable will, yet another vat of toxic chemicals, and Spider-Man’s signature pep talks, Randy is able to break away from the Bandanna Gang and see just how much his father cares for him. Robbie himself gets a measure of closure after knocking his tormentor into the same vat of chemicals where their rivalry started; only this time, Lonnie Lincoln was shipped off to prison for good.
What Makes Tombstone So Dangerous?
Despite not getting enough of the spotlight throughout his 34-year-long criminal career, Tombstone is one of Spider-Man’s worst nightmares. And after taking a look at his stats, it’s hard to question why. Tombstone is freakishly strong, able to lift 6 tonnes with ease and packing wall-shattering impact in his punches.
His conditioning is beyond peak level, as he can fight for hours on end without getting fatigued. He even had some natural resistance to injury, as his skin wouldn’t part with ease, making slicing and stabbing rather ineffective ways of killing the man.
After getting pumped with Diox-3, Tombstone’s physiology has been warped to make him highly durable to extreme temperatures (ranging from 1200° F to -80° F) and all forms of physical injuries, including high-caliber bullets that usually pierce through any kind of armor you’d have on.
He has shrugged off an electric attack from Daredevil like an annoying fly, laughed when a rocket exploded against him, and collapsed the adjacent building, and it took Spider-Man using all of his might and surrounding his hand in the webbing to knock out Tombstone. Peter notes that he regularly damages his hands trying to strike Tombstone, and Daredevil has nearly broken his fingers when attempting a nerve strike at the Big Man.
All this, and years of combat prowess make him one of the deadliest individuals in the mob. Tombstone has been perfecting hand-to-hand combat since he was a teenager and has never stopped conditioning his body to the peak of his physical capabilities. Though he isn’t a particularly fast individual, his reflexes and endurance are at the point where he can keep up with- and even outpace- Taskmaster, one of the fastest human beings in Marvel continuity.
All things considered, we really get why Lonnie Lincoln’s criminal name is what it is; because it is the one gift his victims will always carry with them in death. Tombstone might not shoot lasers out of his eyes or breathe poisonous mist, but we’d argue that makes him even more dangerous than people who do possess those abilities.
If your kill count pales in comparison to this guy, you’re either a lazy bum or absolutely suck at doing your job. In Tombstone’s case though, neither matters, because he will always be better at killing than you, and everyone in Marvel knows it.
Crazy Alternate Versions Of Tombstone In Various Forms Of Media
Despite being a relatively lesser-known character in Spider-Man’s immaculate Rogues Gallery, Tombstone has been shown a lot of love by studios and fans alike. We’ve already discussed his most-iconic portrayal, brought to life by Dorian Harewood in the 90s. 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse gave us the first movie depiction of Tombstone as the personal bodyguard of Kingpin.
However, there is a version where Lonnie Lincoln achieves his goal of running crime in New York City as opposed to simply being a part of it. Tombstone appears as a recurring villain in The Spectacular Spider-Man animated TV show. Throughout the series, he is known as “The Big Man” by his henchmen and associates.
This show flips the power dynamic between Tombstone and Hammerhead, making the latter his right-hand man. Another notable departure from the source material is Lonnie Lincoln’s inherent intellect. Spectacular Spider-Man’s Tombstone is a cunning and intelligent criminal mastermind who uses his mind to play games with his opposition, rarely getting physically involved.
In many ways, Tombstone is used as a surrogate Kingpin (whose rights were tied up with the Daredevil animated series at the time). During his first appearance on the show, Lonnie uses Oscorp to create supervillains to fight Spider-Man in order to keep him distracted, while his associates go rob the city blind; uninterrupted. He offers to stop using Oscorp to create metahumans so long as Spider-Man keeps his nose out of his affairs, even paying him in advance.
Obviously, Spider-Man refuses and continues to fight against The Big Man of Crime for the rest of his career. In Insomniac’s Spider-Man game, Tombstone is the leader of a Hell’s Angels-esque biker gang. He helps Spidey locate Mister Negative in-game and is even the lead character of his own arc, where his impenetrable skin is altered back into its original, human state.
After getting behind-handed to him by the wall-crawler and feeling pain for the first time in years, Tombstone’s desire to commit crimes only intensifies. He now waits for his re-match with the web-head, which will be all kinds of gnarly fun when the next Insomniac Spider-Man game drops.
Why you should pay more attention to Tombstone
While it is true that Lonnie Lincoln is relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, nevertheless, Tombstone is a defining member of Spider-Man’s Pantheon of Supervillains; and his origin story is tragic and downright relatable. Most of us have faced some form of discrimination in our lives; whether it’s about our interests, our appearances, the way we act, or the way we talk.
At a time when being different is celebrated- and rightly so- Tombstone serves as a reminder of a time when acceptance wasn’t in an abundant supply. Lonnie Lincoln’s fate isn’t entirely his doing, and that is what makes him both terrifying and relatable.
Tombstone is an unexpectedly layered character who also happens to be strong enough to literally toy with Peter. We can’t wait to see him show up in a proper, live-action adaptation soon. Whether it happens as part of the MCU or Sony’s standalone Spider-Man Villainsverse; remains to be seen.