Brilliant research scientist Dr. Johnathon Ohnn attempts to replicate teleportation powers, but winds up accessing a different dimension associated with the Darkforce. Gaining the ability to travel by way of portals, he becomes the Super Villain known as the Spot.
Change One’s Spots
Earning a Ph.D. in engineering, Dr. Johnathon Ohnn becomes a research scientist. He soon finds himself working for Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin, who hires him to research Tyrone Johnson, AKA Cloak’s powers and emulate them. In the process, Ohnn makes a startling discovery that changes his life. Following a battle at the Kingpin’s headquarters involving Cloak and others, Ohnn realizes his equipment had picked up Cloak’s unique energy, revealing that it originated from another dimension. Ohnn begins to reproduce Cloak’s energy emanations but his duplicator overheats, creating a large circle of darkness within the laboratory. Ohnn steps into this hole, causing a power surge that alters the radiation wavelength. Finding himself in a black-and-white spotted dimension, Ohnn locates the hole through which he came and re-enters it, emerging as a living embodiment of the “Spotworld” dimension. Discovering that his spots are dimensional portals, Ohnn chooses to test his powers before informing the Kingpin of his discovery.
When Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, and Felicia Hardy, AKA Black Cat, attack the Kingpin’s skyscraper, Ohnn announces himself as the Spot, sending the wall-crawler into gales of laughter. Although Ohnn uses his portals to punch Spider-Man from all directions, his blows prove too weak to be effective. Spider-Man’s own blows are equally ineffective as his fists enter Ohnn’s portals rather than connecting. Spider-Man finally tricks Ohnn into removing most of his body’s spots, making him eminently hittable. A few spider-powered blows convinces Ohnn to swear off super-villainy.
Spotworld
Ohnn is a living swatch of “Spotworld,” a half light/half dark dimension associated with both the Darkforce dimension and the Dark Dimension. He is chalk-white and covered in black spot-like portals to Spotworld; from there, he can access other spot portals to Earth. He can remove the spots, suspend them in mid-air or on any surface, step into one spot and instantaneously emerge from any other, expand or reduce them in size, put them back on his body, and combine them together into one spot on his chest returning him to his normal appearance.
He can transport parts of his body, allowing him to attack opponents from different positions simultaneously, or transport completely from one spot to another, pulling the spots in after him if he wishes. The spots on his body protect him from punches, which pass harmlessly into the other dimension.
A Spot of Bother
Spot frequently encounters and battles Spider-Man, but the wall-crawler often dispatches him.
Johnathon first works for the crime boss Kingpin in research and development within his superhuman enforcer department, and later as Spot, is forced to do Kingpin and Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin’s bidding to attain their nefarious ends.
Spot-On Allies
Johnathon cares deeply about his family, especially his son Wyatt. While he’s divorced from Wyatt’s mother and doesn’t see his family after his accident in the lab, Johnathon still sends his son a special gift while he recovers in the hospital from a near-fatal gunshot wound.
The Spot allies himself with villains, taking jobs from the likes of the maniacal George Tarleton, AKA M.O.D.O.K., and Martin Li, AKA Mr. Negative. The latter swears to help him find a cure for his condition, which motivates an alliance.
A Spot of History
The Spot began frequenting the Springdale, Connecticut Bar with No Name until Maxwell Markham, AKA the Grizzly, recruited him for his “Spider-Man Revenge Squad” (later dubbed the “Legion of Losers”) along with Martin Blank, AKA Gibbon, and Brian Hibbs, AKA Kangaroo. Ohnn then robbed a bank, but Grizzly and Gibbon objected to this deviation from the plan, causing a group ideological split during which Grizzly and Gibbon knocked the Spot out.
Ohnn was later abducted by the Gideon Trust and used as a power source for their Negative Zone portal. Sent to the power-dampening Cage prison after the portal’s destruction, Ohnn became Lonnie Lincoln, AKA Tombstone’s cellmate. Ohnn conspired with Tombstone to inform on him; once Ohnn was paroled, he helped Tombstone escape, but the gangster rewarded him by breaking his neck. Though Ohnn recovered, Elektra Natchios, AKA Elektra, and the Hand later killed him, resurrecting him as a slave. He participated in the attack that crashed the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier.
Ohnn was eventually restored to normal, and was recruited by M.O.D.O.K. to help steal the Hypernova, a powerful energy source, from the extradimensional fortress Infinicide, but secretly struck a deal to sell the device to Temujin, AKA Mandarin, Unaware that M.O.D.O.K. had swapped the Hypernova with a fake, Spot betrayed his fellow minions, stealing it from them and delivering it to Temujin, who then double-crossed the Spot, using his black light ring to trap Ohnn in Spotworld.
He attempted to contact his old criminal colleagues by projecting his image into the Bar With No Name; when that failed, the Spot went mad, apparently losing the ability to speak. He focused on his son’s image instead, and eventually honed in on him, only to find out that he had been critically wounded in a drive-by shooting by gangster Dmitri Ivanov’s men. The furious Ohnn slaughtered Ivanov’s thugs; Ivanov himself was saved by Spider-Man, but was driven insane with fear.
The Spot subsequently joined Parker Robbins, AKA the Hood’s criminal organization as a mole for Chinatown crimelord Mr. Negative, who sought to destroy the Maggia and offered to find a cure for his condition. The Hood dispatched the Spot and several other villains to attack Negative; they failed, and during a subsequent attack, the Spot teleported Negative to safety.
Joining Otto Octavius, AKA Doctor Octopus, in a plot to kidnap the child Stanley Osborn, the Spot ended up battling Spider-Man and promptly in police custody. He was later involved in another kidnapping and lost a fight with Matt Murdock, AKA Daredevil. The Spot ended up captured and his abilities replicated by Coyote, who worked for a mysterious benefactor, and it wasn’t the last time the Spot was experimented upon. Kingpin and Norman Osborn desired to use Spot’s connection to the Darkforce Dimension to capture the demonic Harry Osborn, AKA Kindred, despite the Spot pleading otherwise. Though Norman betrayed Kingpin and offered Spot freedom if he helped release his son. Desiring to be free, Spot helped Norman free Harry.
The Spot was later attacked by the Carnage symbiote and his serial killer disciple Kenneth Neely, AKA The Artist, who desired to gain access to Spotworld. In an effort to escape, Carnage got its hooks into the Spot and ripped him apart. Carnage absorbed the Spot’s abilities, but the Spot warned the symbiote that he couldn’t be killed and he would return.
