Villain Spotlight: The City Stealers

It is surprising how many people don't have tho follow through to go through with a plan. I can't tell you the number of times that I have suggested doing something that everyone thought was a good idea but there was just no follow through.

That above all else is what impresses me about "The City Stealers". We don't know a lot about the history of the city stealers and there were some flaws in their plan, but they made their attempt.

Their plan, as you might have gathered from their ingenious name, was to steal a city. Manhattan to be exact. To do this they made a deal with "They who wield power"(Clearly at this point marval had given up on naming characters) and were given power armor and destructo-rays.

Using the destructo-rays to break away the stone that held the island of manhattan up began to cause earthquakes. This drew the attention of the only two superheroes who lived in New York at the time, Spiderman and Hercules.

The two attacked the city stealers and were quickly defeated and chained up. This moment of morality seems almost endearing to these villians until you recognise the fact that if they were to succeed in their plot to destroy the foundations of the city of Manhattan it would have sank and killed millions. In this light the idea to not simply shoot Spiderman and Herculies in the head while they were chained up seems a little odd.

They continued their attempt to create a new Atlantis but Herculie broke free but the city stealers prove to not be totally incompetent and shoot him with a blast from their gun. This again knocks him unconscious and again they choose to not kill him.

Instead one of the city stealers decided that the best plan of action would be to hold spiderman over his head, assumingly because a 12 foot drop would be more effective at killing the webcrawler than the blaster rays.

At this point Hercules and Spiderman once again break the metal chains and this time defeat the city stealers. Herculies claimed that they had succeded in their plot at this time and he dragged the city back to its position. This was later found to be untrue and the general assumption is that he absorbed the energy from the destructo-ray. What isn't understood is how the blaster rays from the city stealers blasters knocked him unconscious but he was strong enough to survive a destructo-ray blast.

Still with the failures of their plots hte city stealers made their attempt and nearly succeeded, twice knocking unconcious herculies in the process, an impressive feat, and their allies got away in the nuclear submarine though they were not heard from again.