Luke Carlyle
Luke Carlyle is a male comic supervillain who features in Marvel Comics.
Contents |
Biography
Luke Carlyle was a male human who was born in the modern age on Earth. By adulthood, he had been a thief and con artist who had been involved in a wide range of criminal actions. These included convictions of fraud, forgery, extortion, racketeering, assault and battery alongside other such offenses. He managed to hide these in his future endeavours in order to maintain his image as a respectable businessman. He was then approached by Nexus Industries who were looking to hire someone to help promote and advance the company's public image as well as raise the value of their stock. They, however, did not perform a background check on Carlyle who was a noted con artist and thief. Using his talents, he came to rise up the corporate ladder where he made it appear that he was rich in order to attract investors. Money was then filtered into the company where it was used in acquisitions of other businesses. Carlyle had even set up dummy subsidiaries financed from within the company where their assets were counted as revenue to make Nexus appear bigger as well as stronger in the stock market. On paper, this strategy worked for a while until a number of old debts were due. The company had to cover the fall-off in productivity resulting in the financial figures not matching. This led to the CEO looking further into Luke's past and confronting him about it. In response, Carlyle murdered the man where he claimed that the CEO had went on an unexpected vacation. It was then that Carlyle looked to abandon the company and take whatever he could with him. Unfortunately for him, he found little he could do as the money was gone and any property was locked up in escrow. The only product the company had was in theoretical research with him unable to make use of it as he did not understand it. He then looked for alternatives that would make him free in a way that nobody could stop him. Luke then remembered the story of Doctor Octopus and his amazing tentacled mechanical limbs. Carlyle had wanted something similar and thus tasked Nexus employees in creating something similar. The teams worked independently of one another with nobody knowing what the others were doing except for Carlyle himself who had the whole picture. They had managed to achieve the basic elements of the project but were unable to solve the cerebral interface matter. Ultimately, the only means of solving this problem was by having access to the mechanical harness of Doctor Octopus. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #43)
Thus, Carlyle had decided to enact a scheme to entrap Doctor Octopus. Hiring temp agents, he decided to make it appear that Nexus was looking to hire Octavius for his genius and to serve as a consultant. Octavius was only happy to accept the interview as he felt his genius was being appreciated. Thus, he attended the meeting where he was asked to bring his mechanical tentacle limbs where Nexus claimed they wanted him for his expertise in cybernetics. At first, they said they looked to have him as a consultant in order to further their cybernetic developments which involved studying the tentacled mechanical harness used by Octavius. Once the tentacles were sighted, Carlyle and his 'business partners' exited the room claiming that they were going to discuss the matter further. This was simply to lull Octavius into a false sense of security as the trap was sprung. The doors locked and knock-out gas was pumped into the room where at first Doctor Octopus attempted to escape only to find that the walls were reinforced metal able to withstand the cybernetic tentacle limbs. Rendered unconscious, Octavius was abducted over the course of five days whilst Carlyle's scientists managed to solve the cerebral interface issue. They were then able to create a similar such harness for Luke Carlyle. He then proceeded with using his newfound harness by robbing a bank. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #43) With his stolen money, he came to spend it at the Embassy Crown Hotel where he looked to spend its services on him and looked to hire prostitutes to entertain himself. Before he could do so, his suite was attacked by Doctor Octopus who was looking to get his revenge on Carlyle. However, Luke was prepared with his mechanical harness suit underneath his clothes. The two then came to battle across the hotel leading to immense damage to the building. The fight was seen by the media with videos being sold to the Daily Bugle earning the person recording a lot of money. Ultimately, the fight drew the attention of Spider-Man who arrived at the scene. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #44)
Both Doctor Octopus and Carlyle warned the Wall-Crawler from interfering in the fight. In fact, Luke even suggested to Octavius that perhaps they work together to eliminate a common foe before settling their dispute. However, Otto refused to work alongside someone who had stolen their technology. Thus, a three-way battle was fought where Carlyle initially used his tech against Spider-Man but the hero sent webbing at Luke's glasses thus temporarily blinding him. Upon getting rid of it, he decided to knock out Octavius before attacking the support pillars of the building. This created a danger to civilians at the scene allowing Carlyle to flee the scene with Spider-Man being forced to help the endangered people. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #44) In the aftermath, Carlyle looked to find some high-profile hostages and targeted a theatre. He took the people there hostage where he intended to force the authorities to allow him to escape and suffer no interference. However, he believed the police would not take his demands serious unless he showed them how serious he was by killing a hostage. An actress named Mary Jane Watson attempted to warn him off but Carlyle could not be dissuaded as he looked to kill an elderly hostage that he considered expendable. This saw him deciding to kill a woman named Aunt May but he was stopped by the intervention of Doctor Octopus who had pursued Luke. Carlyle eventually gained the upper hand due to his advanced suit where he looked to kill Octavius. However, he was stopped by the sudden arrival of Spider-Man who targeted Luke. This saw Carlyle suffering a cracked rib leading to Luke attacking more aggressively. Doctor Octopus then revealed to Spider-Man that he had cracked Carlyle's shell from behind giving an opportunity for the Wall-Crawler to strike. Webbing Luke's eyes again, Spider-Man then went behind Carlyle and opened the crack in his suit where he sent in some expanding webfluid. At first, Carlyle seemingly recovered and pinned Spider-Man where he was ready to eliminate the hero only for his suit to stop responding and shatter leaving Luke defeated. This left him in a position where the authorities could apprehend him without incident with Doctor Octopus having left the scene in the confusion. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #45)
Overview
Personality and attributes
It was shown that he tended to wear red sun glasses. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #43) After learning his real name, Spider-Man came to refer to Luke as Carlyle Calamari in a joking effort to distinguish him from Doctor Octopus. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #45)
Luke was shown to be greedy with a fixation in getting money and profit which he did so through dishonest as well as illegal means. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #43)
Eventually, he had grown tired of living off people that did not appreciate his abilities. It was then that he intended to show the world what he was capable of achieving. To that end, he looked to become a supervillain in order to use his newfound might to establish an empire of his own rather than use others in doing so. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #43)
After becoming a costumed supervillain, he looked to kill Doctor Octopus as he had no further use for the man. Luke considered Octavius an old man who should simply die. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #44) Despite tricking Octavius, he initially felt that was enough space for both of them to operate in the crime scene. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #45)
Powers and abilities
Luke Carlyle was born an ordinary human being with no special inherent ability. Whilst growing up, he did become a con artist and thief with a skill to trick as well as manipulate people. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #43)
He was eventually able to have scientists create for him a cybernetic harness that had six mechanical tentacles similar to those used by Doctor Octopus. This saw him wearing a green suit where each tentacle could be outfitted with a different weapon. These were controlled by a cerebral interface and had superhuman strength. It was shown that the suit was slim enough that he could wear other clothes over them to hide it from others. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #43) Unlike Octavius's version, Carlyle had six tentacles with multiple attachments on them. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #44) Among these included two tentacles with even smaller tendrils on them that could embed them into a targets skin to injure them. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #45)
Despite his advanced suit, he was still an ordinary man underneath it. Thus, he was vulnerable to powerful superhuman opponents. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #45)
Carlyle was a business executive for Nexus Industries that was a high-tech research and development company which specialised in cybernetics. They were said to had gone public on the New York Stock Exchange two years prior with their last rating putting them at a new value of two hundred million dollars. (Amazing Spider-Man v2 #43)
Notes
- Luke Carlyle was created by J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita, Jr. where he made his first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man v2 #43 (October, 2002).
In other media
Video games
Appearances
- Amazing Spider-Man v2: (2002)
External Links
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