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An Ode to Judas Traveller

Written by Gerard Delatour II

Ah, Judas Traveller.  Is there a worse character in Spider-Man history than this villain, who debuted in 1994?  Well … yes, but that’s not what this article is about.

Be warned, there are spoilers to mid-90s story in here!

Let’s begin with the basics.  Traveller first appeared in Web of Spider-Man #117, the first part of “Power and Responsibility.”  When he first speaks, he’s cloaked in shadow behind his entourage, the Host:

Judas and the Holograms

C’mon, look at these guys!  Look at them!  An oddly-miscolored Indian woman, a dude that looks like he belongs in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, a 1920s gangster dude, and a gothic punk chick are Traveller’s colleagues?  The worst part is, Dr. Kafka believes their story that they are psychologists.  Traveller seems to have a reputation, as even Spider-Man remarks that he knows his name, but these other guys should’ve never made it past the security gate.  That would be like two unauthorized civilians talking their way into an official state dinner at the White House without showing credentials.  Oh, wait …

When Traveller eventually steps out of the shadows, we finally see that this guy appears to be some kind of techno-gypsy:

Fashion Emergency!

This is 90s character design at its worst.  First of all, he’s got some kind of gold coil around his neck with a pendant on the end of it.  Oddly enough, it seems to be holding his jacket on somehow.  He has not one, but two belts, including one that he’s wearing diagonally for some reason.  He has more bracelets than a sixteen-year-old girl, and he’s wearing Han Solo’s pants from The Empire Strikes Back, except that he’s pulled them up around his nipples.  And finally, well … I’ll just post the image and back away slowly:

Nice buckle ... thing.

What makes the look complete, though, is the fact that he seems to resemble an older, long-haired version of 1970s porn star John Holmes …

Creepy.

THAT YOU ARE, INDEED

But enough about how silly he looks – the real reason he’s such a reviled character is that he didn’t fit Spider-Man at all.  At first, he seemed to be a psychologist interested in studying the true meaning of evil in the hearts of supervillains.  That’s fine as a motivation (and pure gold in the hand of amateur psychologist/writer J.M. DeMatteis), but for some reason, that wasn’t good enough.  Oh no, for some reason the writers decided that he needed to have near-omnipotent power levels.

YAAAR!

... obviously ...

To quote Bertone … “REALLY?!”  In this first story alone, Judas Traveller (a) walks through walls, (b) cripples people’s minds with a mere thought, (c) separates Cletus Kasady from his symbiote, and (d) takes a beating from Spider-Man without flinching.  What?  This guy seems like he belongs in an issue of Uncanny X-Men, not Amazing Spider-Man or its ancillary sister titles.  And I’m not even going to try to make sense out of his later appearances, in which he (a) travels to the future and then later comes back and shows Spider-Man that future, (b) absorbs the Mark of Kaine without a scratch, (c) seems to teleport to and from Ryker’s Island, and (d) a bunch of other things that I have intentionally tried to forget over the years.

WUT

**SHUDDER**

And it gets better – all of this is later retconned!  It turns out that Traveller is simply a nut who has the mutant power (See!  He DID belong in an X-Men book!) to alter perception.  He essentially casts illusions.  Okay … that makes no sense.  Now, I could try to go back and point out all the inconsistencies, and how this makes no sense whatsoever given the things that we see him do, including actual physical contact and whatnot that wouldn’t be possible via the casting of illusions, or the fact that Spider-Man already has a villain with the exact same “powers,” making Traveller wholly and utterly redundant, but I won’t.

THE REAL DEAL

Anyway, at the end of the Clone Saga, Norman Osborn betrays him (I think …) and he is never seen or mentioned again – and the entire world thanks Marvel for this.