Foolkiller.
Killer of Fools.
364 days a year, an individual who chooses to self-identify with the name “Foolkiller” might get up and face the world with a grim determination. There are fools to kill and quotas to meet, gotta kill them all.
However, on April Fool’s Day, someone who has decided that he’s going to be called “Foolkiller” wakes up with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. He probably has his own theme song that he sings to himself as he takes his morning constitutional.
It’s probably something along the lines of that Little Richard song that Bill Duke’s Mac repeats over and over in Predator. “Gonna have me some fun. Gonna have me some fun.”
April 1st, truly, is his favorite day of the year. Zap zap zap.
Foolkiller comes in several different flavors, and has persisted through several decades, because the world is full of fools, so it’s not like he’s going to go out of work. There have been a number of people calling themselves Foolkiller over the years. The first two were pretty consistent in their wardrobe, and then things shifted a bit.
Foolkiller debuted in Man-Thing # 3, and then promptly died. That’s ok, because someone quickly took up the fool-killing mantle again. Both of these initial Foolkillers wore a skin tight blue outfit with the very prominent buccaneer boots that were oh so stylish in the 70s, and a jaunty hat. If you’re going to go out and kill some fools, it’s a prerequisite that you wear the jauntiest hat that ever jaunted. It helps if you’re as looney as a pigeon-toed pomeranian wearing pistachio pomade. Yes, Foolkiller is certifiably bats, but he’s too caught up in his whole foolkilling thing to realize it. They just keep ending up in sanitariums, so you’d think they’d get the hint.
I first ran into Foolkiller when he showed up in an issue of Amazing Spider-Man. He had a nifty gun (called a Purification gun) that incinerated people into tiny piles of ash. Believe me, the first thing I did was scour the Sears catalogue, but I couldn’t find one of those to order anywhere. I was BUMMED.
(Kind of still am.)
Greg Salinger lasted longer under the hat than the first dude, racking up an impressive body count, and then some time later a third, equally nutso guy named Gerhardt picked up the Foolkiller mantle, this time wearing something that exposed a lot of chest. I guess it’s to distract fools. We’re almost at full nipple there. He got a brief series back in the 90s and even got his own rookie card in the Marvel card line.
The Salinger Foolkiller got a new costume in the 2000s. I miss the jaunty hat, but I guess we’ve all got to change with the times, even if you’re job is killing fools. This time around he got a lot more tactically armored, but it still has an overall peppy look to it.
There was also a MAX version, but from what I can tell he didn’t get a cool costume. I can’t respect a Foolkiller who doesn’t get all spiffied up.
Foolkiller would make a cool action figure in any version. My personal preference of course is for his initial spandexy look complete with jaunty hat, because that is a guy that just looks like he kills some fools, gets a quick bite at the local diner and then heads back out to kill some more fools. I wouldn’t scoff at either of the later versions, but really, that first one is prime Foolkiller. Put him in a Spider-Man wave and give him a pile of ash as an accessory. Because why not?
