Characters / The Hood

The Hood

The Hood

Alter Ego: Parker Robbins

Notable Aliases: Demon Boy, Smokey McChimney

First Appearance: The Hood #1 (July, 2002)

After stealing a mystical cloak and pair of boots that endowed him with supernatural abilities from a Hydra recruiter, small-time crook Parker Robbins rose through the ranks to become a skilled sorcerer and feared crime lord. After years of being a part of the Marvel Universe, the Hood became a really lucky villain - Brian Michael Bendis, then-current writer of Avengers titles, took him under his wing, and turned him into a first-class villain, king of New York's underground. After Civil War, Hood became a secondary Big Bad for the New Avengers — while he's not their only, or even greatest, threat (that title was claimed first by the Skrulls and later by Norman Osborn), he's certainly a legitimate menace. Originally his powers came from an unknown demon, later revealed to be none other than the Dread Dormammu himself; since then he has gone up and down the power scale as he gains and loses "patrons."

The character is set to make his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in the Disney+ miniseries Ironheart, with Anthony Ramos in the role.

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• Ascended Fanboy: Parker was a fan of supervillains since childhood.
• Ambition Is Evil: The Hood suffers Motive Decay (he initially just wanted to support his family) because of his ambition to be a big-time supervillain criminal mastermind instead of the street thug he really is. Acquiring the magical hood and boots empowered by Dormammu gave Parker Robbins an appetite for power that has gotten worse with time.
• Anti-Hero: In his first series.
• Anti-Hero Substitute: Norman Osborn tries to turn him and his gang into this for the Initiative.
• Badass Normal: Once or twice he's proven that he can take care of himself, even without his powers. He just needs a gun.
• Better Living Through Evil: Became a supervillain for the money.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Parker tries so hard to become one of the verse's Big Bads after getting a taste of power from his magical clothes. Problem is, he's still a street thug at heart and doesn't really know how to best use the vast power he has at his disposal. He does accomplish a lot, but he's ultimately a slave to his own hunger for power and to the entities who feed his addiction. The one time he tries to claim power without making any deals with otherworldly entities he attracts the attention of a much worse villain and loses that power in short order. His greatest act of villainy was having a bunch of his thugs beat up a captive superheroine, and said heroine paid him back in spades.
• Body Horror: Dormammu's possession twisted him into a nightmarish being with More Teeth than the Osmond Family.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Magic clothes turned him into a supervillain.
• Cruel Mercy: At the end of Dark Reign, Tigra corners the Hood and talks at length about how she wants to kill him... and then doesn't. Instead she simply brings in his wife so she'll know who he is and what he's done and never let him near her or his daughter again.
• The Dark Side: When you see the lengths Parker is willing to go after new power sources whenever the previous one is cut off from him, you can safely say he is addicted to power. He even mentions that he spent half a billion dollars in an expedition to the now-abandoned Attilan just to recover one of the Infinity Gems. Also, when he turns to Count Nefaria (just after the end of the Siege on Asgard, where he lost the power of the Norn Stones), you can see how much of a wreck he is (though that might have been hesitation because Nefaria wanted every last penny of his in return for empowering him).
• Demonic Possession: His relationship with Dormammu later turned into that.
• Deal with the Devil: First enters one with Dormammu, which inevitably turns bad, and later entered one with Loki to gain new powers in the Norn Stones, which worked out fine until Loki came and took them back.
• De-power: Several times.
  • First in Marvel Zombies 4, when Dormammu ditched him for somebody else.
  • Secondly after the new Sorcerer Supreme destroyed his connection with Dormammu.
  • A third time when Loki took the Norn Stones back & used them to grant a power boost to the Avengers & Secret Warriors to stop Sentry/The Void from destroying Asgard.
  • And a fourth time when he lost the Infinity Gems.
• The Dulcinea Effect: White Fang told Hood she would abandon her campaign against him after he threatened to kill Force - a superhero she had known less than one day!
• Enemy Mine: Happened when he has to team up with superheroes against Marvel Zombies.
  • And when he led his crew into battle alongside the Avengers, Thunderbolts, and every other superpowered being that happened to be in Central Park to fight the Skrulls in Secret Invasion.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Parker cares a great deal about his mother.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Before Parker Robbins become The Hood, he was a thief, liar and supervillain fan who seduced and knocked up a gorgeous girl, and was cheating on her with a Russian prostitute. His cousin, John King, is an alcoholic who never worked a single legal job in his life. But when an agent of terrorist organization HYDRA offered them a job, they told him about how much they hate terrorists, beat him and stole his shoes.
  • Would have stolen the suit but John pissed on him.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: Marvel villain The Hood has a red hooded cape that gives him magic powers — and is warping him into a demon.
• Eviler than Thou: Mr. Negative, a Superpowered Evil Side who strongly believes in the Balance Between Good and Evil (which he enforces by corrupting all good deeds done by his good side) told Hood that he would fail because he forsook all the good that was in him.
• Expy: There have been two previous villains empowered by a magic, evil hood; one of them was even named The Robe. They're respectfully very obscure however.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Parker Robbins was a loser and small-time crook, until he stole a magic cloak and boots. As The Hood, he quickly rose in rank in the criminal world, until turning into the leader of a gang strong enough to butt heads with The Avengers and live to tell the tale, gaining himself a place in the Cabal.
  • At one point other supervillains wonder why exactly they follow him and his cousin calls this trope - they all started as nobodies before becoming superpowered crooks, but they had normal lives, while Parker was the only one to start from the bottom and knew what to do to crawl his way to the top.
  • Unfortunately, this ultimately got Robbins addicted to power for its own sake. When he lost the cloak and boots, he desperately scrambled for new super powers since he can't bear going back to being a nobody.
• Gotta Catch Them All: He nearly obtained all the Infinity Gems.
• Heel Realization: The Hood has a heart-to-heart talk with Titania where he mentions having one. Initially, his motivation was that he didn't want his kid to live a crappy life as he himself did. But when he was offered a way out of crime, he didn't take it. The Hood realized that he liked being a bad guy, and resolved to be the very best bad guy he could be.
• In the Hood: Mostly, depends on the artist.
• Invisible Jerkass: When possessed by Dormammu he could be this.
• Invisibility with Drawbacks: Parker Robins' magical cloak makes him invisible as long as he's holding his breath.
• Motive Decay: Marvel villain The Hood originally had some sympathetic motives for becoming a supervillain, such as supporting his family. He gradually began to love the power his new hood and boots granted him more than he loved them. When he lost the hood and boots that allowed him to channel the power of Dormammu, he leaped at Loki's offer to repower him with the Nornstones. When he lost those powers almost as soon as he got them, he didn't take it very well. Then he went after the Infinity Gems. He seems to be addicted to power for its own sake.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Happens a lot. Justified when his backer was Dormammu, who is one of the most powerful demons in the universe and a Dimension Lord.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After Dark Reign, The Hood broke out of prison and was about to give up villainy (since he lost his wife and daughter). However, three members of Avengers Academy broke into his apartment because the video of Hood beating up Tigra had gone viral (which wasn't his fault: the villain Slug sold it to a celebrity gossip site without his knowledge). Not only does that almost get them expelled from the Avengers Academy (Tigra wasn't happy that they paid evil unto evil), but this also spurs the Hood to go after the Infinity Gems.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: He gave one to superheroine Tigra because another villain asked him to do so in exchange for his advice.
• Person with the Clothing: The Hood, whose cloak and boots came from a demon and are the source of his magical powers.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: He seems to consider himself as the only one allowed to defeat the New Avengers.
• Save the Villain: Doctor Strange has tried several times to show him what he's gotten himself into and offer help. It never works.
• Save the Villain: Discussed The Hood, whose hood and shoes gave him superpowers through increasing amounts of Demonic Possession. He was sent to murder Doctor Strange, who realized at once what was going on and tried to talk him down. Later, when it was obvious that the demon was more than Hood could handle, his associate tried to send him to Strange for help due to this trope. "I bet he'll help you. Even after everything. He has to, right?"
• Super Mob Boss: The Hood was an Unlucky Everydude who got magical cape and shoes from certain demon that granted supernatural powers, and with that in hand he fights to became a mob boss, becoming a real menace for groups as the New Avengers. But even without his magical clothes, he's also a Badass Normal who can fight with his guns and fists.
• This Is Your Brain on Evil: When his relationship with Dormammu got worse.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Dormammu had a bad habit of replacing Parker's reflection in the mirror.
• Took a Level in Badass: Deconstructed by Brian Michael Bendis. He was becoming more powerful and getting New Powers as the Plot Demands, but was also making the link between him and the source of his powers, Dormammu, stronger. When it was strong enough, the demon turned him into his slave.
• Too Dumb to Live: A flashback in Infamous Iron Man reveals that during one of the Cabal's meetings, the Hood made the mistake of trying to get chummy with Doctor Doom by bringing up the story of his dead mother. That's already bad enough, but the Hood continued to wear Doom's patience thin by poking holes in Doom's motivations. Fortunately for him, Doom was merciful enough to use a spell to banish him to India instead of killing him on the spot.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He's had access to world-shaking power, but he doesn't know how to fight except as a street thug, so he can never use it to its full advantage.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Dormammu when he was his patron.
• Villain Protagonist: In both of his limited series, especially in the second.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Osborn tries to give this status to all his gang members.
• Wolverine Publicity: Let's see... Hood regularly appears in New Avengers and the new The Punisher ongoing. Took a part in the Beyond mini-series and appeared in a few issues of Daredevil. Thanks to being a member of The Cabal, he appears in every comic that shows their meeting and gets a second solo mini. Osborn turned him into the new boss of the Initiative alongside Taskmaster. He has a major role in Marvel Zombies 4 and Dark Reign: Mr. Negative. And the list of his appearances still seem to be going up. People are starting to bet if he's going to appear as often as Wolverine before or after Deadpool will. He even showed up in Moon Knight. Let's not forget the House of M tie-in book.
• You Killed My Father: White Fang, Action Girl in Powered Armor blames him for killing her husband.
  • Funny thing is, that was an accident. She also doesn't know her husband was cheating on her.
    • Also it was his cousin.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Dormammu convinced him that he could be Sorcerer Supreme if he killed Doctor Strange. Strange insisted that it doesn't work that way, but Hood was in no mood to listen.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: The way The Hood found out the source of his powers was Dread Dormammu was when the demon suddenly replaced his reflection in the mirror. Later Dormammu's preferred way of communication with Parker was to replace half of his reflection in the mirror, as a metaphor of their connection.

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