SQUID

Real Name: Don "Donny" Callahan

Identity/Class: Human mutate

Occupation: Enforcer

Group Membership: The Hood's  "villain army" (Hood (Parker Robbins), Answer (Aaron Nicholson), Armadillo, Blackout (Lilin), Blood Brother, Bulldozer, Chemistro (Calvin Carr), Controller, Crossbones, Crossfire, Crusader (Arthur Blackwood), Cutthroat, Doctor Demonicus, Grey Gargoyle, Griffin (Johnny Horton), Hydro-Man, Jigsaw, John King, Mandrill, Mister Fear (Alan Fagan), Mister Hyde, Piledriver, Purple Man, Recession Raider, Thunderball, Tiger Shark, Vapor, Vector, Wrecker (Dirk Garthwaite), X-Ray, others)
    formerly Hammerhead's "villain army" (Hammerhead, Answer (Aaron Nicholson), Ape-Man, Aura (Ann Herd), Bloodshed, Clown (Eliot "Crafty" Franklin), Discus (Tim Stuart), Electro (Max Dillon), Great Gambonnos, Man-Mountain Marko, Mauler (Brendan Doyle), Override (Greg Herd), Ringmaster (Maynard Tiboldt), Spot, Trapster, Will O' The Wisp, others)

Affiliations: Ms. Fortune, unidentified Upper West Side crime boss

Enemies: Spider-Man (Peter Parker), "Old Man" Frenzetti, Iron Man (Tony Stark), SHIELD, Miguel Vargas

Known Relatives: "Big" Mike Callahan (father), unnamed mother (deceased)

Aliases: Squiddy

Base of Operations: Unrevealed;
    formerly the sewers of the Upper West Side, Manhattan;

First Appearance: Peter Parker: Spider-Man II#16 (April, 2000)

Powers/Abilities: The Squid can shift from his human form to a green-skinned, mouthless (sometimes) squid-like form.  In this form, he possesses four (or six) extendable tentacles capable of restraining a superhuman with Class 10 strength.  He can also spray his foes with a foul-smelling viscous ink, emitted from his hands.  In his second encounter with Spider-Man, he secreted the ink constantly from his entire body - whether this was a reflection of his emotional state at the time or a delayed mutation is unknown.  He can also apparently squeeze through narrow pipes, indicating that his Squid form has no bones.

History: (Amazing Spider-Man II#26 - bts) - After his mother died, Donny Callahan had problems relating to his domineering father, "Big Mike" Callahan.  fell in with the wrong crowd, first joining street gangs, and eventually allowing himself to be mutated into a superhuman enforcer, becoming the Squid.

(Peter Parker: Spider-Man II#16) - In their first outing as supercriminals, the Squid and his girlfriend, Ms. Fortune, attacked Spider-Man on a rooftop.  The Squid managed to spray Spider-Man with his ink and grab him with a tentacle, but Spider-Man unceremoniously tossed them off the roof. 

(Amazing Spider-Man II#26 - bts) - After their defeat by Spider-Man, the criminals who empowered them turned on the Squid and Ms. Fortune, almost killing her.  She broke up with the Squid, who was then hired by an Upper West Side crime boss to eliminate local businessmen who wouldn't sell their properties to him.

(Amazing Spider-Man II#26) - The Squid dragged "Old Man" Frenzetti into the sewers in front of his cigar shop, killing him.  Later that night, Donny Callahan confronted his father in his bar, Callahan's.  Angrily storming out when Peter Parker entered the bar, he slunk back into the sewers and attacked Miguel Vargas, coming up through the pipes in his coffee shop.  Entangled in the Squid's tentacles, Vargas ran out into the street, yelling for help, as the Squid emerged from the sink.  Before he could kill Vargas, however, the Squid was attacked by a baseball bat-wielding Mike Callahan.  The Squid easily crushed the bat, but the distraction allowed Vargas to escape.  Angered, he turned on Mike, but was blindsided by Spider-Man.  Angrily recalling his past defeat by the web-slinger, the Squid lashed out at him, but was beaten back once more.  Before Spider-Man could take him out, however, he was restrained by Mike, who pleaded with him to leave his son alone, claiming that he 'wasn't right in the head'.  Taking advantage of his father's intervention, the Squid immobilized Spider-Man in his tentacles and began to strangle him.  With the wall-crawler helpless, the Squid taunted Mike, telling him that he couldn't push him around anymore.  To Donny's surprise, Mike agreed with him, and apologized for the way he'd treated him.  The Squid released Spider-Man from his clutches, and began to advance on Mike.  Spider-Man, still woozy, tried to stop the Squid, but he was felled again with a vicious tentacle swipe.  Undaunted, Spider-Man rose again, and asked him, "Do you think your dad could have survived that one?".  Donny realized that, for all the anger he felt towards his father, he still didn't want to kill him.  He lowered his tentacles and stammered an apology.  Donny, Mike, and Spider-Man talked long into the night, after which Donny was presumably taken away by the police.

(Civil War: War Crimes) - The Squid was among a number of super-criminals recruited into a "villain army" by Hammerhead in order to take advantage of the raging superhero Civil War.  Before they could begin doing so, however, their headquarters was raided by Iron Man and a small army of SHIELD agents.  The Squid's fate in the ensuing melee is unknown, although he evidently survived. 

(New Avengers#35) - The Squid was one of many villains summoned to a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn by the Hood, where he was offered $25, 000 in seed money to join his villain army.

(Amazing Spider-Man I#562) - The Squid (seemingly having mutated back into his original Squid form) attended a Bar With No Name in New York City, where he and a number of other supervillains watched the Basher challenge Spider-Man to a fight via YouTube.  He and a number of other villains placed bets with the Bookie that Spider-Man wouldn't show up, and turned on him angrily when an imposter Spider-Man showed up at the fight.  He was still at the bar when the real Spider-Man arrived, following a tip from the imposter.

(Amazing Spider-Man I#563) - The Squid and the other supervillains in attendance battled Spider-Man, but they stopped when Deke, the bartender, reminded them that the Bar With No Name was a sanctuary for those being hunted by the law - which currently included Spider-Man.  Spider-Man then pressed the bar's tight-lipped occupants for information on the Bookie, finally extracting some from Deke.

Comments: Created by Howard Mackie, A.A. Ward, John Romita, Jr., and Scott Hanna.

It isn't explicitly stated whether Donny is a mutate or a guy in a freaky suit, but his ability to slide through the pipes, combined with his father's horror at what he's done to himself, imply that he's been mutated.  It also isn't stated why, exactly, the Squid and Ms. Fortune attacked Spider-Man in the first place.  They may have been involved with the other supervillains who attacked Spidey that night (Master Monarch, the Agitator, the Wicked Brigade), or they may have just been looking for a super-hero to test their new powers with.

The Squid's appearance drastically changes between issues.  In the PP: SM issue, he's got a pattern of ovals on his chest, two smaller tentacles on his calves in addition to the four on his back (which he should have, as squid have ten limbs), and a mouth.  In Amazing Spider-Man II#26, he's lost his mouth and the tentacles on the legs, and the oval pattern's been replaced with a rectangular one.  To further confuse matters, he's got another design on the cover of Amazing Spider-Man II#26, with a beard-thing on his chin and three-tentacled hands.  Both issues (and the cover) were drawn by John Romita, Jr., so it's not a matter of artistic license...maybe Donny mutated between issues.  Then he's back to his original design in Amazing Spider-Man I#562, so I guess it's an "unstable mutation" thing, like Tiger Shark and the Griffin.

Man, the Squid's getting invited to all the big super-villain get-togethers these days, despite a somewhat less-than-impressive CV.  He isn't present at any of the later gatherings of the Hood's army, however - maybe he took the money and ran?

You might be saying "Hey, I didn't see the Squid in New Avengers#35!" - and you'd be right.  The Constrictor's there - and given that he's a member of the Initiative now, he really shouldn't be there.  Sooo, the Constrictor became the Squid (who has a similar pattern of stripes on his chest).  Good save, Marvel!

My friend Marcus recently informed me of the ghastly mating habits of giant squid...maybe getting pasted by Spider-Man isn't the only reason Ms. Fortune dumped Donny's butt.

Profile by Minor Irritant.

Clarifications:

The Squid, Donny Callahan, has no known connections to

• Squid, Atlantean vessel @ Avengers I#154
• Squid, Atlantean, leader of the School @ Marvel Comics Presents#12/4
• Squid race, encountered by Power Pack @ Power Pack III#2
• Squid Boy (Samuel Pare), Xavier Institute student, friend of Juggernaut, killed by Black Tom Cassidy @ Uncanny X-Men#410
• 'Squid' Scungili, member of the Scungili crime family @ Spider-Woman#45
• Squiddy, water park mascot @ Fantastic Four III#84/513
• Squidco 2099, corporation of the future @ 2099 Unlimited 10/2
• Sid the Squid, archnemesis of Slappy Squirrel @ Animaniacs
• "Dirty" Harry Callahan, renegade cop, coiner of catchphrases @ Dirty Harry
• or any other humanoid cephalopods.

Old Man Frenzetti has no known connections to

• Frenzy (Joanna Cargill), super-strong member of the Acolytes, Alliance of Evil and the Femizons @ X-Factor I#4
• or any other old men

Miguel Vargas has no known connections to

• Vargas, unsuccessfully tried to keep Dracula out of Spain @ Dracula Lives#12/3
• Vargas,  super-mutant warrior, killed Psylocke (but she got better) @ X-Treme X-Men#1

 "Big Mike" Callahan

(Amazing Spider-Man II#26 (fb) ) - Mike Callahan was a friend of Richard Parker, who once witnessed him break up a fight between a man and his much smaller son.  He married and started Callahan's, a bar on the Upper West Side, the upkeep of which led him to neglect his son, Donny.  At some point, his wife died, and Donny fell in with a bad crowd.