After his part in the superhero Civil War, Speedball rechristened himself Penance in a spiky new costume. While New Warriors fans protested the change, it was actually foreshadowed 16 years earlier when Robbie Baldwin joked about redesigning his costume.
The awful event that kicked off Marvel's Civil War sent the once happy-go-lucky hero Speedball down a path that took him years to recover from. But as it turns out, Robbie Baldwin called his dark phase out years before he would ever don the identity of Penance.
Fans may recall Speedball being a central figure to the Civil War storyline, with the Stamford Incident being the inciting event that began the discussion on the Superhero Registration Act. With over 600 people dying in a superhero stunt gone wrong, and the world casting blame on him, Robbie ditched his Speedball mantle and took on the role of Penance. With a suit lined with spikes for every Stamford victim, Baldwin tortured himself as self-punishment, with one spike for every life lost.
While Speedball's wisecrack more than likely wasn't a hint at the terrible future for Marvel, it's interesting to see how Robbie did wind up incorporating spikes into crime-fighting. As Penance, however, the spikes in his outfit were intended to hurt him rather than any villains he fought. The cuts helped activate his powers after they were altered in the Stamford explosion while also giving him the punishment he felt he deserved.
Robbie's Penance phase was reviled by many longtime fans of the character, who expressed that putting a traditionally easygoing hero through so much trauma was edginess for edginess' sake. It got to a point where even Squirrel Girl, who had longtime crushed on the hero, tried to snap him out of his dark period by telling him Penance wasn't true to his nature.
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