#FreeWillyFriday: Willy the 13th

This whole adventure started when I got the weird idea to turn “Free Willy” into a horror movie, complete with a Friday the 13^th Jason Voorhees hockey mask on the main character. So when it was time to follow up on the 12^th sequel, it seems obvious what should be the centerpiece of the poster...

Well, obvious to everybody but 13-year-old me, I guess.

I got the title right, but how it didn't occur to me to bring back the mask, I do not know. Skipping “Willy the 13th” would have been almost as bad as if the folks behind “The Fast and the Furious” don't heed the Internet and call the next installment “Fas10 Your Seatbelts.”

Then again, I thought “Avengers 4ever” seemed an obvious choice for what wound up being “Endgame.” But that worked out OK.

I guess in getting back to the scary whale vibe I opted to go with toxic waste mutating Willy. That seemed to be the go-to origin for a lot of characters in the '90s, especially with us becoming more environmentally conscious. Was I perhaps trying to impart some cautionary wisdom to my peers? Or was I just thinking of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

(Spoiler alert: It's the second one.)

Toxic waste followed the radiation that spawned the Hulk and Spider-Man and was said to have played a role in the rise of mutants like the X-Men. Later we moved on to genetic modification, like on the '90s Spider-Man cartoon, where everybody got their powers from some form of the MacGuffin-esque neogenic recombinator (right). Or neocombic regenerator. Or something.

Nowadays, nanotechnology is a popular boogeyman/power bestower, from the New 52 OMAC to Iron Man's Infinity War and Endgame armor.

(left, OMAC Vol. 4 #1, cover by Keith Giffen)