Human Top

The Human Top, born Dave Cannon, is an American criminal known for his innate ability to spin at remarkable speeds. He is in fact able to spin so fast as to not be visible to the naked eye. In between his criminal acts, Cannon has also worked as an ice dancer and professional wrestler, among other odd jobs.

Biography

The Human Top pulled off several successful heists for years, beginning as early as 1959. In 1963, he faced his first real opposition when Giant-Man and the Wasp attempted to stop his robbery of a department store. But the Top was easily able to outmaneuver them, running circles around the clumsy Giant-Man, who hadn't gotten used to moving around in his 12-foot form. Though Giant-Man was easily defeated, Top rightly deduced that he would be back. The Top next set his sights on civil-defense plans stored in a nearby federal building, aiming to sell them to a communist agent in town. Unfortunately for him, not only were the plans outdated and worthless, but the agent had been under heavy governmental surveillance for months. Giant-Man used this advantage to intercept the Top at his meeting, catching him with glue-covered gloves to keep him in place. The Human Top was taken into custody. He escaped from prison just a few months later and immediately robbed a bank. Afterward, he noticed that Giant-Man and the Wasp were on the case once more, and stealthily followed them back to their lab. He ambushed the heroes, stealing Giant-Man's belt of size-changing capsules and becoming giant-sized himself. He threw the normal-sized Giant-Man into a closet and locked the door before capturing the small Wasp in a jar and fleeing. Top relished the power he felt from being twice his normal size, but it wouldn't last long. Giant-Man soon caught up to him on a rooftop, and they fought until Wasp escaped from her confines and caused the ceiling underneath the Top to crumble with the help of some termites. The fall knocked him unconscious, and Wasp slipped him a shrinking capsule to return him to normal size, allowing the two to easily bring him to custody.

The Top was released a few months later on parole, and emerged vengeful toward Giant-Man for defeating him on multiple occasions. One day he spotted Giant-Man and Wasp on the street, and quietly followed them using his spinning ability to become effectively invisible to the human eye. He overheard Giant-Man mention that they were going to New Mexico to speak with the Hulk and attempt to convince him to rejoin the Avengers. Top followed the duo on the plane trip over, and once there he was able to locate the Hulk and point him towards Giant-Man. The two giants fought in a small abandoned town as Top also got the attention of military forces led by Thunderbolt Ross, who had tried and failed to stop the Hulk since his creation. Top informed them that the Hulk was in the town, and they initiated a small atomic strike in an attempt to defeat the menace once and for all. But Hulk jumped high into the air and caught the shell, tossing it as far away as he could. It exploded in a large but harmless blast, though the powerful shockwave caught Hulk and knocked him to the ground, returning him to his human form of Bruce Banner in the distance. Upon seeing Hulk catch the bomb, Human Top fled in terror.

Dave Cannon remained in hiding for several months, until he spotted a particularly large Giant-Man roaming the New York countryside. Top piloted a small airplane, attempting to crash it directly into Giant-Man and kill him, but the hero managed to block the attack. Cannon fell from the plane, but Giant-Man caught him safely, knocking himself out on a tree as he fell. Giant-Man didn't recognize Cannon without his Human Top costume, and Top fled the scene unscathed. Later, he realized that he would be a lot more potent with his own power of flight, and developed a new helium-enhanced costume to grant him that ability when used in conjunction with his natural spinning. He posed as a reporter to infiltrate Giant-Man and Wasp's high-rise apartment and attacked them. He abducted Wasp and flew out the window, leaving the awkwardly adjusting Giant-Man behind. Top flew Wasp back to a specially arranged construction site, where he had built a mock village over a huge trap designed to capture Giant-Man. The trap was mechanically powered to shut when Giant-Man fell into it, and contained an intense freezing mechanism to quickly freeze the prisoner in ice. Wasp covertly used her cybernetic helmet to communicate with a nearby wasp and inform Giant-Man of her location. He arrived soon after, and fell into Top's trap as intended. A frantic Wasp followed him in, and Top froze the two, creating a huge Giant-Man-shaped ice statue, inside of which Hank and Janet cuddled together at normal size to keep warm. Thinking himself victorious, Top pulled the statue out, allowing Giant-Man and Wasp to escape and knock him into the trap instead. They quickly pulled him out, freezing him just well enough for the police to retrieve him.

Within a few months, Top was out of prison. He was soon coerced by Doctor Doom's emotion machine into attacking the Baxter Building on the day of the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm. A veritable legion of villains fought a similarly powerful force of heroes defending the Baxter Building. He faced Quicksilver of the Avengers in a challenge of speed, but the lightfooted mutant proved to be Top's superior. In the end, Reed Richards used a device provided by Uatu to transport all of the villains back slightly in time and wipe their memories of these events. Reed and Sue Storm were thus successfully and peacefully married.