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Major spoilers for Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man episodes 3, 4, and 5 follow.

Greetings Popversians, and welcome to Lore Corner! Each week, video producer Ashley V. Robinson and staff writer Grant DeArmitt are going to take you deep into the preexisting lore behind some of pop culture's most exciting adaptations, such as Marvel's latest take on its most enduring character,Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Enjoy! 

Five episodes in to Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man on Disney+, how can you not love Lonnie Lincoln? The character we first assumed was a bit old jock becomes more liable every episode, constantly putting others before himself and subverting the meathead expectations his position on the football team might give fans. Here's the thing, though: loving Lonnie Lincoln is about to get a whole lot more sad.

As we've already gotten hints toward, the situations that Lonnie finds himself in are forcing him to make more and more dubious decisions, and as fans familiar with his comic book inspiration already known, those dubious decisions lead down a much worse path. We're going to be talking about that in just a moment, but first, let's answer the question...

Who is Lonnie Lincoln in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man?

Lonnie Lincoln is voiced by Eugene Byrd. He's one of the Rockford Bales High gang we meet in the first episode and, right away, we see why so many people like him. He is a star athlete and boyfriend to one of the school's main crushes, but despite his popularity, Lonnie is kind, warm, funny, and even humble. Unfortunately, Lonnie's little brother gets involved with an uptown group of ruffians, the 110th Street Gang, and Lonnie has to join up to save his brother's skin.

Over the course of five episodes, we watch Lonnie get more and more into the 110th Street Gang, taking part in more of their illicit activities and letting his social and school life slip as a result. Lonnie's commitment to the group becomes firmer than ever at the end of episode 5, when Lonnie makes an impressive showing in a fight between 110th Street and a rival gang. At the end of the fray, the 110th Street boss gives Lonnie a new nickname:

"Tombstone."

If that name sounds familiar, it's because it's the supervillain identity of the character called Lonnie Lincoln in Marvel Comics, pieces of whose story are scattered throughout Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

What happened to Tombstone in Marvel Comics?

Alonzo Thompson Lincoln first appeared in 1987's Web of Spider-Man #36, created by Gerry Conway and Alex Saviuk. Lincoln was introduced as a Black man with a pigment disorder, rendering his skin pale and gray, and ostracizing him from the people he grew up with. Lincoln thereby grew up angry and mean, eventually turning to a life of crime on the streets of New York. But Lonnie was no simple muscle-for-hire; he would become one of the most powerful forces in the NYC underworld, owing partially to the kind of accident that only happens in the world of superheroes.

In Web of Spier-Man #66, Lonnie Lincoln was accidentally locked in a chamber with a strange mutagen known as Diox-3. Rather than killing him, the substance transformed Lonnie, giving him a host of powers (which we'll talk about later) and putting him at the top of the list of New York's most deadly criminals. Some 35 years later, Lonnie AKA Tombstone is still one of the most feared characters in Marvel's underworld, taking part in recent company-wide events such as Gang War 

How powerful is Tombstone in Marvel Comics?

To be honest, pretty damn powerful, especially for someone who operates on what Marvel fans call "street level," that is, stories that run on elements of crime and vigilanteism rather than the global or even cosmic adventures that Iron Man or the Silver Surfer are frequently on, respectively.

In the comics, Tombstone's powers consist of Luke Cage-like bulletproof skin, super-strength, and even heightened combat skills. This makes him a powerful crime boss and rival of characters like Spider-Man and Daredevil, but for much of his comic book history, Lonnie AKA Tombstone has been proven to be even more useful (and let's face it, fun) as a right-hand man, a bodyguard that will go toe-to-toe with one of Marvel's super-combatants.

At least, that's how Sony characterized him in Into the Spider-Verse.

Who voices Tombstone in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse?

Oh yeah, did we forget to mention? Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man isn't the only wall-crawler project that Lonnie Lincoln has appeared in in recent memory. In fact, it's not even the only animated one. Tombstone appeared as the bodyguard/fixer for Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin, in the Sony feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Tombstone is voiced by Marvin Jones III, and the character is a whole lot less lovable than the Lonnie Lincoln we've been watching on Disney+. Content to be an enhanced enforcer for an objectively evil character, this guy isn't given much of a backstory at all, and even if he was, we'd doubt it would be as tragic as the one in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

And speaking of tragedy...

Why is Tombstone called Tombstone in Marvel Comics?

That's not only an excellent question, it's an opportunity to see just how different the character we met in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is compared to his Marvel Comics inspiration. In the comics, the brutal gangster known as Tombstone is named such partially as a reference to his middle name, Thompson. Depending on which comics you're reading, the nickname could've also sprung from his metahuman durability. However, in certain comic book interpretations of the character, he had the nickname even before his exposure to the toxic substance that gave him his invulnerability.

Consider how different that is from how Lonnie gets his nickname in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Big Donovan, leader of the 110th Street Gang, gives him the name as a signifier of how tough Lonnie proved himself to be during a rumble with The Scorpions. Ironically, if Lonnie actually had superpowers by this point in the series, he wouldn't have seemed so brave in the fight, and may not have acquired the (complimentary) moniker.

Even Lonnie's nickname (which we suppose will eventually be a supervillain name) has a hint of tragic irony to it. Of the many bits of Marvel lore that we're going to be covering as this series goes on, Lonnie's is perhaps the most painful - the fact that we know he's doomed for supervillainhood makes his current status as one of the most likeable characters in Your Frienfly Neighborhood Spider-Man is proof positive.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (featuring the tragic story of Lonnie Lincoln) is streaming now on Disney+.

Marvel's most reliable superhero has proven he can do a whole lot more than just 'whatever a spider can.' Swing into Spidey's history with Popverse's 10 best Spider-Man comic books, our Spider-Man movie watch order, and if you want our opinions on the subject, read our articles ranking Spider-Man's actors and Spider-Man's girlfriends.