The hive of the internet is abuzz with talk of Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, and the busiest of online bees are pollinating the cyber flowers with oodles of questions. They all want to know who will voice M.O.D.O.K. in the upcoming film. But the rest of the hive is humming with a question of its own:
Who the $%^& is M.O.D.O.K in the first place?
They can’t be blamed for their ignorance. After all, M.O.D.O.K. isn’t the best known of all super villains.
So Where Did M.O.D.O.K. Come From Anyway?
M.O.D.O.K. was originally a man named George Tarleton, who was born in Bangor, Maine. Red flag. Any Stephen King fan knows that evil shit always comes out of Maine. Apparently, Maine is the hub of all the world’s darkness. Even that jerk H.P. Lovecraft knew that New England was an evil place.
George Tarleton didn’t help with Maine’s less than stellar reputation. Tarleton worked as a technician for criminal organization for nerds called A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics). From the look of things, AIM is almost as bad of a work environment as Twitter in 2022. The eggheads at A.I.M. had just finished developing a mysterious object known at the Cosmic Cube, a “containment matrix” that was going to help the organization achieve their goal of world conquest. Sus. To study the cube further, the higher-ups at A.I.M. experimented on Tarleton with mutagenic compounds in order to turn him into an organic super-intelligence.
They were successful, and George Tarleton was turned into M.O.D.O.C. (Mental Organism Designed Only For Computing). However, M.O.D.O.C. (like any current Twitter employee) had a few complaints about his treatment at the company. He used his super intelligent mind in order to kill his creators and take over A.I.M., rechristening himself M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only For Killing) in the process. Under M.O.D.O.K.’s super-intelligent leadership, A.I.M. becomes a more significant threat than ever. Needless to say, S.H.I.E.L.D. has to sic their heroes on M.O.D.O.K. and his underlings all the time.
So What Can M.O.D.O.K. Do?
Mental Organism Designed Only For Killing might be a bit of a misnomer, as M.O.D.O.K. could do lots of different things if he only put his big ol’ mind to it. However, for a being with an intellect that is so vastly superior, he shows a surprising lack of creativity on this front. M.O.D.O.K. devotes most of him time to killing people and trying to take of the world. However, his creativity bleeds through with the variety of methods he uses to introduce people to their maker.
So obviously, M.O.D.O.K. is smart. Smart is an understatement. He has more processing power than Google. Comparing his mind to a super-computer doesn’t give him enough credit. If anything, he is more similar to a true A.I. He is a super-intelligence that has consciousness, something that does not exist at the human scale. He is able to use logic, intuition and a level that borders on precognition. He’s so smart that he can accurately predict the future. He also has hyperthymesia, which means that he can remember everything that ever happened to him. Not just everything he’s seen or read, everything. It’s a photographic memory on an unprecedented scale. He’s basically has Big Brain Energy. Lol nerd.
He can also use his Big Brain Energy to shoot energy beams out of his mind. How? Courtesy of A.I.M. He had his underlings build him a special headband that allows him to channel his mental energy into kinetic energy. In layman’s terms, he can blow stuff up with his thinky-thoughts. And that’s not all! M.O.D.O.K. is also a powerful telepath, and is able to contact people with his mind. He is also able to generate powerful force fields that are strong enough to withstand nuclear blasts. As a side effect of his mutations, he has a gigantic head. It’s so large that the rest of his body can’t support it, so he has to ride around on a hoverchair, which sounds pretty chill. The chair is equally no-chill because M.O.D.O.K. can use it to fire rockets and lasers at people, a perk which he uses often.
If that wasn’t bad enough, M.O.D.O.K. has the entirety of A.I.M.’s resources at his disposal. He has access to advanced weapons and technology, a team of (less smart) scientists, and a private army. Yikes. He uses A.I.M. facilities in order to grow clones of himself, which he uses to harvest organs. Ew. If he didn’t do this, he would die, as his own organs deteriorate more rapidly than the organs of other living things.
What Does M.O.D.O.K. Want?
A size 41 hat? An XXXL sized pillow? A kiss from a mouth his size? These are all good guesses, but no. M.O.D.O.K. is not really a creative guy, and he wants the same-old-same-old thing: world domination. He comes up with some pretty interesting ways of trying to get it, though. He pioneers a supervirus called Virus X, revives Hulk’s old foe Abomination, and even makes an army of genetically enhanced monkeys creatively known as “A.I. Monkeys.” Just what will this dude think up next?
We don’t exactly know what M.O.D.O.K.’s motivation will be in the new Ant Man film, but my guess is he’s either going to be after world domination, or perhaps some super technology that will give him a sort of synthetic enlightenment, which I am sure he will then use to take over the world. Again, it’s a pretty generic goal, but he’s not exactly M.O.D.O.O. (Mental Organism Designed Only For Originality), now is he?
(Featured Image: Marvel Entertainment)
