Square Enix’s upcoming Marvel’s Avengers features many of your favorites heroes from the film franchise, but it will also introduce a new villain with an enormous ego, or as some may say, a “big head”. As evidenced by the new trailer, M.O.D.O.K. will get his chance to defeat the Avengers, along with the help of his many minions in the A.I.M. organization.
M.O.D.O.K. may be a new face to game players and MCU fans, but the character has a long publication history. The top-heavy villain was first created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1967 when he first appeared in the Captain America portion of Tales of Suspense 93. Like many of the evil scientist of his day, George Tarleton started off as a lowly technician before ‘volunteering” for an experiment by his fellow co-workers at Advanced Idea Mechanics (Lee and Kirby loved acronyms if you haven’t noticed…).
From there, Tarleton’s head grows to an enormous size, and believe it or not, the initial experiment was designed to create a much more benign M.O.D.O.K., one with a C at the end of his name which stood for Mental Organism Designed Only for Computing. As these things go, once George sees his new appearance and his super human abilities, he adjust his name to include a K and a new moniker which now translates to Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing before taking control of the whole company.
After being defeated by Cap in his debut, he would go on to menace the star-spangled Avenger in a variety of stories in Steve Roger’s own title, take a trip “under the sea” with Prince Namor, and engage in a memorable battle with the Hulk before turning up as a main protagonist for the original Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) and Iron Man.
Most recently, M.O.D.O.K. got the animated treatment (where he was voiced by Sponge Bob himself, Tom Kenny) in Marvel’s Super Hero Squad, where he joined up with fellow bad guys Doctor Doom and the Red Skull to menace the goofy cartoon versions of the Avengers. There are still plans to bring an irreverent, more adult take on the character to Hulu (voiced by Patton Oswalt) in the form of a new animated series. The series was set to be part of a large block of Adult Swim-style programming featuring series based on Howard the Duck, Tigra & Dazzler, Hit Monkey, and The Offenders. Currently, only MODOK and Hit Monkey will continue as planned.
Marvel’s Avengers will be released on September 4, 2020 for PS4 and XBOX ONE. Check out the trailer below and get your first glimpse of the giant head in the metal suit.