Mad Thinker
| Mad Thinker | |
|---|---|
Mad Thinker's first appearance in Fantastic Four #15, next to his Awesome Android. Art by Jack Kirby | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Fantastic Four (Vol.1) #15 |
| Created by | Stan Lee Jack Kirby |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | unrevealed |
| Team affiliations | the Maggia, Puppet Master (deceased), Egghead (deceased) |
| Notable aliases | Dr. José Santini, The Thinker |
| Abilities | Extrardinary genius with knowledge of technology centuries beyond conventional science. Can project his mind into the body of his Awesome Android and other robots. |
The Mad Thinker is a Marvel comics supervillain. He is a genius specializing in evil robotics and usually comes up with very elaborate infallible devious plans that unfold like clockwork (until they don't).
The Mad Thinker was introduced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Fantastic Four #15 (June, 1963). His real name and origin has never been revealed.
Character biography
The Mad Thinker made his debut fighting the Fantastic Four. He once attempted to take over New York City using the Baxter Building as his base and all organized crime members as his lieutenants. He trapped the Fantastic Four in the lower quarters of the building but was eventually caught, after being stopped by an unforeseen factor: the building's mailman, Willie Lumpkin.
It seemed that his primary objective had not really been to take over the city but to manipulate organized crime into helping him get into the Baxter building so that he could indulge his intellectual avarice by stealing the technology of Reed Richards. In that sense, the Fantastic Four did not really defeat him, they only defeated his pretext. The Mad Thinker would gladly get sent to prison for a peek at the secrets of what he considered the greatest mind in the world.
Prisons don't do well to hold the Mad Thinker and he escapes from all levels of incarceration with little difficulty. Often he doesn't even bother escaping, but simply transmits his thoughts into a robot body at one of his secret bases. He can not only do his work, but he has the perfect alibi—he's already in prison.
The Mad Thinker became interested in the young supergroup called the New Warriors, and posed them a riddle when they first formed. In the final issue of the series, the answer to the riddle was revealed: the Mad Thinker's nephew had accidentally gained uncontrollable superpowers from his lab, killing his mother in the process. Now, the Thinker wanted them to help him. Presumably they did so using the Neoneutralizer they acquired in that adventure.
Since then, the Mad Thinker has been seen battling She-Hulk in a prison escape attempt. However, this Mad Thinker was revealed to be merely an android duplicate of the real Mad Thinker, created for purposes as yet unknown.
Although willing to kill heroes who get in his way, there are lines the Mad Thinker will not cross. A partnership with the Wizard was cut short after the kidnapping of the child Franklin Richards. The Wizard wished to experiment upon Franklin and learn the secret of his vast powers. The Mad Thinker, however, claimed that this had an almost certain probability of Franklin's death. When the Wizard acknowledged this but decided to continue anyway, an angry Thinker dissolved the partnership and helped lead Franklin's godfather, The Thing, to where the Wizard had the boy hostage. Currently, the Mad Thinker has himself allied with the Puppet Master, planning to strike against the Fantastic Four yet again. When the Puppet Master asks him about his anger, he replies that "it isn't repressed any more." He has built a device to ampliphy the Puppet Master's power so that they can escalate a battle between the two rival factions in the Super Hero Civil War.
Powers and abilities
The Mad Thinker has no superhuman powers. However, he is an extraordinary genius with knowledge of technology centuries beyond conventional science. He has a photographic memory and can rapidly organize and correlate vast amounts of information and perceive non-obvious patterns. He has the facilities and means to create all manner of sophisticated weaponry, androids, armor, and vehicles.
His analytical, mathematical, and geometrical abilities are of a sophisticated order not commonly found on Earth. He is particularly adept at robotics and artificial intelligence. He has constructed his own android, The Awesome Android, and once resurrected the original Human Torch. In addition to his own achievements he has stolen much of the secret technology of Reed Richards, back in the incident when he took over the Baxter building.
Ultimate Thinker
In the Ultimate Marvel imprint, the Baxter Building was the home of a Think Tank of young geniuses, funded by the US Government. A girl named Rhona Burchill was considered for the project, but was denied due to her borderline psychotic tendencies. Enraged, she went home and concocted an accelerant that would allow her to think many times faster. Needing more brain power to handle the drug, she anaesthetized her brother, and using a crude surgical technique, cut out portions of his brain and grafted them onto her own. Claiming that 'You don't need a Think Tank - You just need a Thinker,' she attacked the Baxter Building and laid a trap for the Fantastic Four. When she tells her story in her now stream of consciousness speech pattern to the Four, Reed calls her mad. She replies, 'If it's mad to think the unthinkable, then I'm the Maddest Thinker you ever met'. Based on this comment, she has since been referred to as the Mad Thinker. She also appeared as the villain in the Ultimate FF/Ultimate X-Men miniseries, which showed her with an android resembling the Awesome Android.