Mister Mind
Mister Mind is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, primarily as an enemy of Captain Marvel. Created by Otto Binder and C. C. Beck for Fawcett Comics, the character made a cameo appearance in Captain Marvel Adventures #22 before making his full first appearance in Captain Marvel Adventures #26. Mister Mind is a two-inch alien caterpillar-like being of high intelligence with telepathic powers who usually carries out his villainous plans through an organization called the Monster Society of Evil. The Society made its debut in Captain Marvel Adventures #22, and the resulting "Monster Society of Evil" story arc continued for two years in Captain Marvel Adventures, ending with issue #46.
Mister Mind appears in the DC Extended Universe films Shazam! and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, portrayed in CGI and voiced by director David F. Sandberg.
Publication history
Fawcett Comics
After a brief appearance in issue #26, Mister Mind is eventually revealed in Captain Marvel Adventures #27 to be a cartoonish alien worm with spectacles and a talkbox around his neck to amplify his voice.Despite his small size, Mister Mind continues to use his powers of intellect and telepathy to battle Captain Marvel in subsequent chapters of the serial, eventually recruiting numerous other allies ranging from Alligator-Men to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. "The Monster Society of Evil" serial concluded with Captain Marvel Adventures #46, in which Mind is captured and executed for crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials.
DC Comics
Fawcett ceased publication of Captain Marvel comics after settling a lawsuit from DC Comics in 1953. Twenty years later, DC acquired the rights to publish its own Captain Marvel stories under the title Shazam!, as well as the reprint rights to the Fawcett material. Mister Mind was reintroduced in a new story in Shazam! #2, which explained that he had survived his execution and hid while Captain Marvel and his allies were stuck in suspended animation for 20 years. Mister Mind would appear regularly as part of Captain Marvel's rogues gallery in his adventures in Shazam and World's Finest Comics through the 1970s and early 1980s. Mind also appeared, often with some form of the Monster Society of Evil, as a guest villain in other DC publications such as Justice League of America and DC Comics Presents. The final appearance of Mister Mind and the Monster Society of Evil in the original DC/Fawcett continuity was in All-Star Squadron #51–54, an arc written by Roy Thomas and his wife Dann that was chronologically Mind's first appearance and revealed the origin of his hatred of humanity and superheroes.DC reset its comics' continuity with the 12-issue miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985–86, and Mister Mind disappeared from DC publications for a decade. He re-emerged in The Power of Shazam! #13, now a more realistically depicted caterpillar-like being from the planet Venus possessing powers which include mind control, telepathy, and mental image projection. This Mind was the main villain of the second major story arc of The Power of Shazam!, and was depicted as the lead scout of Venusian worms looking to conquer the Earth. While Captain Marvel eventually destroys the other worms, Mind survives and becomes a recurring villain in The Power of Shazam!, JSA, and other DC publications, often forming a Monster Society of Evil to do his bidding as in the original serial. The weekly maxiseries 52 featured Mister Mind as the series' final major adversary. In this story, he gains the ability to evolve into a gigantic "Hyperfly", able to eat space and time and inadvertently creating a new DC Multiverse in the process.
Following 52, Mind appeared irregularly as a supervillain in DC comic series such as Action Comics, Booster Gold, and more. In 2007, cartoonist Jeff Smith, the creator of Bone, wrote and illustrated a four-issue miniseries, Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, which offered an updated take on the classic Fawcett story.
In 2011, DC again reset its continuity with The New 52. In subsequent stories, Mister Mind has appeared sparingly, mostly in cameo appearances as in Justice League #21 and Convergence: Shazam! #2. He appeared as one of the villains in DC's Shazam! ongoing comic series, with his first appearance in Shazam! #2.
Fictional character biography (chronological)
Pre-''Crisis''
Earth-Two
Mister Mind came to Earth during World War II, drawn by its radio broadcasts; he especially loved Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy. Upon learning that his beloved Charlie was not real, he decided to conquer the world instead. To this end, he formed the first Monster Society of Evil, which was merely a shadow of what was to come. He gathered known villains like Dummy, Mister Who, Nyola, Oom the Mighty, and Ramulus to make up the Monster Society of Evil. They succeeded in capturing Hawkgirl. Not long after its founding, the other villains tried to kill him and Mister Mind retreated to Earth-S. Without his leadership, the team was quickly defeated in battle by the All-Star Squadron.''Captain Marvel Adventures'': "The Monster Society of Evil" (Earth-S)
As a side-effect of the reality-altering Crisis on Infinite Earths, Mister Mind arrived in the universe of Earth-S sometime around 1846. His brilliant intellect, telepathic powers, and ruthlessness allowed him to conquer much of space, establishing bases on many different worlds as well as varied locations on Earth. He recruited supervillains, armies, and entire alien species to aid him in his attempt to conquer the Earth, and first relayed his information from the planetoid Punkus via radio. He began his reign of terror on Earth in 1943, boasting that he and the Monster Society of Evil would give Captain Marvel "nightmares from now on". This formed the basis of the plot for "The Monster Society of Evil" serial in Captain Marvel Adventures #22–46. Mind was not revealed as a worm until Captain Marvel Adventures #26.Mind had many and varied plans to conquer Earth, and to destroy Captain Marvel or his teenaged alter-ego, Billy Batson. But Captain Marvel stopped all of Mind's plans, dismantled all of his resources, and arrested, frightened away, or accidentally killed all of his henchmen. Reverse cliffhangers were used in the Monster Society stories, such as Mister Mind about to be crushed under a careless heel or about to be crushed in a paper roller. Finally, a desperate Mister Mind attacked Captain Marvel's alter ego Billy Batson with ether and left him unconscious. But he then realized that without his henchmen, he was practically helpless and unable to kill him. Captain Marvel soon captured Mind and had him tried and executed for killing 186,744 people.
''Shazam!'': Return of the Society
Shazam! #2 was Mister Mind's first appearance in a DC comic, and depicted his return to villainy. Although he had been sentenced to death in the electric chair, Mind's alien physiology proved resistant to the high voltage, and he entered a state of suspended animation that was mistaken for death. On the verge of being stuffed for display in a museum, he awakened, hypnotized the taxidermist into creating a duplicate, and escaped.Shortly after Captain Marvel's own return from suspended animation, he encountered Mister Mind trying to destroy the country with an expanding balloon-like weapon in St. Louis. With intelligence from a reformed Herkimer, Marvel succeeds in thwarting Mind's plan and capturing the worm.
Several future issues of Shazam! depict Mister Mind attempting to recruit new henchmen and reform the Monster Society of Evil, at one point even recruiting a displaced Lex Luthor from Earth-One. The Monster Society of Evil was briefly reformed in Shazam! #14.
An escaped Mister Mind, hungry for revenge, assembled a new, smaller group which included Doctor Sivana, his children Georgia and Sivana Jr, and Ibac. They attempted to attack the Marvel Family—Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Captain Marvel Jr.—with a death ray that created "dream" monsters using first evil thoughts and later the nightmares of Uncle Marvel. The Marvels end up defeating the Monster Society by convincing Uncle Marvel to dream up "dream" versions of the Marvels to fight the monsters.
''World's Finest Comics'': The Monster Society Strikes Back
Mister Mind reformed his Monster Society of Evil one last time in the classic continuity, in World's Finest Comics #264–267. Almost the entire Marvel Family had to unite to stop them—Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., and the three Lieutenant Marvels: Tall Marvel, Fat Marvel, and Hill Marvel. Their wicked plans were wide-ranging, beginning with an assault on Egypt, expanding to a scheme to reverse the entire Earth's topography, Oggar raising an evil army from the sands and dusts of Egypt for Black Adam to lead, and conquering hundreds of planets and using them to build an army of spaceships. Their plans culminated in a massive assault on the Rock of Eternity, home of the Marvels' benefactor, the wizard Shazam.''World's Funnest''
In the Elseworlds story Superman & Batman: World's Funnest, the two near-omnipotent imps Mister Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite engage in a tremendous duel that destroys many planes of reality. One of these appears to be a version of Earth-S. During their time there, they run into a version of the Monster Society of Evil. Mxyzptlk easily destroys them along with the rest of the universe, but eventually restores it.Post-''Crisis''
''Shazam! A New Beginning''
Mister Mind's return to the DC Universe in wake of Crisis was first hinted at in Roy Thomas' Shazam! A New Beginning. It closed with a defeated Dr. Sivana hiding out and drinking tequila in a Mexican dive bar. He ponders how he will defeat Captain Marvel when he sees a worm in the bottle and has the idea of using it as a weapon against the hero.Thomas' idea of Mister Mind being a mutated tequila worm was not followed up on and he was given a different origin in his next appearance.