5 Reasons You Should Care About … The Masters of Evil

On last week’s Agents of SHIELD, Cal (Kyle MacLachlan), whom nerds may know better from the comics as Mr. Hyde, assembled a team of random supervillains (Angar the Screamer!) in a revenge play against Director Coulson. It reminded me of Marvel’s best-known team of random rotating supervillains, the Masters of Evil. And with Daniel Bruhl (Inglourious Basterds) believed to be cast as Baron Zemo in Captain America: Civil War, now seems like a good time to familiarize oneself with the nasty brigade.

The basics: The Masters of Evil were created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Chic Stone and first appeared in 1964’s Avengers #6, during a time when villain teams kept some variation of evil in their name to let obtuse Silver Age readers know where they stood. See also the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (X-Men) and DC’s Legion of Super-Villains.

1. Seemingly anyone can be a Master of Evil: Past Masters include both Barons Zemo (Heinrich and Helmut), two Black Knights, the Melter, Radioactive Man (the green Chinese scientist, not the Simpsons character), the Enchantress and her Executioner, Wonder Man, Ultron, Klaw, Whirlwind, Egghead, Moonstone, the Scorpion, Tiger Shark, the Beetle, the Shocker, the Absorbing Man, Blackout, Black Mamba, Fixer, Goliath, Grey Gargoyle, Mr. Hyde, Screaming Mimi, Titania, the Wrecking Crew, Yellowjacket, Doctor Octopus, Gargantua, Jackhammer, Powderkeg, Puff Adder, Justine Hammer, Cyclone, Flying Tiger, Man-Killer, Aqueduct, Bison, Blackwing, Boomerang, Cardinal, Constrictor, Dragonfly, Eel, Icemaster, Joystick, Lodestone, Man-Ape, Quicksand, Scorcher, Shatterfist, Shockwave, Slyde, Sunstroke, Supercharger, Gypsy Moth, Hydro-Man, Machinesmith, Max Fury, Princess Python, Vengeance, Black Talon, Brothers, Grimm, Carrion, Crossfire, Diablo, Firebrand, Griffin, Killer Shrike, Lady Stilt-Man, Pink Pearl, Squid, Taskmaster, Bi-Beast, Madcap, Ringer, Madame Masque, Daimon Hellstrom, Cullen Bloodstone and Lightmaster. Not gonna lie, I have no idea who half these people are, but I assure you they’re all evil. EVIL!

2. They once trashed Avengers Mansion: The fourth incarnation of the Masters, gathered by Helmut Zemo, was so large they managed to outnumber and overwhelm the Avengers, taking over their base of operations, torturing Jarvis the butler, beating Hercules into a coma, kidnapping Captain America and leaving Wasp the only Avenger left standing. The team inevitably crumbled due to clashing agendas and egos, especially between the younger Zemo and Moonstone.

3. They turn good guys bad: In his very first appearance in Avengers #9, Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man, was pitted against the Avengers as a pawn of Zemo. He originally died in that issue but was brought back nearly a decade later in 1972’s Avengers #102. Another Avenger who once joined the Masters was Dane Whitman, the Black Knight, who infiltrated the team to defeat them from the inside. Whitman is the nephew of the previous Black Knight, Nathan Garrett, who was one of the original Masters.

4. And bad guys good: After Onslaught, when the Fantastic Four and Avengers got sucked into a pocket dimension for a year, a new superhero team emerged called the Thunderbolts, who turned out to be the Masters of Evil in disguise. Some of the team’s members went native and ended up becoming legitimate good guys, including Songbird (formerly Screaming Mimi), and the Beetle. Beetle, aka Mach V, is used to hilarious effect as Boomerang’s parole officer in Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber’s much-missed Superior Foes of Spider-Man series. As the Thunderbolts, Zemo’s team ended up fighting a separate Masters of Evil organized by Justine Hammer, daughter of Justin Hammer, industrialist and foe of Tony Stark.

5. They made the Thunderbolts name stick: A book with the Thunderbolts title has been published fairly consistently since the original series by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley debuted in 1997, with slight tweaks to the concept along the way (and a rather dubious one in which the book became about an underground supervillain fight club). After Civil War, they became a team of unreformed supervillains on tight, Norman Osborn-controlled leashes. After Siege, they became Luke Cage’s team of reformed baddies. And after A vs. X, they became the Red Hulk’s team of anti-heroes.

Read this: “Avengers Under Siege” by Roger Stern and John Buscema (Avengers #270-276), the 1986 storyline in which the Masters trash Avengers Mansion. Also read Busiek and Bagley’s original run on Thunderbolts.

Watch that: Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, which adapted a number of Masters of Evil stories, including “Avengers Under Siege.”

Dan Grote’s new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He has been writing for The Matt Signal since 2014. He and Matt have been friends since the days when making it to issue 25 guaranteed you a foil cover.

Oh Warren, You and Your Ideas

Writer Warren Ellis launches a new volume of Moon Knight for Marvel this week, with art by Declan Shalvey. In many ways, Ellis is the perfect writer for this character, whom he previously worked with in a six-issue run on Secret Avengers in 2011. Ellis is a man who loves throwing high-concept, futuristic, pseudoscientific ideas at the wall to see if they stick, and Moon Knight is the vessel of vengeance for an Egyptian moon god or something. In a recent CBR interview, Ellis said of writing MK, “You can get really weird. Also, you can provide, as an entire plotline, the sentence ‘punching ghosts,’ and nobody bats an eyelid.” Stop. You had me at hello, I’m Warren Ellis.

As we look to Moon Knight’s future, let us also look to the past, to but a small sampling of Ellis’ most outré ideas:

The alien race that killed its own god (Excalibur): In 1994, Marvel gave Ellis the then-third-tier X-book Excalibur to infuse with his dark, distinctly British sensibility. Among his first acts was creating the snarky but haunted spook Pete Wisdom and teaming him up with not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman Kitty Pryde. Together they discovered Wisdom's employer, Black Air, was experimenting on an alien race called the Uncreated, self-named because they killed their own deity as a means to conquer their inferiority complex. After doing so, the race traveled the stars looking to exterminate any lifeforms that did not embrace their atheism. Ellis next used the Uncreated in 1995's Starjammers miniseries, in which the titular space pirates defeated the nasties by projecting an image of their god, leading the Uncreated to commit seppuku. (For more on Ellis’ Excalibur run, read Matt’s Recommended Reading column from last May.)

The most obvious visual representation of Darwinism ever? (Storm 1-4): Ellis and Terry Dodson did a four-issue Storm mini in early 1996 that picked up a few dangling Morlock/Gene Nation plot threads from earlier in the ’90s. Storm is shunted into an alternate dimension run by Colossus’ brother Mikhail Rasputin, last seen flooding the Morlock tunnels and disappearing with the undercity dwellers. In Rasputin’s pocket world, where time moves in erratic patterns, the Morlocks were trained to become Gene Nation terrorists by climbing The Hill. Literally, every denizen of this world had to scale and survive a giant hill to prove their fitness and worth to Rasputin.

The bowel disrupter (Transmetropolitan): “Now, what setting? Watery, loose … prolapse.” One of Ellis’ greatest triumphs and crazy-idea farms is this 60-issue Vertigo series starring Spider Jerusalem, a futuristic Hunter S. Thompson whose work for The Word uncovers the dirty deeds of one president after another and puts a big old target on his back. It’s a near-future world in which people fight for the right to change species and there’s a children’s show called “Sex Puppets.” There’s also a gun that makes people poop themselves, which Jerusalem uses to threaten stripper turned “filthy assistant” Channon Yarrow and actually uses on the president known as The Beast in issue #4 in 1997.

Superman and Batman as a gay power couple (The Authority): Ellis ported Superman analogue Apollo and Batman analogue Midnighter from Stormwatch to The Authority. In their new book, the two were revealed to be a gay couple. Back in 1999, this didn't happen all that often, and so the book received a GLAAD award. Arguably these two paved the way for other gay couples in comics such as Northstar and Kyle Jinadu, Batwoman and Maggie Sawyer, and Wiccan and Hulkling.

Right-tool-for-the-job expert-dispatch service (Global Frequency): This 2002-04 Wildstorm book may be the best example of what happens when Ellis favors concepts over characters. Global Frequency was a 1,001-member organization (about on par with Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers cast) of the world’s foremost experts in their field, who are called in as crises warrant based on field of expertise and proximity. In a way it was like a super-serious version of G.I. Joe, with a mix of military, intelligence, scientists, ex-cons and the like all working to save the world, except the characters didn’t stick around long enough for anyone to decipher who the Shipwreck and Roadblock analogues were. Even the artists changed from issue to issue. Also it was almost a TV show.

The guy who buggers cars (Two-Step): In 2003-04, Ellis wrote a quickie three-issue miniseries for Wildstorm with Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti about a bored, cheeky London camgirl named Rosi and a zen gun-for-hire named Tony who run afoul of a gang whose trademark is having artificially large wedding tackle. Among their number is a Baby Huey of a man named Ron who enjoys having sex with cars to the point where they explode. According to TLC’s My Strange Addiction, this is a real thing.

Having Iron Man inside you (Iron Man: Extremis): In 2005-06, Ellis got to tinker with Iron Man's origin, tying the creation of the first Iron Man suit to the war in Afghanistan as part of a six-issue arc that introduces the concept of Extremis, a nanotech virus that allows fir the constant healing and enhancing of the body in the latest attempt to re-create the Super Soldier Serum that transformed Steve Rogers into Captain America. Tony infects himself with Extremis and in so doing becomes one with Iron Man, allowing parts of it into his bones and give his brain a complete upgrade. Elements of the Extremis story were used in the Iron Man movies, including the updated origin story.

Supervillain marketing (Thunderbolts 110-121): Ellis took over Thunderbolts after Civil War in 2007-08. During that period, the ’Bolts were Colorado’s Initiative superteam and were run by a Tommy Lee Jones-looking Norman Osborn. Osborn used his business acumen (when he wasn’t using his crazy acumen) to market the team through Saturday morning cartoon commercials, brainwashing kids into rooting for psychotic killers like Bullseye, Venom and the Strucker twin who was in love with his dead sister.

Honorable mention: Warren’s novel ideas (Crooked Little Vein, 2007; Gun Machine, 2013): Ellis’ two published novels are every bit as idea-rich as his comics. Without going too deep into either, it should be noted that in Crooked Little Vein, the two main characters inject saline into their genitals to artificially swell them and then have sex, and in Gun Machine, a Wall Street financier explains that the key to the future of financial-market real estate is pingback, the time it takes information to transmit from a given location, to ensure the fastest, most competitive buying and selling.