Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the primary movie within the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Part 5, promising to kick off a three-year arc of adventures centered round the specter of the villainous Kang the Conqueror.
However as Kang overshadows Quantumania, there’s one other character in his shade. He’s an evil genius, a grotesque laboratory experiment, and he’s among the many best-beloved Marvel supervillains (for being absolutely the worst).
He’s MODOK.
Who’s MODOK in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania?
Marvel Studios’ trailers for Quantumania have been gentle on MODOK sightings — we’ve seen him all armored up, whizzing round firing lasers, however except for blink-or-you’ll-miss-it moments, the total glory of how bizarre MODOK appears to be like has been saved beneath wraps. Nevertheless, it appears probably he’ll be allied with Kang in a roundabout way, one of many foes over which Scott Lang should triumph.
MODOK can also be performed by Corey Stoll, which provides us an enormous trace as to his doable MCU origin. Stoll performed Darren Cross, aka Yellowjacket, the principle villain of Ant-Man (2015). The final we noticed of him, he was violently shrinking away into nothing after Scott Lang broken his shrinking go well with to maintain him from killing his daughter, Cassie, and her new stepdad. However now, because of Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), we all know that for those who shrink down far sufficient you make it to the Quantum Realm, a wierd world hidden throughout the subatomic constructions of the universe. It appears doable, even probably, that Stoll continues to be taking part in Darren Cross in Quantumania, and no matter’s occurred to him within the Quantum Realm since final we noticed him, it’s turned him into the MCU’s model of MODOK.
Who’s MODOK in Marvel Comics?
MODOK first appeared in 1967’s Tales of Suspense #94, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. His existence started as a poor human take a look at topic of the researchers within the mad science cabal recognized to the Marvel Universe as AIM (Superior Concept Mechanics). AIM’s scientists reworked that human into the proper weapon and furnished him together with his personal acronym-based title: the Psychological Organism Designed Just for Killing.
And, as MODOK himself bellowed at Captain America in his first look, the scientists did their work “too properly.” MODOK subsequently took over AIM, and reigned the group supreme for a few years. His unique incarnation is all about taking part in up his grotesque look as being the consequence of his enhanced intelligence (he’s all mind and no brawn — you get it). All the specter of a supergenius and a reasonably first rate psychic, packaged up in a hovering harness that allowed him to focus his “psychological power” into laser beams that shot from his brow.
However nowadays, virtually no one does a severe MODOK story anymore. It’s simply onerous getting round the truth that his design appears to be like fairly foolish within the artwork model of right now’s comics. And so his trendy area of interest is as certainly one of Marvel’s foremost joke villains, a personality who lets writers and artists indulge within the bombast of basic comics speeches and explosions, and provides their heroes an opportunity to bulldoze over a complete pushover.
After which there’s the joke of the MODOK variant. When content material requirements look down on utilizing the phrase “killing” in a youngsters’ present, MODOK has grow to be grow to be the Psychological Organism Designed Just for Kicking-butt, or MODOC — the Psychological Organism Designed Just for Computing (or Conquest).
We’ve seen MODOT (Speaking), MODOG (Genocide), MODORD (Curler Derby), MODAM (a girl MODOK, mom of a MODOK child), and the good-looking, shirtless BRODOK, the Bio-Robotic Organism Designed Overwhelmingly for Kissing, whose head was solely simply noticeably bigger than the human normal.
So it’s no marvel that’d he’d crop up in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — he’s the proper butt of a joke for one of many MCU’s jokiest sub-franchises.