George Tarleton

George Tarleton was an ordinary AIM technician subjected to radical mutagenic experiments by the organization, which grotesquely enlarged his skull and granted him vast psionic and computational abilities — transforming him into MODOK, a living weapon designed purely for killing and computation.

Stan Lee and Gene Colan introduced George Tarleton to Marvel readers in 1967's Tales of Suspense #93, and what a Silver Age debut it was — a character so entangled in Marvel's DNA that he's been turning up across 58 years of continuity, racking up 153 catalog appearances and a remarkable 10 key-issue designations along the way. His story is inseparable from some of Marvel's biggest names: he shares pages with Captain America, Tony Stark, and the monstrous M.O.D.O.K. himself, a rogues' gallery of icons that speaks to just how deep into Marvel's core mythology Tarleton reaches. You'll find him most often haunting the pages of Captain America and Hulk, which tells you everything about the kind of high-stakes, world-shaking corners of the Marvel Universe he inhabits. For collectors and readers who want to understand the hidden architecture behind Marvel's greatest threats, George Tarleton is an essential — and endlessly rewarding — figure to track down.