Mole Man

Mole Man
Mole Man. Art by Frank Cho.
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Fantastic Four (1st series) #1 (Nov 1961)
Created by	Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
In-story information
Alter ego	Harvey Rupert Elder
Team affiliations	Subterranea Outcasts
Partnerships	Thing, Hulk, partner of Kala, former ally of the Red Ghost
Notable aliases	Dr Wrong
Abilities	Highly developed "radar senses", to help his weak normal vision; has developed a fighting style resembling the Japanese martial art of bōjutsu

The Mole Man is a comic book supervillain that exists in Marvel Comics' main shared universe. He first appeared in Fantastic Four (Volume 1) #1, and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Fictional character biography

The Mole Man was originally Harvey Rupert Elder, an American nuclear engineer and explorer. Elder was socially shunned due to a combination of his abrasive personality and his homely, dwarfish appearance. Furthermore, his fellow explorers ridiculed him for his eccentric, crackpot theories regarding a Hollow Earth. In 1956, while following the group of explorers called the Monster Hunters, he stumbled upon Monster Island, which was at the time a base of the Deviant Warlord Kro (at the time, Monster Island was located near Japan, although other stories place it in the Bermuda Triangle; some issues of X-Men have portrayed them as two distinct separate locations).

When Elder fell into a massive cave leading deep into the underground realm of Subterranea, he decided his theories had finally been vindicated. However, he suffered permanent damage to his eyes when he gazed directly upon a highly reflective deposit of diamonds. Partially blind and apparently secluded from the surface world forever, Elder dubbed himself the Mole Man and began exploring his new home. He eventually became the ruler of the branch of Subterraneans now known as the Moloids, and the ruler of much of Subterranea and the caverns of Monster Isle. He used the Deviant-derived creatures and technology that he found in Subterranea to strike back at the outer world in numerous attempts to rule or humble the world that had rejected him.

The Mole Man conducted attacks on the surface world by destroying power plants until he was opposed by the Fantastic Four in their first adventure on Monster Isle. The Mole Man apparently destroyed Monster Isle in an atomic blast, although it was seen on several other occasions.^[1] The Mole Man's Deviant-bred monstrous mutates, collectively known as the "Mole Man's Monsters", include the three-headed Tricephalous, the horned Megataur, and the flying bird-insect creature known only as "Skreeal". The Mole Man also has a group of superhuman allies called the Outcasts.

The Mole Man later stole buildings from New York City, but was thwarted by the Fantastic Four and apparently killed.^[2] With the Red Ghost, he next battled the Avengers and tried to use a machine that caused earthquakes to take over the world, however Giant-Man shrunk down to ant-size and sabotaged the machine.^[3] Mole Man was among the criminals later assembled by Doctor Doom to attack Reed and Sue's wedding.^[4] Mole Man then fought a war against Tyrannus.^[5] Mole Man used the original X-Men as pawns in his war against Tyrannus.^[6] The Mole Man later trapped the Fantastic Four in a house that blinded them.^[7] Mole Man continued to fight a war with Tyrannus.^[8]

He later teamed with Kala, the queen of the Subterranean Netherworlders, and fell in love with Kala. He plotted to destroy the surface world, but was betrayed by Kala and Tyrannus.^[9] Some time later, Mole Man and Kala were betrothed to be married. Namor, the Atlantean prince, helped out the Moloids when a conquering force was slaughtering many while using them for slave labor.

Much later, Mole Man befriended the Thing and then plotted to raise a new continent at the cost of sinking California, but was again thwarted by the Fantastic Four.^[10] He was captured by Lava Men later.^[11] Mole Man then attempted to bring peace to Subterranea, but was attacked by Fantastic Four clones.^[12] He contended with Skrulls, and tried unsuccessfully to capture a Skrull technotroid egg.^[13]

Mole Man later allied with Grotesk and Tyrannus against Deviants led by Brutus. He aided the Hulk in fighting Brutus's Deviants. Together with his allies, he triumphed over Brutus, and welcomed back Kala as his consort.^[14]

Mole Man became involved with the West Coast Avengers when one of his monsters attacked Los Angeles. His Moloids were caught in the middle of a Skrull revenge scheme on the Fantastic Four. A replacement Fantastic Four, consisting of Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, the Hulk and Wolverine were tricked into entering the Mole Man's territory and battling his forces.

He later battled the West Coast Avengers along with the U-Foes during the Acts of Vengeance, but their attempts met with failure.

Reformation

Later, he surrendered his desire for conquest and revenge and began assembling a sanctuary for others who had been rejected by the surface world. His two attempts to do so led to the deaths of most of the visitors to his sanctuaries. Briefly, the Mole Man allowed Adam Warlock's superhero team, the Infinity Watch, to use Monster Island (more specifically, a castle located on its grounds) as a base, on the reasoning that they could help protect him from any meddlers, which they did on several occasions. They proved helpful when the United Nations invaded the island. The Watch, primarily Gamora, drove away the invading force with an absolute minimum of harm. The Avengers assisted with the United Nations, then recognized the Mole Man's rulership over the island.

Mole Man tended to keep out of the way when the cosmic plans went on. The Watch occupied the Monster Island castle until their dissolution as a team. Following their departure, the Mole Man apparently returned to his solitary, vengeful existence. Aside from occasional fits of hostility, he seems for the most part content to rule his subterranean kingdom, and for the past few years his surface activities have mostly been limited to reacting to threats (real or imagined) to his people.

Attacking Again

In one incident, he was causing property damage purely to help the Moloids, whose water and food had become polluted.^{[volume & issue needed]} He appeared in The Mighty Avengers having led an attack on New York, claiming retaliation for his underground home, which he says is destroyed. He was humiliated by a female-formed Ultron, who destroyed his remaining monsters, and he was arrested.^[15]

Mole Man was also behind a series of Chupacabra attacks in Puerto Rico. His motive was to protect the blood-drinking race from extinction.^[16]

In Runaways, the Runaways are fighting a huge tall sky-scraper sized monster. When Victor suggests Nico shrink it, Nico mentions she already used that spell on Mole Man.^[17]

In Incredible Hulk 605, Mole Man witnessed the return of the Hulk, which pleased him. However, when the Hulk was defeated and his stone ship destroyed, various creatures from planet Sakaar were released into the underground. Mole Man trained the alien beasts and lead them to attack New York once more. However, the creatures were really waiting for that arrival of Skaar, the Hulk's son. However, Tyrannus rose to challenge Mole Man's claim and used magic to pervert the aliens so that they could destroy the surface. Skaar went into a berserker rage and thus both Tyrannus and Mole Man fled.^[18]

Powers and abilities

The Mole Man has no true superhuman abilities. He is an extraordinary genius, with knowledge of technology centuries beyond conventional science. He was able to master alien principles of technology totally foreign to his culture and environment. Due to his poor eyesight, his senses have naturally compensated to the degree that they are, like those of Daredevil, heightened to nearly superhuman levels.

The Mole Man fights with a staff and has developed a fighting style that resembles bōjutsu; despite his small size and relative weakness he is a highly proficient hand-to-hand combatant when armed with his staff. He also commands an army of monsters and Subterraneans that are absolutely loyal to him.

The Mole Man is extremely near-sighted due to damage his vision suffered years ago, and his eyes are extremely sensitive to bright light. He is virtually blinded by normal illumination. To counter this, he wears protective glasses (an early version of a nuclear weapons test Range Officer's flash-goggles) that both reduce bright light to levels his weak eyes can tolerate and increase dim light to levels by which he can see. His sense of hearing, smell, and touch are far more sensitive than that of a normal human; these senses are heightened, but not superhuman. He possesses a "radar sense" that supplements his own weak natural vision.

Mole Man has a series of similar-looking staves (6 feet long, made of wood or aluminum), designed by the Mad Thinker, which contain built-in weapon(s) and additional features. Among such weaponry are an electrical blaster, a flame-thrower, a vibro-charge blaster, and a laser cannon. All of the staffs appear to have a low-energy radar. All staves are booby-trapped with a galvanic response meter that is tuned solely to the Mole Man's skin conductivity; this prevents anyone else from activating his staves.

Mole Man's life has made him an expert on subterranean geography, spelunking, understanding Deviant weapons systems, and monster training. He has mastered the principles underlying Deviant technology that he discovered in Subterranea and has made radical improvements upon much of it.

Other versions

Heroes Reborn

The spaceflight which grants the Fantastic Four their powers ends with them crash-landing on Mole Man's monster-inhabited islands. Mole Man ends up capturing Ben and Sue and takes a power source and potential explosive off the group's ship.^{[volume & issue needed]}

This incarnation of the Mole Man looks physically different from his 616 counterpart, with a taller, more muscular build and apparently increased strength, being able to hold up Johnny Storm with only one hand.

Later, there are hints Mole Man's island is connected to the Inhumans' city of Attilian.^{[volume & issue needed]}

Spider-Man Newspaper Strip

In the Spider-Man newspaper strip, The Mole Man travels to the surface and attempts to make Mary Jane Parker the queen of his underworld kingdom. When he learns MJ is already married to Peter Parker, these plans are dashed. That same evening, he bumps into May Parker and becomes instantly smitten with her. He eventually decides to kidnap both May and Mary Jane and takes them to his kingdom. Peter chases after them as Spider-Man but is bested in combat by the Mole Man, forcing him to seek out help from The Fantastic Four's Thing. The Mole Man and Aunt May begin to bond romanticly, to the point May agrees to marry him. Spider-Man and The Thing arrive and after a short confrontation and conversation, are convinced to honor May's wishes that she spend the rest of her days making a lost soul happy. The wedding, however, is interrupted by May suffering from a physical condition called Spelunker's Lung, which causes her to have severe breathing problems when underground. This condition is what ultimately forces Spider-Man and the Thing to take May back to the surface along with MJ. Mole Man, realizing his new found love can never rule alongside him due to this condition, reluctantly says goodbye to her and returns home to rule alone.

In this continuity, Mole Man's real name is revealed as "Melvin"

House of M

In the House of M universe created by an insane Scarlet Witch, the Mole Man appears in Fantastic Four: House of M as an enemy of the Fearsome Four, which is composed of Doctor Doom, the Inhuman Torch, the Invincible Girl, and the It. This version of the Mole Man is killed by the Fearsome Four during a battle with them.

Marvel Zombies

In Marvel Zombies, the Mole Man, along with several other undead villains, first appears to attack Galactus; after Galactus is defeated by several heroes, Mole Man gets into an argument with Colonel America over who gets to eat the injured Galactus, and is subsequently blasted apart by the cosmically powered colonel.

The zombie Mole Man also appears in the prequel to Marvel Zombies, Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, appearing to attack Nova alongside the Wizard.

Ultimate Mole Man

In the Ultimate Marvel Universe, Mole Man was a Baxter Building scientist named Dr. Arthur Molekevic. Nicknamed Mole Man by the students, he was fired due to his experiments in creating life after being warned off. He claimed the files as his own but was told by the governmental officials firing him, which included Sue and John's father, Dr. Franklin Storm that everything he created was the property of the United States government. He soon disappeared into underground caverns with his Moloids. These caverns contained advanced technology, which Mole Man claimed had been built by an ancient race. Parts of the caverns were also under the Baxter Building itself, which provided Mole Man with links into their security system. His ability to spy on the team fostered the delusion that he was a father figure to them. When the Fantastic Four gain their powers, and were transported across the world, Sue, while unconscious, was kidnapped and transported to his caverns. Mole Man sends one of his created monsters to New York to retrieve the others. The other members of the team manage to defeat it. They follow the hole the monster made and confront Mole Man, eventually rescuing Sue. The Four defeat his forces but the Mole Man escapes. However he returned and kidnapped several Baxter Building students while explaining more details of his life. He was eventually driven off when he left the students behind and went to confront the Fantastic Four, who had arrived to try and rescue them. The students created weaponry from the alien technology and drove off all parties; Mole Man, Fantastic Four and the government, intending to build their own civilization in the ruins of the city.

According to his history, which he told to the abducted Baxtor students, he left his family after he devolved his younger sister into a lungfish and turned his father over to the government for money. His first bioexperiment went unsuccessfully and he snuck into Europe in the guise of a washerwoman (he adds that he kept the costume and later added sequins to it). He is led to the ruins of the underground civilization by an insane Italian man who was a part of a NATO expedition to find the lost city, the third group to try (the first two groups perished and the rest of the third group either starved to death or killed each other). Though Mole Man found the Italian man's insane antics amusing, he later fed the Italian to an underground monster to gain the monster's trust.

Ultimate Mole Man physically resembled the original character. However, he is bulkier, rarely washes and has an unsightly skin condition. The Ultimate Moloids are fungus-based life-forms engineered by Mole Man himself, though initially simplistic and animalistic, they are more intelligent in their second appearance, even speaking a language which Mole Man understands.

In other media

Television

• Mole Man appeared on the Iron Man segment of 1966's The Marvel Super Heroes.
• Mole Man appeared twice in the 1967 Fantastic Four TV series.
• In the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, Spider-Man encountered a villain Mugs Riley calling himself The Mole Man and ruling a race of Green, hairy humanoids thousands of feet below Earth; this villain shared only a name and modus operandi with the Mole Man of the comics.
• Mole Man made one appearance on the 1978 Fantastic Four television series.^[19]
• Mole Man appeared in the 1994 Fantastic Four TV series voiced by Gregg Berger.
• Mole Man appears in the 2006 Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes series voiced by Paul Dobson. He is introduced in the episode "De-Mole-Ition", which uses the basic plot of Fantastic Four #1, adding elements from later stories.
• Mole Man first appears in the The Super Hero Squad Show episodes "And Lo? A Pilot Shall Come" voiced by Ted Biaselli.^[20] This version is shown to have burping and farting problems. He was sent to lead his monsters (consisting of Tricephalous, Manoo, and Megataur) and Fin Fang Foom into attacking Super Hero City. Mole Man finds the Infinity Fractal and uses its power to gain longer legs (giving him super speed) and mind-control and plotted to take over the Lethal Legion. While the others dealt with Mole Man's monsters and Fin Fang Foom, Iron Man and Falcon fought Mole Man. Thor and Storm baited Mole Man's monsters and Fin Fang Foom with lightning-cooked meat while Falcon rammed the Helicarrier into Fin Fang Foom crushing Mole Man and enabling the Super Hero Squad to claim the Infinity Fractal. While Fin Fang Foom and the other monsters were wrecking Mole Man's lair, Iron Man and Falcon carried Mole Man and the Infinity Fractal to the Vault. However, Doctor Doom uses his powers to withdraw Mole Man and deal with him personally. In "From the Atom...It Rises," he helps Doctor Doom, MODOK, and Abomination in a plot to use an underground area dug up by Mole Man's Moloids in a plot to use an Infinity Fractal to control a black hole to use on Super Hero City. In "Wrath of the Red Skull," Mole Man attempted to burrow into the Vault but ended up burrowing into a garbage dump. Red Skull later had Mole Man excavate the UberSkullbot as part of his Plan USB.

Film

• A sewer-dwelling character named "the Jeweler" duly similar to the Mole Man^{[citation needed]} appeared in the unreleased 1994 Fantastic Four film produced by Roger Corman, played by Ian Trigger.

Video games

• Mole Man appears in the 2005 Fantastic Four video game voiced by Barry Dennen. In the game, he sent out his creatures to battle the Four rather than fight himself, in the same way as Puppet Master sent his puppets. After his Monstroid (closely resembling Giganto from his first comics appearance) is destroyed, he escapes, and swears revenge the Fantastic Four.
• Mole Man appears in the Marvel Super Hero Squad video game voiced by Ted Biaselli.
• Mole Man appears as a villain character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online.

Comic strips

• Mole Man makes a guest appearance in the syndicated comic strip Scary Gary, in the strip of November 14, 2008.^[21]

Parodies

• Mole Man was parodied by Pixar at the end of the 2004 film The Incredibles by a man known as the Underminer.^{[citation needed]}

• In the sixth episode of the eleventh season of The Simpsons called Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder, a reference to the supervillain Mole Man was made when Homer stumbles across Hans Moleman as the leader of a race of Mole People in an underground fortress complete with earthquake machines ("There is no escape from the fortress of the Moles!").^{[citation needed]}

References

1. ^ Fantastic Four #1
2. ^ Fantastic Four #31
3. ^ Avengers #12
4. ^ Fantastic Four Annual #3
5. ^ Tales to Astonish #80-81
6. ^ X-Men Vol. 1 #34
7. ^ Fantastic Four #89-90
8. ^ Incredible Hulk #127
9. ^ Fantastic Four #127-128
10. ^ Fantastic Four #296
11. ^ Fantastic Four #313
12. ^ Fantastic Four #329
13. ^ Fantastic Four #347-349
14. ^ Avengers Annual #20; Hulk Annual #17; Avengers West Coast Annual #6
15. ^ Mighty Avengers #4
16. ^ in the one-shot Fantastic Four: Isla de la Muerte
17. ^ in the "Live Fast" story arc of Runaways^{[volume & issue needed]}
18. ^ The Incredible Hulk #605
19. ^ "1978 ''Fantastic Four'' episode guide". Marvel.toonzone.net. http://marvel.toonzone.net/ff1978/guide/. Retrieved 2011-04-14. 
20. ^ "Comics Continuum". Comics Continuum. 2009-07-28. http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0907/28/voices.htm. Retrieved 2011-04-14. 
21. ^ Chicago Tribune, Comics Page, November 14, 2008.

External links

• Mole Man at Marvel.com
• Mole Man at the Comic Book DB
• Mole Man at the Internet Movie Database