A morte não é o fim é um recurso onde destacamos as explicações bizarras para personagens de quadrinhos (principalmente supervilões) sobrevivendo à morte aparentemente certa. Hoje, veremos a maneira surpreendentemente complicada como o rival do Capitão Marvel, Mister Mind, sobreviveu à sua própria execução!
Um dos vilões mais estranhos dos quadrinhos de todos os tempos é Mister Mind, o verme alienígena que foi um dos vilões mais malvados do Capitão Marvel (daí a “pior” parte do lede). Uma das coisas mais interessantes sobre Mind é que quando ele foi apresentado pela primeira vez, seus criadores, Otto Binder e CC Beck, nem sabiam O QUE ele era!
Como observei em um artigo antigo (realmente deveria ter sido um Comic Book Legends Revealed, deixei cair a bola ali), Roy Thomas entrevistou Otto Binder sobre Mister Mind em 1964 para o original de Thomas. Alter ego fanzine e Binder revelaram: ..
Senhor Mente não era um verme, pelo menos não na primeira meia dúzia de capítulos [Binder is off by a couple of issues, but what’s a couple of issues between friends? -BC}. The CMA (Captain Marvel Adventures) brain-trust composed of Wendell Crowley as editor, Charles Clarence Beck as artist, and myself as scripter, got our heads together to figure out just WHO or WHAT Mr. Mind should be, after I invented him as a diembodied voice.
We undoubtedly went thru a hundred concepts, until somebody (and, frankly, in those skull sessions, I have no idea who first thought of any particular gimmick)..somebody said, “Why not take the most unusual thing we can think of? Not the traditional human or galactic villain, nor robot, nor this this nor that of the routine masterminds, but just the goofiest of all things—maybe a worm!”
I vaguely recall that this was enthusiastically endorsed by us with much laughter and a tongue-in-cheek attitude, we had not idea that thing would become POPULAR!!?? We truly were amazed at the electrifying response…letters pouring in…and believe me, with a readership of over one million as we had in those days, the mail can become pretty imposing. A rousing consensus simply loved Mr. Mind! Why? We never figured it out. You figure it out, you researchers today into the mysterious hypnotic power that comic characters had on readers.
Mister Mind had one of the most amazing introductory stories of all-time, as he started to put a Monster Society of Evil together to fight Captain Marvel! It did not end well for him, as he was killed at the end of it, but, as it turned out, that wasn’t the end of his story!
As I noted in an old Look Back, one of the problems with reprinting this otherwise classic “Monster Society of Evil” storyline is the fact that a LOT of the members that Mister Mind receuited for his Monster Society are just ethnic stereotypes, with one of the bad guys’ villain name seriously being a slur for Japanese people with “O” added to the end. There are some other really rough racist caricature characters in the story. It’s baaaad.
The serial continued for over TWENTY ISSUES, which is just insane, but eventually, Mister Mind’s Monster Society broke up, and he was down to just a handful of monster servants and so he tried a new approach by creating a last ditch effort – a Monster Brigade!
First, Mister Mind headed to the sea in Captain Marvel Adventures #45…
And then he introduced his sea monster brigade after one of his remaining servants captured Billy Batson and gagged him so that he couldn’t shout “Shazam!” and turn into Captain Marvel…
The Monster Brigade caused a lot of trouble, but Billy eventually got himself free and turned into Captain Marvel. He made quite work of the sea monsters…
He handled them all nicely…
Mister Mind escaped, but not before losing almost all of his remaining servants, thus ending the threat of his various societies and brigades.
He was put on trial in the next issue, with Captain Marvel prosecuting the case (as you do), and we learn that Mister Mind has killed almost 200,000 people (hence him being Captain Marvel’s WORST villain), and he is convicted and sentenced to death…
In the next page, Mister Mind is executed…
I love that he was executed and STUFFED!
Okay, you don’t get much more final than executed and STUFF, right? And yet…
Okay, in the 1970s, DC licensed Captain Marvel for a new series (it had to be called Shazam! now because Marvel owned the trademark to Captain Marvel), with C.C. Beck returning to draw the series, and Denny O’Neil writing the main features for the series. The concept of the comic is that they were all basically kept in suspended animation since their Fawcett series was canceled in 1953. Otherwise, they were in their own world in the DC Multiverse.
In Shazam! #2 (by O’Neil and Beck), the stuffed Mister Mind turned out to not be the actual Mister Mind, and the villain was still alive (and, I guess, just, like, chilling for 20 years)…
At the end of the issue, they wonder how Mister Mind survived, but the answer wasn’t given right away…
The weird thing is that Mister Mind showed up AGAIN in Shazam! #9, and oddly enough, O’Neil wouldn’t give an answer THEN, either!
O’Neil brought Mister Mind back a few more times, but this time, he didn’t even bother getting into the answer (I’m sure he never came up with an answer, figuring he could figure it out later).
However, in Shazam! #31, E. Nelson Bridwell, Kurt Schaffenberger and Bob Wiacek, Bridwell (who was always good with this stuff) came up with the answer – Mister Mind’s race goes into suspended animation when electrocuted, not killed. He came out of the suspended animation in time to hypnotize the taxidermist to replace him with a fake worm…
It’s SOMEthing!
If anyone has a suggestion for a future Death is not the End, drop me a line at [email protected]!
