George Tarleton (Earth-616)

George Tarleton
Name	George Tarleton
Aliases	Big Head, Chairman, Damocles Rivas, Gerlach, M.O.D.O.C. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Computing), M.O.D.O.F. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Fun), M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing), Mister Potato Head, Moddy, the Saint, Scientist Supreme
Affiliation and Relationships
Affiliation	A.I.M. K Sector, MODOK's 11, Gamma powered Super Soldier program leader (possibly), Intelligencia
Relatives	Sean Madigan (aka Head Case; son) M.O.D.O.K. Superior (clone)
Marital Status	Single
Physical Characteristics
Gender	Male
Height	12′ (3.66 m)
Weight	750 lbs (340.19 kg)
Eyes	Irises: White
Hair	Brown
Unusual Features	Formerly an Enlarged Head
Origin and Living Status
Origin	Human; formerly Mutate and Cyborg
Living Status	Alive
Reality	Earth-616
Place of Birth	Erie, Pennsylvania
Personal Information
Identity	No Dual
Citizenship	American
Occupation	Would-be conqueror, AIM leader, terrorist; former AIM agent, technician
Education	Mathematics degree, possibly higher
Base of Operations	Mobile
Creators and Appearances
Creators	Jack Kirby, Stan Lee
First	Tales of Suspense #93 (June, 1967)
First	Tales of Suspense #93 (June, 1967)

 I worked for A.I.M.... Didn't know they were bad people. Thought it... exciting science. Then one day... Four of them grabbed me. They injected me, pushed me in a chamber-- It hurt so bad... It hurt! And then, and then... It's all the nightmares after that. 

—George Tarleton

George Tarleton aka M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing), formerly M.O.D.O.C.(Mental Organism Designed Only for Computing), was a lowly American technician working for A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics). He joined the team to help develop the Cosmic Cube, but was mutated into a human computer by the Scientist Supreme. They grew his brain to give him a superhuman intellect, but with the side effect of a massive cranium which was too much for his frail body, meaning he needed to be placed inside a life support unit dubbed the "Doomsday Chair". The process also gave him a plethora of psychic powers along with an ego and ambition to match. He went on to use his new found powers to take control of the organization that had experimented on him.

History

Origin

George Tarleton was a skilled technician from Erie, Pennsylvania. He joined the radical scientific group A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics) and worked with them to create the Cosmic Cube, a device with infinite capabilities. The Scientist Supreme (Lyle Getz) decided they needed a way to study the cube so they created project M.O.D.O.C. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Computing) to analyze and probe the Cosmic Cube and to improve the organization's productivity in its scientific endeavors, while still being subservient to the higher echelons of the organization. To that end they mutagenically altered George into the super intelligent being, M.O.D.O.C., his massive cranium was too much for his frail body to support so they place in a hoverchair dubbed the Doomsday Chair. These scientists unwisely did not take into consideration the theory that superior ability naturally leads to superior ambition. It did not take long for M.O.D.O.C. to turn on his former masters and overthrow A.I.M. He adopted the new acronym for his title: M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing) at this time as he was more of a ruthless killer than a bean counter in his own estimation.

Captain America

First appearance

M.O.D.O.K. came into conflict with Captain America when he came to rescue Sharon Carter from an A.I.M. submarine who was undercover as an A.I.M. agent when he cover was blown. He tried to destroy Cap with his mind bolts, but during his fight A.I.M. betrayed it's leader and tried to free themselves. As they all tried to escape M.O.D.O.K. detonated the self destruct leaving everyone only moments to get free from the blast.

M.O.D.O.K. was later revealed to be alive and well and learned the Red Skull had stolen the Cosmic Cube and used it to swap minds with Captain America. He survived the explosion of the AIM submarine by creating a mental force-field around him to protect himself from the blast, then using telepathy to call AIM scientists that were still loyal to him to recover him from the ocean. M.O.D.O.K. and A.I.M. manipulated Captain America as a part of a plot to steal Professor Fosgrave's most recent atomic equations. But he was able to stop them.

M.O.D.O.K. is unimpressed for with this recent failure. He turned one of his assassins into a cyborg and sent him on a test run to rob a bank. On his return M.O.D.O.K. destroyed the money. He is then sent after Captain America, but failed in his mission to him.

M.O.D.O.K. created an android duplicate of Bucky and sent him to work with Captain America. When it comes down to it, the android's implanted memories of Bucky's loyalty wont allow him to kill Captain America, and it short circuits. He then sends Bulldozer a giant robot to kill Captain America.

Namor

He battled Namor, who he took prisoner with help of his army of androids. Doctor Doom is forced to confront M.O.D.O.K. directly. Namor managed to free himself and reach the Cosmic Cube. Working together Doom and Namor defeat M.O.D.O.K. and flee as the Cosmic Cube's explosion destroyed the A.I.M. base.

Hulk

M.O.D.O.K. tried to take out the Hulk. He created a giant robotic body to help in the battled and planned to use gamma radiation to create a creature more powerful than the Hulk and has determined the best subject for it: Betty Talbot. M.O.D.O.K.visits Betty and uses his mental powers to amplify her hate and orders her to kill the Hulk the next time she sees him. However M.O.D.O.K. was confronted by the Hulk and his robotic body was no match for him and was forced to flee.

Later, Dr. Katherine Waynesboro, an associate of Bruce Banner, was briefly transformed into a female M.O.D.O.K. counterpart called Ms. M.O.D.O.K. She nearly married M.O.D.O.K. until he tried to disintegrate the Abomination, which appalled her. Crestfallen, M.O.D.O.K. decided she wasn't the one for him after all, and forcibly returned her to normal.

Death

A.I.M. was not happy with M.O.D.O.K.'s megalomaniacal and short-sighted leadership and he was frequently ousted only to return to power again. M.O.D.O.K. was so focused on his personal grudge with various superheroes that he ignored the scientific aspect of the organization and allowed it to become stagnant. The other A.I.M. leaders eventually hired assassins to eliminate him. M.O.D.O.K. was supposedly killed by the Serpent Society during that group's first mission.

Return of M.O.D.O.K.

AIM used a Cosmic Cube, and sacrificed M.O.D.A.M., to revive M.O.D.O.K. at Boca Caliente in order for him to repair the damage to reality that the uncontrollable Cosmic Cube had wrought. M.O.D.O.K. first deactivated most of the local Adaptoids and, when he analyzed the dimensional rift opened by the Cube's unleashed energies, he decided to willingly go to the other dimension in a quest for power. The breach at Boca Caliente was later sealed by the sacrifice of an Adaptoid.

In this other dimension, M.O.D.O.K. found himself overwhelmed and stranded. The Headmen inadvertently recovered M.O.D.O.K., who agreed to help them use Orrgo to conquer the world. M.O.D.O.K. took advantage of his unexpected return and once again took control of AIM. However, after battling the Defenders, M.O.D.O.K. withdrew the support of AIM, lest the organization suffer another defeat.

On one occasion, M.O.D.O.K. attempted to use the invention of the brilliant doctor Mark Cushing, who had developed a way to utilize the dormant mental powers of humans to turn the weak, the sickly, the handicapped, into super-people, and had created a Utopian society. AIM of course wanted this discovery, but was thwarted by Captain America and Iron Man. On this occasion, M.O.D.O.K. utilized the pooled psychic power of the super-society to create a giant humanoid body for himself, made up out of pure energy.

Later M.O.D.O.K. had been captured by a US Naval intelligence/drug cartel alliance, who lobotomized him and used him to tap spy satellites and manipulate stock markets. Unknown to them, M.O.D.O.K. regained consciousness and swapped his mind with the human Damocles "The Saint" Rivas as well as developing the ability to convert his original form to data and "e-mail" it around the world. His original body, acting off old instincts, murdered every AIM agent who had created M.O.D.O.K. while M.O.D.O.K. himself battled Captain America, the Falcon and the Anti-Cap in a takeover attempt. He was finally trapped in stasis (by interrupting a teleportation sequence) and taken into SHIELD custody.

M.O.D.O.K. escaped custody and either expelled or subverted the personality of Rivas and took command of an AIM research lab in India. There, he was attacked by Deadpool, who was searching for a sample of the Phalanx. He was later defeated by Squirrel Girl when attempting to take over one of Maelstrom's old labs.

Eventually, the process that turned Tarleton into M.O.D.O.K. proved to be unstable, and his body began breaking down. M.O.D.O.K. wanted a device called a G-TAC sequencer to help stabilize his physiology, but it was being used in a series of shell games by Sean Madigan, another agent of A.I.M. and Tarleton's discarded biological son. A faction within A.I.M. wanted to overthrow M.O.D.O.K. and commissioned Madigan to make it happen, but Madigan turned his employers and M.O.D.O.K. against each other, bringing in Ms. Marvel's Lightning Storm team and Monica Rappaccini's A.I.M. faction for good measure. Eventually, Madigan affixed the G-TAC sequencer to the weakened M.O.D.O.K. as a living "DNA bomb" and dropped him in a major population center. Ms. Marvel flew M.O.D.O.K. into low orbit to safely detonate the bomb, leaving M.O.D.O.K. lost in the explosion. After that, Madigan got his wish and A.I.M. degenerated into a series of splinter cells operating independently, instead of under one overarching leadership.

M.O.D.O.K.'s 11

M.O.D.O.K.'s 11

Left impoverished and isolated after Monica Rappaccini took control of AIM, M.O.D.O.K. came up with a new plan to regain power. Assembling a team of current and former super-villains — Puma, Mentallo, Armadillo, Chameleon, Nightshade, Living Laser, Rocket Racer, and Spot - using a psychic illusion of cash, he plotted to steal a power source called the Hypernova. Able to be used as a power source or ultimate weapon, it belonged to the Infinicide, a race of naturally-evolved M.O.D.O.K.s from the end of time. He repeatedly tried to focus on being Designed Only for Computing, and had to struggle not to say "Killing" instead.

M.O.D.O.K.'s team was infiltrated by Rappaccini's Ultra Adaptoid and two of its members were working for other beings, but M.O.D.O.K. secretly took and replaced the Hypernova while it was being handed to the Spot via the Dark Dimension (M.O.D.O.K. had kept one of Spot's portals around for this). He then sold the Hypernova to AIM for a billion dollars and paid off his minions that remained loyal (with increased cuts due to only three remaining in the end). It turned out the Hypernova was unstable away from the Infinicide — which M.O.D.O.K. had known, and his plan all along had been to get Rappaccini to give him money for something that would destroy her and AIM's HQ (although it bears to be seen whether this was the real Hypernova and not another imitation; an actual hypernova explosion would completely destroy the entire solar system rather than just a single AIM base). M.O.D.O.K. now had a base and an army of minions once more.

A.I.Monkey experiment

M.O.D.O.K. fought the Fantastic Four in Puerto Rico alongside his A.I.Monkeys that he was working on at the time.

M.O.D.O.K. was among the nine criminal geniuses that Beast sought out to help him reverse the effects of M-Day. As with many of the others, M.O.D.O.K. rebuffed the Beast.

World Wars Hulks

When the Intelligencia used the Cathexis Ray Generator, a device that could transfer radiant energy from one subject to another, Amadeus Cho was affected as well. Cho's mind expanded at certain level that he gained the ability to warp reality within a ten-foot radius. With the use of this power, Amadeus changed M.O.D.O.K. back into George Tarleton again. George Tarleton was taken into custody by the US military and remained confined at the Gamma Base in Death Valley. He began to undergo therapy to overcome the trauma caused by his actions as M.O.D.O.K., which he could barely recall.

Attributes

Power Grid

Powers

None ever since Amadeus Cho depowered M.O.D.O.K and returned to a normal human being.

Former Powers

Mental Organism Designed Only for Computing:

• Super-Genius Intelligence: M.O.D.O.K. possessed one of the most brilliant minds on the planet. He was created by A.I.M. sacrificing his body for one of the worlds largest brain. He possesses enhanced intuition, pattern solving, information storage and retrieval, and logical and philosophical structuring. M.O.D.O.K.'s ability to predict probable outcomes of tactical and strategic scenarios was so advanced that it bordered on clairvoyance. His intuition was heightened to the degree that his hunches were almost always correct. M.O.D.O.K. had a perfect memory with the ability to recall every moment. His vast intellect made him one of the few beings who can comprehend and build a Cosmic Cube.
• Psionic Powers
  • Telekinetic Force Blasts
  • Force Fields
  • Telepathy
  • Mind Control

Paraphernalia

Equipment

Former Equipment

Doomsday Chair: Due to M.O.D.O.K.'s mutated size, he is no longer capable of unassisted physical movement. M.O.D.O.K.'s body is housed within a technologically advanced device which he refers to as his "Doomsday Chair". The Doomsday Chair, in addition to providing structural support or M.O.D.O.K.'s frame, also magnifies his psionic capabilities to the Nth degree. Though primarily a self-sufficient device, the Doomsday Chair can also be connected to a special energy cradle that provides it with an endless supply of power. Empowering both the chair and the cradle requires massive amounts of energy. Charging it up once caused the entire city of Los Angeles to black out.

M.O.D.O.K.'s Humanoid Body: A humanoid, giant-sized metallic body, built by more than 100 AIM scientists, that M.O.D.O.K. could operate by entering the empty "headpiece". The body was hard to damage and gave him superhuman strength. It also allowed him to shoot beams of energy from the fingertips, and flight using boot jets. It was big enough to hold Iron Man in one hand. It was destroyed in a fight with Yellow Claw.

See Also

• 133 appearance(s) of George Tarleton (Earth-616)
• 14 appearance(s) in handbook(s) of George Tarleton (Earth-616)
• 52 minor appearance(s) of George Tarleton (Earth-616)
• 55 mention(s) of George Tarleton (Earth-616)
• 11 mention(s) in handbook(s) of George Tarleton (Earth-616)
• 104 image(s) of George Tarleton (Earth-616)
• 11 quotation(s) by or about George Tarleton (Earth-616)
• 1 victim(s) killed by George Tarleton (Earth-616)
• 3 item(s) used/owned by George Tarleton (Earth-616)

Links and References

• History of M.O.D.O.K.