Villain Profile: The Inventor

I mean, did the original Edison build giant robots? Score 1 for Bird-Man Edison.

Sigh, I wish these Disney+ shows could do seven episodes instead of six. That would fit my format of a week of posts so much better. But alas, they don’t, so I need to think of a seventh thing to talk about. Because I’m kind of tired, I’ll do an easy but memorable character. The Inventor! The Inventor was the original antagonist of Ms. Marvel aka Kamala Kahn. He’s not in the new series because… he’s… a bit weird. But I’ll get to that in a second. Let’s get to it.

 

Imagine being one of the most world
renouned geniuses, ever, but also
being a bird.

In the mid-2010s, for reasons never really explained beyond “why the hell not,” geneticist Gregory Knox cloned famed inventor Thomas Alva Edison. Unfortunately, Knox was a bit of an idiot and didn’t wash out his petri dishes. The sample was contaminated with DNA from his pet cockatiel. The result was a human-bird hybrid with Edison’s intellect but an extreme hate for most everything because he’s a God Damned Bird. Now being in the current marvel universe, Edison quickly mastered advanced robotics and bioengineering. Edison and Knox set up shop in a decommissioned factory in New Jersey and got to inventing. Deciding that the modern adolescent isn’t good for much of anything besides providing energy, Edison decided to use them as a power source. He would take volunteer runaways and a few kidnapped kids to power a small army of advanced robots.

 

The Inventor got on fledging superhero Ms. Marvel’s radar when the younger brother of her bff Bruno, Vick, tried to hold up the Circle Q to pay the Inventor. He ended up shooting Kamala, which helped her learn about her regeneration powers. The Inventor later took Vick, most likely to use him in another of his machines. Ms. Marvel tracked Vick down, though, and freed him… after some trial and error.

 

Over the next few weeks, The Inventor tried ever increasing attempts to kill or capture Ms. Marvel. The closest to being successful was trapping her in a sewer complex he rigged together. It might have worked… if the X-Men’s Wolverine hadn’t been in town looking for a runaway student that the Inventor had taken to use as a battery. Kamala and Logan dispatch the Inventor’s various devices, including a giant crocodile, and free the Mutant being used as the area’s battery. Later, Kamala and her new assistant, the Inhuman dog Lockjaw, were able to track one of the missing kids to an abandoned power plant that the Inventor had been using for experiments. They were attacked by a robot, which them broke, to find another kid inside. They took him to the hospital.

 

You literally are.

The Inventor had slipped robot tracers on Kamala during this incident and sent a heavy mech to her school to try to finish her off. She and the robot wrecked have the school during their brawl, one that went on a bit longer than it could have due to Ms. Marvel’s strength having been pretty much depleted from the near constant fighting. She was saved from being squished by Medusa, Queen of the Inhumans, stepping in and teleporting them to New Attilan, the Inhuman capital.

 

The Inventor and Kamala faced off one more time as she and Lockjaw, with the guide of Vick, attacked his lair. She discovered that the Inventor had been using that shitty teenager feeling of worthlessness and depression common to teenagers to convince them to willingly power his machines. He drops in with another army off mechs and the two face off. His robot has a bowler hat for some reason. She ends up capturing Kamala and revealing that he has a ton of students that he kidnapped to continue his experiments, that includes Kamala’s friend Nakia. Kamala, Lockjaw, and the now motivated teens area able to stop the last of the Inventor’s robots. Kamala shrank down and broke much of its inner machinery. The police arrive, Kamala had called Bruno to call the cops earlier, and arrest Knox. They try to arrest the Inventor too, but he escaped and tried to reactivate his mech. It ended up exploding and he was seemingly killed.

 

And that’s the last we’ve seen of him.

 

I wonder what the actual Edison would be able to
do with modern tech. ... He'd probably be pissed
Tesla has better name recognition.

The Inventor is a mutant clone of famed inventor Thomas Alva Edison. Edison is a gifted inventor and scientist. He specializes in robots of varying sizes, and bioelectricity. I enjoy the implication that if he was born a little later in history, Edison would have been able to build giant robots. He also has a cockatiel’s large beak and claws.

 

The Inventor has never been used outside of the comics. It’s not too surprising, as even as introductory villains go, he’s a very bonkers concept. I mean, Thomas Edison, but he’s also a bird. Weird. The Ms. Marvel show seems t o be making its own canon for Kamala, creating a new otherworldly origin for her powers and focusing on a known as the Clandestine to antagonize her. And in all other appearances, Ms. Marvel is an established hero, guest spotting on other series. No real reason to show Kamala’s original baddy.

 

The Inventor is a visually interesting villain with a unique means of terrifying and using children for his evil machinations. I mean, you must be extremely evil to prey on the insecurities and depression of teenagers to make his giant robots. Also, just a dick move in general. Pretty much the only reason that I remember him is because he is Ms. Marvel’s original baddy and because of his giant ass bird head. So yeah, a visually memorable villain if nothing else. If he’d made another appearance in the future I wouldn’t complain, but I think Kamala has kind of graduated beyond crazed mutant historical figure. Just saying. Next time, we’ll cover Ms. Marvel the show and discuss what does and doesn’t work with this adaptation.  See you then. 

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/68491010

Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero