Just in time for Halloween, we’re back to feature all those creepy, kooky, and scary characters of comic book lore! This time, we’re going to take a look at monsters from the vaunted House of Ideas. So, enter, if you dare, for Comic Book Monsters 2012: The Mighty Merry Marvel Edition!
Comic Book Monsters – October 9th: The Leader
The Leader discovering his new look.
The Leader started off in somewhat humble style as chemical plant grunt Samuel Sterns. One day, as he was tasked to transport some radioactive chemicals from one area of the plant to another, they exploded, dousing him with gamma radiation. Of course, we all know how potentially life changing gamma radiation may be in the Marvel Universe, and true to form, Sterns recovered, but was transformed into a green-skinned man with an enlarged cranium to house a giant brain making him one of the most intelligent beings on the planet.
Sterns began calling himself the Leader and started formulating plans for world domination. More often than not, these plans, mixed with the Leader’s obsession with Bruce Banner, led him into direct confrontation with the Hulk. When the Leader, now wanting to study the Hulk after a few encounters, saved the beast after the Army cornered him in a cave, Sterns operated on the Hulk to save his life. Reminding him of this act of kindness, it kept the Hulk indebted to him to the point that the Leader sends the Hulk to obtain the “Ultimate Machine” – the deviced used by the Watcher to view all the knowledged of the universe. The plan would backfire, though, when the Leader was not able to handle the amount of information he was absorbing.
Over time, the Leader would constantly be at odds with the Hulk. This would often put him in league with General Thunderbolt Ross. The Leader’s aid in Ross’ own personal war against the Hulk included using a Super-Humanoid, a robot of the Leader’s own design, to gain control of the country’s nuclear arsenal. After that failed, the Leader came back to steal the U.S. Army’s “Murder Machine” (sounds… pleasant) to use it against the Hulk. He even transferred his consciousness into the body of the Rhino to battle the Hulk.
The Leader hanging out with Dr. Doom.
Other plans of his included irradiating the the water supply of New York City to turn its people into mutated creatures like himself. However, over time, the gamma radiation in his body began to wear off. Unfortunately for him, by the time he realized what had happened, his mental capacity to actually fix the problem had escaped him. He’d do whatever it takes to get funding in the meantime, but he eventually devised a plan to convince the Gray Hulk to help him in exchange for this new version of the Hulk to have full time control over transformation. However, Sterns would get his intelligence back when longtime friend of the Hulk Rick Jones got irradiated with gamma energy. The Hulk created a way to transfer the radiation from Jones to the Leader. This transfer would be different than the first and would mutate Sterns’ cranium to look more like an enlarged brain instead of a towering skull.
The modern look for the Leader.
Now back in the game, the Leader resumed his war against the Hulk. Eventually, the Leader would die, not once, but twice. The first time, the Hulk had fallen under the manipulation of Agamemnon and attacked a facility where the Leader was. At the same time HYDRA also stormed the base. When the Hulk attacked the Leader, Sterns apparently died in a crossfire. The second death happened when the Leader learned that his consciousness no longer needed a physical body. He managed to manipulate the Hulk toward a secret base where he planned to take over the body for himself, but when friends of Banner’s intervened, the plan failed and the Leader seemingly “died” again.
But, wait… Isn’t the Leader still around? Yes, he is. These “deaths” may not have been necessarily been all they seemed, but a plan by the demon Nightmare in a grand scheme to destroy the Hulk, but that aside, the Leader would return in a body that seemed to have characteristics of both his previous forms. This body of his might actually be from a parallel universe.
After General Ross was transformed into the Red Hulk, he punished the Leader for turning his daughter, Betty, into the Red She-Hulk by completely draining the gamma radiation from his body, leaving him in his original, severely below average intelligence form making him unable to figure out how to turn back into the Leader on his own.
This brings us to the end of yet another Comic Book Monsters. We’ve now seen that even a man of great intelligence can be a bit of a monster in his own right. Tomorrow we will get to see that monsters can even come in robotic form – if given enough hatred for the human race. Come back then to see who’s next!