M.O.D.O.K.

Every supervillain fears death. M.O.D.O.K. suffered something worse: a cure. During the World War Hulks chaos, teen genius Amadeus Cho was briefly empowered by the Intelligencia's Cathexis Ray to warp reality within a ten-foot radius — and he used it on the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing. In Incredible Hulks #610 (2010), Cho reversed the A.I.M. mutation entirely, shrinking the giant head, restoring the stunted body, and leaving an ordinary, frightened, unremarkable man blinking in the wreckage: George Tarleton.

Tarleton was taken into military custody at Gamma Base, where he underwent therapy for a life of mass murder he could barely remember. The most dangerous mind on Earth was now a traumatized ex-technician who wanted, mostly, to be left alone. By any normal standard, the story of M.O.D.O.K. ends here — cured, harmless, forgotten.

Except M.O.D.O.K. had planned for exactly this. Before his fall, he had cloned a copy of his own brain and hidden it away in the care of Life Model Decoys. With Tarleton human again, the backup brain woke, grew into a fresh M.O.D.O.K. body, and — judging both the original and the acronym insufficient — rechristened itself M.O.D.O.K. Superior (first stirring in Hulk Vol. 2 #29, 2011). All the genius, all the deadliness, none of the weak little human it had just watched crawl out of the chair. The original got therapy. The copy got the empire.