The Galleria of Lame Supervillains: The Mad Thinker

I’m a big fan of comic books—not the new ones, where every hero looks like they start every day with a heaping bowl of anabolic steroids and wash it down with some fresh-squeezed flaxseed oil. I’m an aficionado of the old comic books from the 60s and 70s, the ones where characters yell things like “He’s beginning to glow…to vibrate…like some ethereal titan! Get back…all of you! This sight was never meant for human eyes!” This is a randomly selected quote, mind you.

The comics of today have been gnawing on the Silver Age’s table scraps for almost three decades, in the same manner that my cat gnaws on my arm. Rather than come up with anything new, they’ve just been recycling things like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men and added increasing amounts of angst, gore, and breasts.

Not everything that came out of the Silver Age is worth remembering. There are some characters so absurd they send the mind boggling. THE UNICORN! FIN FANG FOOM! THE PURPLE MAN! The only question is what sort of and how many drugs Stan Lee was on when he dreamt up these guys.

But these ridiculous characters will be forgotten no more. Today, I’m starting a semi-irregular feature I’ve dubbed “The Galleria of Lame Supervillains.” Now let’s meet our first contestant:

The MAD THINKER! Are you ready to hear his unbelievably, totally, incredibly awesome super power? Please take a deep, deep breath. I don’t want any lawsuits on my hands, not until I beat that murder rap. The Mad Thinker was…very good at planning things. But I’m not talking about vacations—though I’m sure he could organize a trip for three to Las Vegas in the snap of the eye.

No, the Mad Thinker’s real bread and butter was to take all sorts of data, run it through his comically gigantic 60s-era computer, and then predict the future so accurately that Nostradamus could spit. I’ll let him describe one such case in his own words:

“I knew that the organ-grinder’s monkey would start a fire in the attic, destroying the incriminating documents!”

Sure you did, sure you did. Imagine if Bill James turned to crime and started wearing pea-green Mao jackets, and you’ve got a pretty good picture of what the Mad Thinker was all about. And if you don’t, here’s an actual picture:

Now, I might not have the brains of the Mad Thinker, nor his pageboy hairdo. But I see two flaws in his master plan to dominate the world.

1) Just because you can see the future doesn’t mean everything will come up roses for you. A pretty standard Mad Thinker sequence would involve some thug pulling a gun on him, the Thinker cackling “Ha ha ha! I planned for this!” and the gun blowing up in the guy’s hand. But not every gun is defective. And what’s the Mad Thinker going to do when his ENIAC II tells him he’s going to choke to death on a hoagie tomorrow?

2) If he can predict everything, why go into crime? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to become a millionaire trading stocks or betting on sports games? I mean, if you know Boeing’s stock is going to go through the roof—or if you know Ben Roethlisberger’s going to throw a critical interception in the fourth quarter—why bother with the whole supervillain gig?

I hope you take away one thing from this: the knowledge that I have way, way too much time on my hands. Be sure to keep an eye out for future installments of THE GALLERIA OF LAME SUPERVILLAINS!