Mr. Who

We've been over this kind of ad naseum at this point, but if you can make a super serum that can, and settle in because this is a long list, make a person grow to the height of 16-feet to 15 stories tall, shrink to a few inches tall, gain chameleon powers, turn invisible, breath in water and grow flippers, get as flat as a sheet of paper, phase through stuff, and shape-shift...just sell that singular miracle potion for, I don't know, a bajillion dollars. They'll have to make up a number for how much money you could make from that. You don't need to use it to rob art galleries.

The Who?

Still, though, Mister Who used his precious Solution Z to commit small-time robberies. And you might be thinking, Mister Who? Why didn't he go on to get his evil doctorate at evil graduate school and become Doctor Who? Well, he probably would have liked to, but he spent most of his childhood and young adult life dodging beatings.

It's...actually fairly tragic. We don't know Mr. Who's real name, but we do know that he grew up sickly and impoverished. If he didn't make enough money working as a newsie on the street, then his father would beat him at night. It was difficult to make enough money during the day, though, because the local organized crime was running a protection racket that he couldn't afford, so he was beaten up by them during the day.

Still, he managed to scrape together enough money, somehow, to go to college. With his withered body and poor vision, he only wanted to be like everyone else. He got that, and so much more when, studying extractions from animals that adapt themselves to all conditions, he kind of mixed everything together in the scientific version of how people mix all the sodas together at a fountain to make Solution Z, the panacea that will do whatever you need it to whenever you need it to.

Mr. Who discovered the solution...and then I guess sat on it for forty years, because he first makes an appearance as a very elderly man, showing up in the 1941, quote, "double fisted adventures" of Doctor Fate.

Double-fisted Adventures

Doctor Fate is like a combo of Doctor Strange and Moon Knight. While he was on a dig with his dad in the Middle East, Kent accidentally woke an ancient god and, because it's basically required that all heroes have a dead parent or two, killed his dad. The god, Nabu, was apparently the thoughtful type and took the child under his wing, giving him superpowers so that he would grow up into Doctor Fate. Doctor Fate's powers include immortality, mastery of magic, limited super strength, flight, and according to Wikipedia, archeology. I guess he's going to be in the new Black Adam movie starring the Rock that comes out next month. Doctor Fate will be played by Pierce Brosnan.

On their first outing, Mister Who actually used the failure of his goons to lead Doctor Fate back to his house where, with his super-science, he had made a spider the size of a small elephant and kept him hungry. Mister Who then guzzled some Solution Z, his gray hair turned brown, his back straightened, and, oh yeah, he grew to sixteen feet in height. He easily nabbed Doctor Fate and, instead of a way messier version of the Hulk ragdolling Loki in the Avengers, left him for the spider.

Mister Who suffered from that same overconfidence everyone who has invented a super-serum out of a hodgepodge of animal goo has fallen to, and not only didn't wait for Doctor Fate to die, but left his calendar up so that, when Doctor Fate easily strangled the giant spider with its own web, he saw that Mister Who was going to steal a giant diamond.

At first, I thought this was another misdirection, but my suspicions were proven false when Doctor Fate punched Mister Who through the bottom of a boat. He didn't die, though - remember, he adapts. He grew flippers and gills and swam away.

Continuing to not follow my advice and sell Solution Z, Mister who embarked on several cockamamie schemes in the 1940s, including taking the shape of the mayor to rob the cities treasuries. Rob multimillionaire PJ Moggon, yeah. That one was foiled when Mister Who spotted Doctor Fate and Solution Z backfired. He grew twelve feet tall and messed up his own disguise.

Solution Z wears off in about 5 hours, so you might be wondering how an elderly man keeps escaping from prison. Well, apparently they didn't search prisoners back in the 40s because the first time he snuck in Solution Z in pill form. Another time he had one of his goons soak letters in it, and he packed his own water full of the paper until enough of it seeped out. He used tamed pigeons he had prepared to ride to freedom.

Who's (not) the Boss?

DC actually got a lot of mileage out of a guy who's like an arrogant, criminal Colonel Sanders. He didn't need help, but he was going to get it when he found someone smarter than him.

Ok, so I guess I missed it in the Shazam movie a few years back, but there's a villain known as Mister Mind. Um. He's a two-inch tall telepathic space worm that apparently wears a tiny radio around his neck. He's a villain of Captain Marvel, AKA Shazam. I love this guy, and he's absolutely getting his own episode. Anyway, to combat the Justice Society of America he created "Mister Mind's Monster Society of Evil." Which just goes to show that there are different types of intelligences. You can be a super-smart space worm inventing stuff and controlling minds and all that...but also maybe not so great at naming stuff because that just feels like you focused grouped it and just included...all the names that everyone came up with.

Mister Mind's Monster Society of Evil was eventually whittled down into just "the society" by a different multiverse version of Lex Luthor and Mister Who's membership in it eventually cost him his life when he was obliterated by the superhero Lady Quark in a free-for-all superhero/supervillain battle at the end of a massive crossover. In the end, he died the way he lived: a weird, mostly-inconsequential footnote.

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