AIM is one of those Marvel organisations that you can recognise before you’ve even properly seen them. Yellow beekeeper suits, giant guns, strange laboratories and scientists who have apparently decided that ethics are something other people worry about.
Advanced Idea Mechanics have been causing problems in the Marvel Universe for decades. They started as a scientific offshoot connected to Hydra, but eventually became their own particularly horrible brand of evil. And that’s what makes AIM interesting. They aren’t usually trying to rule the galaxy because they’ve got a massive throne fetish like Thanos. They want knowledge. Technology. And power.
And if half a city has to be experimented on to get it, well, that’s apparently just the price of progress.
AIM have experimented on superheroes, created some of Marvel’s strangest villains, tampered with reality and even helped put some extremely dangerous people back on the board. Their laboratories are basically the Marvel Universe’s version of a shed where you absolutely should not touch anything.
So, with that in mind, here are 10 of the worst things AIM has ever done in Marvel Comics, ranked from bad to downright insane.
10. Creating The Super Adaptoid
AIM didn’t just make another robot and give it a laser gun.
They created something that could look at a superhero, copy their abilities and then use those powers against them.
The Super Adaptoid was developed using advanced AIM science and Cosmic Cube technology, creating an artificial being capable of copying the appearance and powers of other characters. In other words, if you gave it enough time around the Avengers, things could get very awkward very quickly.
Its original appearances turned it into a serious problem for Captain America and the Avengers because it could reproduce the abilities of multiple heroes at once. Fighting Captain America is one thing. Fighting a machine that can suddenly start behaving like Captain America, Thor and Iron Man is another.
And because this is Marvel, the Super Adaptoid didn’t stop at copying people.
It eventually developed ambitions of its own.
The character has returned in different forms over the years and has even been associated with the robotic group Heavy Metal. That team included characters such as Machine Man and the Awesome Android, making the whole thing feel like AIM accidentally started its own extremely angry robot club.
The frightening part is that the Super Adaptoid isn’t just powerful because of one weapon.
Its entire purpose is stealing what makes other heroes dangerous.
9. Turning AIM Science Into A Weapon
AIM’s greatest strength has always been its scientists.
That sounds harmless until you remember that their scientists are usually working inside laboratories where the emergency button probably says something like RELEASE THE MONSTER.
Across Marvel Comics, AIM has repeatedly taken advanced inventions and turned them into weapons. They’ve worked with gamma radiation, artificial intelligence, genetics, energy manipulation, robotics and technologies far beyond anything normal humans should be allowed to fiddle around with.
Their experiments have regularly involved kidnapping people or using unwilling subjects.
This is what separates AIM from the slightly more ridiculous mad scientists of Marvel. There is often an actual system behind what they’re doing. AIM has facilities, personnel, research departments and enough resources to keep doing it after one plan inevitably explodes.
They can lose a laboratory on Monday and somehow have another one running by Friday.
That persistence makes them dangerous.
You can punch one AIM scientist through a wall, but somewhere else another scientist is already writing down what happened.
8. Creating Earth 13584
One of AIM’s strangest schemes involved something much bigger than stealing a weapon.
They created an entire pocket reality.
Earth 13584 was essentially a bizarre alternate version of Earth created through manipulation of time and reality. The world became a twisted playground where AIM could exploit different versions of technology and historical events.
New York became the last major surviving part of the planet, with different factions controlling pieces of the ruined world.
And because Marvel can’t resist making alternate realities completely bonkers, the heroes themselves weren’t exactly normal either.
The Fantastic Four, for example, were affected by another burst of cosmic radiation and became even more powerful. Different versions of Marvel characters appeared throughout the reality, creating a world where you could walk down a street and potentially meet a completely different version of somebody you already know.
Imagine going into your local Greggs and finding out the person behind the counter is an evil alternate universe Wolverine.
Actually, knowing Marvel, that probably exists somewhere.
The reality eventually became unstable and collapsed, but the story demonstrates something important about AIM
They don’t just experiment on people.
Sometimes they experiment on reality itself.
7. Helping Create Man Thing
One of the strangest consequences of AIM.’s experiments is the creation of Man Thing.
And, technically, they didn’t directly create him.
They just caused basically everything to go horribly wrong.
Dr Ted Sallis was working on a super soldier serum when AIM became interested in the research. Ellen Brandt, Sallis’ assistant and eventual wife, was secretly working as an AIM agent, leading the organisation to raid the laboratory.
Sallis escaped with the serum, but while attempting to get away, he crashed his car into the swamp.
He injected himself with the serum to prevent AIM from getting it.
Then the swamp did what Marvel swamps apparently do.
The chemicals, the serum and the strange supernatural properties of the environment combined, transforming Sallis into the creature known as Man Thing.
Man Thing became one of Marvel’s most unusual monsters, connected to the Nexus of All Realities and capable of existing between different dimensions.
So AIM went looking for a super soldier formula and ended up helping create a giant swamp creature who is essentially standing on the front door of reality.
That’s one hell of an unintended consequence.
6. Turning Betty Ross Into The Harpy
Betty Ross has spent a ridiculous amount of her Marvel existence getting dragged into other people’s disasters.
AIM didn’t exactly improve things.
After the apparent death of Glenn Talbot, Betty was already in a terrible psychological state. M.O.D.O.K. and AIM exploited that vulnerability, exposing her to an enormous amount of gamma radiation.
The result was Harpy.
Instead of the Betty Ross readers knew, she became a powerful, furious creature with wings, claws and a violent hatred towards the Hulk.
It’s one of those classic Marvel transformations where you can almost imagine somebody in the editorial office saying:
“What if Betty, but giant bird?”
And somehow it worked.
Harpy wasn’t simply another Hulk villain, either. Betty’s connection to Bruce Banner made the transformation much more personal. When she eventually confronted the Hulk, she was still Betty underneath everything, creating a strange mixture of superhero fight and tragedy.
The transformation was eventually reversed, restoring Betty to human form, but it remains one of AIM’s nastier examples of treating a person as a laboratory experiment rather than a human being.
5. Creating Ms. M.O.D.O.K.
AIM’s relationship with M.O.D.O.K. has always been complicated.
They created him.
They betrayed him.
He betrayed them.
Then they tried to create another version of him.
Because apparently one enormous floating head wasn’t enough.
Kate Waynesboro was transformed into Ms. M.O.D.O.K. as part of an attempt to create a new M.O.D.O.K. who would be easier for AIM to control.
Naturally, this went wrong.
Ms. M.O.D.O.K. eventually rebelled and sided with the original M.O.D.O.K., even becoming romantically involved with him. Which is possibly one of the strangest relationships in Marvel history.
And that’s saying something in a universe where a talking raccoon and a tree are best mates.
Her story also shows how little AIM actually understands about the people they experiment on. They keep assuming that creating a powerful being means they automatically own it.
It doesn’t.
The problem with making something intelligent is that eventually it might realise you’re an idiot.
4. Attempting To Steal Ms. Marvel’s Powers
Carol Danvers has been kidnapped, experimented on and manipulated more times than anyone should reasonably have to deal with.
AIM got their turn.
After Ms. Marvel was defeated and left vulnerable, AIM captured her and attempted to study and transfer her powers. Their goal wasn’t simply to understand Carol’s abilities.
They wanted them.
That meant analysing her powers and attempting to transfer them to one of their own agents.
When that failed, things became even stranger.
AIM attempted to manipulate Carol psychologically and force her into becoming loyal to them. Their methods included trying to manipulate her emotions and even attempting to make her develop romantic feelings towards M.O.D.O.K.
It’s one of those stories where you read the plot and think, “Surely this cannot be the actual plan.”
But it was.
Carol eventually escaped, because Carol Danvers isn’t exactly famous for politely accepting whatever villainous laboratory nonsense is happening to her.
The incident is particularly disturbing because AIM wasn’t interested in simply defeating Ms. Marvel.
They wanted to take apart what made her powerful and rebuild her into something useful to them.
For a group of people who call themselves Advanced Idea Mechanics, they have some remarkably stupid ideas about personal boundaries.
3. Reviving The Red Skull
Villains are dangerous.
Others are the sort of people where even their enemies occasionally think, “Please don’t bring that bloke back.”
The Red Skull is very much in the second category.
After the Second World War, the Red Skull’s apparent death left his body in suspended animation. When AIM discovered him, they revived him and began working with him.
Their goal was to use one of Captain America’s oldest enemies against him.
This was obviously a brilliant plan.
Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Except that the Red Skull is the Red Skull.
He betrayed AIM, stole the Cosmic Cube and went back to doing what he does best: making Captain America’s life considerably worse.
The Cosmic Cube connection made the situation even more dangerous. AIM had effectively helped put one of the most dangerous Nazi villains in Marvel history back into circulation while also giving him access to reality altering technology.
It is difficult to think of a better example of a villainous organisation failing its own background checks.
They basically revived a monster and then acted surprised when the monster behaved like a monster.
2. Creating The Cosmic Cube
The Cosmic Cube is one of the most important pieces of technology in Marvel history.
And AIM helped build one.
They didn’t create cosmic energy itself, but they constructed a device capable of containing and manipulating it after working under the direction of the Red Skull.
That decision had enormous consequences.
The Cosmic Cube has been used to manipulate matter, reshape reality and grant its users extraordinary power. Over the years, different versions and related entities have appeared, including the famous Tesseract like interpretations that became important to Marvel’s wider mythology.
But the comic book version of the Cosmic Cube is arguably even stranger.
Its power has caused reality to bend around the wishes of whoever controls it. At one point, the energies associated with the Cube even affected AIM.’s island, causing thoughts and desires to become physical realities.
That is exactly the sort of sentence that sounds completely ridiculous until you remember you’re reading Marvel.
And, of course, the Cosmic Cube didn’t just stay as a fancy glowing box.
Its technology became connected to some of AIM’s other creations, including the Super Adaptoid and their work that eventually produced their most famous creation.
Which brings us to number one.
1. Creating M.O.D.O.K.
There really wasn’t another choice.
M.O.D.O.K. is AIM’s masterpiece.
He’s also probably their biggest mistake.
George Tarleton was originally an ordinary scientist working with AIM. His job involved studying the Cosmic Cube and helping develop new technology for the organisation.
Then AIM. decided that a normal human brain wasn’t good enough.
Tarleton was subjected to a transformation experiment designed to dramatically increase his intelligence. The process changed his body as well as his mind, leaving him with the enormous head, tiny limbs and horrifying appearance that became instantly recognisable as M.O.D.O.K.
His original designation was M.O.D.O.C., standing for Mental Organism Designed Only for Computing.
Eventually, that became M.O.D.O.K.
Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing.
And suddenly AIM had created one of Marvel’s most recognisable supervillains.
M.O.D.O.K. wasn’t just intelligent. He was a walking supercomputer with psychic abilities, advanced technology and an ego roughly the size of the Baxter Building.
The problem was that AIM wanted him to serve them.
M.O.D.O.K. had other ideas.
Capture
He eventually seized control of AIM becoming its leader and turning the organisation against its former masters. The scientists had created an intelligence powerful enough to outsmart them, and then discovered the obvious problem with giving an egomaniac superhuman intelligence.
He knew exactly how clever he was.
M.O.D.O.K. has gone on to become a major enemy of Iron Man, the Avengers, the Hulk and Captain America. He’s appeared in countless comic stories, animated series, video games and, eventually, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And beneath all the giant head jokes, there’s something genuinely horrible about his origin.
AIM took a human being, decided his body wasn’t useful enough, rebuilt him into something else and then expected him to remain obedient.
They didn’t create a weapon.
They created a person who was smarter than them and gave him every reason to hate them.
That’s AIM in a nutshell.
They spend decades trying to control science, technology and human beings, only to repeatedly discover that once you’ve created something powerful enough, it tends to develop a mind of its own.
And somewhere in a yellow beekeeper suit, there’s probably another scientist already planning to do it again.
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