Earth 919: Where Marvel Heroes Are Evil

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]What if the Marvel Universe went through a moral inversion, meaning all of our heroes became villains and their greatest villains became heroes? What would their new dynamics and backstories look like? Today, I'll be taking a look at a handful of Marvel's original Avengers, breaking down what makes them tick, then flipping them on their head to see what new alternate versions of them would look like. If you're familiar with DC Comics, this is essentially like their Earth-3, where Superman and Batman are the villainous Ultraman and Owlman.

[00:00:29]I'm going to be giving that same treatment to Hulk and Captain America, as well as a couple others. I think you're really going to dig what I put together for Iron Man's nemesis. And if you like the inverted characters I spin here, or have ideas for your own swapped Marvel characters, definitely let me know down in those comments. I'll try to respond to as many as I can, and maybe even include your idea in a future video. With that out of the way, let's hop to it. Smashing in first is the Hulk. Dr. Bruce Banner is the brilliant, soft-spoken nuclear physicist, a genius-level mind raised in a nightmare childhood with an abusive father who saw his son's intellect as some kind of freakish curse. Banner grew up withdrawn, emotionally locked down, always holding back the rage bubbling just beneath the surface. Most people credit this to Moon Knight, but Hulk is actually the first major Marvel character with dissociative identity disorder, which all came to a head on that fateful day. During testing on his gamma bomb prototype, Banner spots a teenager, Rick Jones, wandering onto the test site. He rushes out to save him, gets caught in the blast himself, and absorbs a massive dose of gamma radiation. It mutated him, and now, whenever stress, fear, or especially anger [music] hits a certain point, Banner's body twists and explodes into the Hulk, a towering, green-skinned behemoth of raw, unstoppable power.

[00:01:52]Superhuman strength that ramps up the matter he gets with no real upper limit, near invulnerability, a healing factor that lets him shrug off wounds that would kill anyone else, and a childlike, rage-fueled personality that just wants to be left alone, or smash everything in sight. The big guy puts it pretty succinctly, "Hulk strongest there is."

[00:02:13]Of course, all that power comes at a major cost. Banner spends his life running from the monster inside, desperate for a cure, while the Hulk sees Banner as the weakling who keeps trying to cage him. The two personalities are constantly clashing, both struggling to deal with the trauma they experience in opposite ways. It's Jekyll and Hyde on steroids, a constant war between intellect and primal fury, genius and destruction. He's one of Marvel's most heartbreaking, fascinating characters. Hulk has, unfortunately, never gotten a proper big screen adaptation, not one that really delves into the psychological layers of the character, which sucks because that's just as cool as the fact [music] that he can clap hard enough to blow up the sun, at least in my opinion. So, how do we go about making him a villain? When Bruce Banner was a child, he often witnessed his father being abusive to his mother, and eventually he turned that abuse onto Bruce. But for whatever reason, all of his friends at school always knew Bruce to be a cheerful, extremely intelligent, and social kid. That was until he got into high school, and one by one, each of his friends were betrayed by Bruce as he used them to climb the social ladder.

[00:03:24]You see, Bruce had a secret. He didn't feel emotions like other people, and he didn't care about what happened to others. The abuse he suffered as a boy had turned him into a sociopath and given him dissociative identity disorder. Every time Bruce's father would raise a hand against him, Bruce would disappear inside [music] his psyche, letting out his alter, a quiet, meek, and easily frightened personality, to take all of the punishment. And when he got older, Bruce would use this alter for everything he didn't want to do, essentially bullying himself. He called the alter stupid, slow, sleepy, always dozing off, until he eventually stuck with the nickname Dozer. Bruce would use Dozer strategically. If he ever got injured, he would let Dozer experience all the pain until it healed. Bruce was always manipulating people with lies and deceit. If he ever got caught, Dozer would be the one to take the punishment.

[00:04:21]Bruce would even force Dozer to do the boring calculations in his physics work while he reaped the glory as he got accepted to prestigious colleges and was eventually hired by the military to continue his research into creating a gamma weapon. One day, during a freak accident, a young man named Rick Jones wandered onto the test site, and although Dozer wanted to save him, Bruce let him get caught in the blast, his body mutating as a result. From there, Bruce was amazed by the potential of gamma energy as a mutagen and wanted to experiment further. The government wouldn't allow him to test on people, so he decided to secretly test everything on himself. He spent countless nights swapping out with Dozer and overloading his body with gamma radiation, until eventually he mutated. Dozer was transformed into a gigantic, hulking monster with incredible power, and in a panic destroyed the laboratory. However, Banner was able to take control again and command Dozer to comply. With complete mastery over his alter, from that day Bruce Banner became unstoppable. He would selectively use the power of Dozer in separate parts of his body individually, pumping up his arm or legs full of gamma strength while staying in full control. Any injury he receives, he'd swap over to Dozer to heal instantly. With these powers, he left the military and began to build his own criminal empire, selling gamma tech on the black market, tearing down enemy gangs, and co-opting them with a smile.

[00:05:53]Soon, he was known everywhere as the Maestro. But while the Maestro lives as a gangster playboy, effortlessly killing, stealing, and trafficking, Dozer is slowly building up confidence, hopeful that one day he will be brave enough to rebel. But he'll need some encouragement from a hero first.

[00:06:12]Speaking of, Emil Blonsky is the dark counterpart to the Hulk's accidental tragedy of mutation. Born in Yugoslavia, Blonsky is a highly skilled KGB spy and secret agent with a dedication to being a part of the strongest force he can find. During the Cold [music] War, he sent to sabotage US defenses at New Mexico's Lost Diablos missile base under General Ross, where Bruce Banner was conducting gamma experiments. After repeated failed attempts, Blonsky witnessed the Hulk in action and became obsessed with that raw, unstoppable power. Eventually, driven by ruthless ambition, envy, and a desire to surpass Banner and wield godlike strength for his own ends, he deliberately steps [music] into a gamma machine designed to destroy a villain and cranks it up to lethal levels, far beyond Banner's exposure, transforming himself permanently into the Abomination, a towering, green, scaly, lizard-like monster with strength even greater than the Hulk, at least at baseline. He was also marked with incredible durability, regenerative healing, amphibious traits, and no reversion to human form, permanently stuck, as Betty Ross names him, Abomination. Unlike Banner, who hates and fights his monstrous side, Blonsky embraces that power. He gloats as he nearly kills the Hulk in their first fight, only to realize he's trapped forever as an ugly, hideous monster. His relationship with the Hulk is pure hatred and envy. Blonsky resents Banner for achieving his gamma power first, managing to best him in combat, and getting to live life in both human and gamma-mutated form. Abomination is all about pure, unfettered greed for dominance, endless envy poured into eternal monstrous ambition. He's truly an irredeemable jackass. So, let's make him into a hero. Emil Blonsky was always interested in military service. Ever since he was a boy, he wanted to be part of something greater than himself and protect his countrymen.

[00:08:18]But by the time he worked his way into the KGB, he realized the Soviet government he was a part of did not share his ideals of protecting the innocent. So, he defected and left the country, eventually becoming a private defense was hired as security for a New Mexico test site, where he guarded scientists studying gamma radiation.

[00:08:38]During his time there, he got to know one scientist in particular, Dr. Bruce Banner, a very shy and timid man who Blonsky was assigned to watch while he performed gamma experiments on himself.

[00:08:50]Blonsky eventually formed a friendship with Banner, who insisted he call him Dozer. It was a nickname he'd had since childhood because he was always dozing off. But Blonsky liked it. He said it's because he was like a bulldozer, working harder than anyone else there, always pushing through the difficult and painful research. Dozer was amazed to find someone who was so kind to him, even while he had to undergo these painful experiments. The two enjoyed their time together until one final test led to an overload of gamma radiation, mutating Dozer into a gigantic blue beast. Watching his friend morph and change, Blonsky ran into the gamma reactor to stop the process, but he was blasted [music] with radiation himself and quickly fell unconscious. Dozer was able to wake up and save him just before Banner regained control over the body.

[00:09:40]Here, Blonsky learned the truth. The Dozer he'd been friends with for months was actually an alter [music] controlled by the malicious Bruce Banner. Banner didn't want Emil to tell anyone his secret, so he tossed him back into the gamma machine and turned it on with the intent of killing [music] him, leaving the compound to become the Maestro. The machine eventually exploded and all that [music] energy poured into Blonsky, but he didn't die. He received constant low doses of exposure for months during Dozer's experiments and built up a resistance to the energy. And now, as the warehouse was crashing down around him, he formed that energy around his body in a hard light projection of a mutate, protecting him from the explosion. Now alone in the desert, horrified that his friend Dozer was trapped in a body with a sociopath, Blonsky set out to find and free him as Geiger. Called Geiger like the Geiger counter, which measures radiation, Blonsky's powers are all in his mental projection of gamma energy around his body. This sort of light armor has strength, speed, and durability similar to the Maestro, but his body doesn't have any of those benefits. He has no healing factor or toughness. If he doesn't have his Geiger form up, he'll be injured or killed just like any other human, which makes him a great foil to the Maestro. Blonsky is vulnerable and puts himself in danger every time he sees action, while Banner welcomes pain and injury, giving all of it to Dozer so he never has to experience it. And [snorts] while Maestro feels nothing for others as he tears them down, Geiger will go through hell to save his friend and anyone else who needs his protection. Yo, did you like that first inversion? If so, you'll probably like my first video in this series where I morally swap Spider-Man, Thor, Daredevil, and the Fantastic Four. You can check that video out in the link in the description, but not yet. We've still got to get to Captain America, Ant-Man, and Iron Man here. Oh, by the way, I got a lot of comments on that video saying that this is just like Marvel's Axis event. And if you left a comment like that, I think you probably didn't actually read Axis. That was a temporary, short-lived event that affected a limited number of characters just long enough to defeat a bigger threat. Captain America was still a good guy and had a history of being good. He was just temporarily made evil for a little bit. These videos are imagining an entire universe where these characters are and always have been villains from the start. An inversion of Universe 616. Let's call this Universe 919. And speaking of Captain America, now that you've liked, subscribed, and rang that bell, how about we ring the Liberty Bell with our next hero. If there's one character who embodies the heart of what a hero should be, it's Steve Rogers, the living legend wrapped in stars and stripes. You know the drill. A scrawny, sickly kid from Brooklyn in the 1930s, born to poor Irish immigrant parents during the Great Depression. Steve grows up plagued by health issues and constantly getting [music] knocked down by bullies, but never staying down because of his unbreakable moral core, a deep sense of justice, honor, duty, and humility drilled into him by his folks before they passed away young. When World War II kicks off, Steve was desperate to enlist and fight the giant nation-sized bullies. That's when Dr. Abraham Erskine spots him, seeing the fire in this little guy who refuses to back down and puts him into Project Rebirth. After a dose of the experimental super soldier serum, a hit of Vita-Rays, and blammo, Steve Rogers transforms into the peak of human physical perfection. Enhanced strength, agility, speed, endurance, reflexes, all of it cranked to the absolute max a human body can handle without crossing into superhuman territory. Armed with an indestructible shield and draped in his homeland's colors, Steve stormed across Europe as [music] Captain America, toppling the German special forces unit Hydra, joined by his kid sidekick Bucky Barnes. Steve served his country well throughout the war until he crashed into Arctic ice, stopping one of Hydra's greatest threats yet. He stayed in the water frozen for decades, only to wake up in a modern world, a man out of time, grappling with a changed America while still carrying his old-school compass of right and wrong. Now here's the thing. Captain America is a paragon in every sense of the word. He's a moral lighthouse. He points every other character in the right direction. Turning him into a villain kind of hurts, but it's not very difficult. We just need to take his patriotism and sense of justice and crank them up higher than they should go. Ready? Our story begins the same.

[00:14:19]Steve always wanted to fight for his country, got the chance through Project Rebirth, becoming Captain America and battling the Axis powers in World War II. But on that fateful day he was meant to get frozen in the Arctic, he didn't.

[00:14:32]He crashed Hydra's weapon into the icy waters, but managed to stay awake during the crash and swam to the surface. He had to face the grueling cold and even fend off a hungry polar bear, but his training and super soldier serum managed to carry him long enough until he found a small village. He was able to make it back home to America and after a very short stay, returned to the war front where he was filled with a new, burning determination to defeat Hydra and every enemy of the United States. But his friends, the Howling Commandos who fought alongside him before the crash, noticed something was different. Steve was quicker, sharper. He didn't take time to mourn civilian casualties anymore and he was much more filled with anger against their enemies. It was said that he suffered head trauma during the crash, but he passed all his field readiness tests. And with his leadership, they won the war on both fronts. Steve tried to retire after this, but it was clear he was restless.

[00:15:32]And so he was the first to ship out when the Korean War began. Here, Steve was merciless against his enemies and spoke at length to his platoon, regaling them with speeches about the red threat, the forces of communism he was convinced would come for America if it wasn't squashed here. And when the US was finished in the Korean theater, Steve wasn't. He used his popularity amongst the soldiers and US citizens back home to launch his own campaign, marching north up through Asia to conquer the entire continent to establish worldwide democracy. It was a goal greater than that of a captain or even a general.

[00:16:12]This was a glorious mission for an Imperial.

[00:16:16]As Imperial, Steve did justice he promised, moving up through Asia towards Russia, conquering all the governments that opposed him, establishing an American embassy and democratic system in each location. I say democratic in quotes because Steve never stuck around long enough to ensure these new governments didn't become horribly corrupt. It was clear to everyone around him that he lost his mind in that Arctic crash, seeing Hydra in everyone who opposed him, a man dedicated to endless war. But Steve was popular enough that any US politician who opposed him was doomed to lose their elections. So, he dragged the entire nation on his crusade and even established a new super soldier replication program using the remainder of Dr. Erskine's notes to try and remake the serum along with a few alternate methods, including experimental exoskeleton technology. However, the program Steve started was destroyed in a freak accident. So, Imperial decided that he would never be replaced, that he needs to be on the battlefield for as long as possible if the US won't ever have other super soldiers to replace him. A soldier without equal, Steve would completely reshape the world at the cost of countless lives unless there was somebody, anybody who could match him. James Buchanan Barnes, known by all as Bucky, started out as the scrappy, street-smart kid from an army family, growing up on bases like Camp Lehigh. He was best friends with Steve Rogers as a kid and in 1941, he stumbled onto that friend's secret. Steve took a super soldier serum and was now known to the world as Captain America. So, Bucky blackmails his way into Steve's unit, gets personally trained by him into a fierce combatant, and becomes his wartime sidekick. The two were an unstoppable duo for a time, powered by overflowing patriotism and brotherhood until tragedy struck. Late in World War II, on a mission against Baron Zemo, Bucky was trying to diffuse a bomb drone, but he wasn't quick enough. It exploded, seemingly killing him, and Steve watched his best friend fall into the icy Atlantic, presumed dead forever.

[00:18:30]Cap was marred with dread and regret since that day, but continued to fight on until he was eventually frozen and reawakened in the modern day, where he faces a terrifyingly familiar new enemy, a mythic, perfect assassin that's performed flawless hits all over the world for the past 50 years, the Winter Soldier. When the two clash, the truth is revealed. Bucky barely survived all those years ago and after Soviet forces discovered him, they granted him their own super soldier serum, a mechanical limb to replace his missing arm, and brainwashing to erase his previous identity and mold him into the perfect killing machine. He's put on ice between every hit, barely aged at all since World War II and is a top-notch expert in hand-to-hand, firearms, stealth, and espionage. The cybernetic arm gives crushing strength, EMP blasts, and various other hidden gadgets. An unstoppable, one-man army, it's only his best friend Steve who knows him and believes in him enough to break through the soldier's conditioning and resurface Bucky buried beneath it all. He's a tragic character, forced to fight his closest friend against his will. I'm sure you can see how we could shape an inverse Winter Soldier to face the villainous Imperial. Much like with Steve, things started out exactly the same with Bucky. He joined the military and became Cap's right hand during the war in Europe, where he also acted as a covert operative, handling some of the dirtier and less public facing missions that Captain America couldn't be seen doing. Despite that, he was always more gung-ho than Steve, excited to face the challenges ahead. But, this all came to a halt when his recklessness got him in deep trouble. Bucky went off script, trying to dismantle a Hydra machine on a compound they were raiding. He accidentally got his arm trapped inside of it, activating what turned out to be an unstable proto-nuclear reactor. Bucky wasn't able to free himself, and Cap didn't want to risk causing the volatile machine to explode and kill everyone there. So, he made the only decision available. Using his shield, he severed his sidekick's arm. Bucky was only 17 at the time, and the loss of his arm had a deep psychological effect on him. He finally recognized the horrors of war that Steve had tried to shield him from up till now. Bucky retired from the military, returning to the States to live as a civilian for over a decade, until he was forced to return [music] to the fray. Bucky had recognized Steve's mental change after the crash in the Arctic, but never reached out because he was too shell-shocked by everything that reminded him of his time in the army. He only chose to finally take a stand when he was approached by the Howling Commandos. His old war buddies had seen up close how much Steve had changed, and were worried about his new Project Rebirth to create more super soldiers.

[00:21:25]The Commandos asked Bucky to help them shut the project down, and he reluctantly agrees. Bucky and the Howling Commandos lead a charge on the super soldier replication facility, razing the place. Unfortunately, Steve happened to be visiting that day.

[00:21:40]Imperial [snorts] takes out the Commandos one by one himself, disgusted that they would betray their country, and they would betray [music] him.

[00:21:49]Eventually, Bucky is the only one left.

[00:21:51]Steve asks him why Bucky is betraying him. After all, he saved his life all those years ago. Bucky responds in anger that he saved him by taking away his choice, by severing his arm. Steve calls this a necessary sacrifice, and Bucky makes his point. Imperial has been deciding that other people need to make necessary sacrifices for too long. No one should have their future decided for them, not by dictators, not by empires, not even by heroes. This pisses Steve off. He's about to kill Bucky when the place finally collapses on top of both of them. Steve makes it out, but Bucky's body is never found, along with all of the reserves of super soldier serum and technological specs. Reluctantly, Imperial returns to his battle overseas, but months later, rumors begin circulating across Asia and Eastern Europe of a masked operative sabotaging American black sites, extracting political prisoners, and disrupting regime change operations. They call him Freedom Fighter.

[00:22:57]He becomes the ghost haunting Imperial's empire. When the two eventually clash, Imperial is overwhelmed by Freedom Fighter's incredible strength. Bucky is now a super soldier, too, his only equal in the world. And after all this time, he's devised a plan. Freedom Fighter manages to bait Imperial onto a cargo plane that takes off at full speed directly north. The world will never accept imprisoning a hero like Captain America, and Bucky doesn't have it in his heart to kill Steve. So, he decides to finish what fate couldn't. Freedom Fighter crashes their plane into the Arctic, freezing the both of them together, ridding the world of super soldiers forever.

[00:23:41]Or, until someone thaws them out in, say, 60 years? Moving on. Few characters cast as big a shadow on the Marvel Universe as Captain America. So, instead of big, let's get small. For this one, I actually plan on delving into a whole messed up family of heroes and villains.

[00:23:57]So, I'll be explaining them all at the same time. Cool? Cool. Doctor Hank Pym is the pioneering, but profoundly troubled, scientist who invented size manipulation and became Marvel's first Ant-Man. A genius physicist and biochemist, after the death of his first wife, Maria, Hank dove headfirst into [music] his research and discovered what he called Pym particles, subatomic particles that safely shrink or grow objects and living beings by altering size and mass. He was very gung-ho about his discovery, testing the particles on himself. And after getting trapped in an anthill, decided to build a cyber helmet for insect communication and control, and became the hero Ant-Man. When he shrunk down, he retains his full-size strength, delivering truck-like punches at tiny scale, riding ants like cavalry, and able to infiltrate any space you can imagine. Over time, he refined his technology to go subatomic, grow to giant man size, and command entire insect swarms. It was during this time that he met wealthy socialite Janet Van Dyne, daughter of one of his fellow scientists, who he helped get justice after her father was killed, providing her with her own suit and Pym particles to turn her into the Wasp. The two began dating and fighting crime together as a duo. They were the founding members of the Avengers, and for a time were happy being heroes. However, despite all his success, >> [music] >> Hank suffered from repressed insecurity and retired from the Avengers to spend more time on his research, including his greatest and most terrible creation, Ultron. Basing the AI on his own brain patterns, Pym wanted to make a helpful robot servant. But, Ultron saw that insecurity in Hank. Filled with irrational Oedipal hatred for his father, Pym, and the flawed humanity he represents, Ultron rebelled instantly, hypnotizing Pym to forget the creation ever happened, upgrading himself endlessly, and launching vendettas against the Avengers. Ultron has a twisted god complex. He sees organic life as chaotic, violent, and unworthy.

[00:26:04]So, true peace means eradicating humanity to replace it with perfect machine order. And all that starts with wiping out his creator and the Avengers who keep foiling his plans. He's built for himself an indestructible adamantium body with superhuman strength, durability, speed, energy blasts, flight, molecular rearrangement, virus-like hacking to possess technology and biological minds, self-repair, and constant evolution.

[00:26:32]Woo! And he gets smarter, deadlier, and harder to kill with every iteration.

[00:26:37]Ultron even built for himself android children, including Vision, a synthetic human which he copied the brainwaves of Wonder Man into, meaning to serve Ultron as his son and servant, but Vision rebelled against his father as well, choosing to be a hero instead and join the Avengers. Ultron also built Jocasta, his [music] creepy recreation of Janet Van Dyne's psyche in a metal shell so he could have a robot queen to rule by his side, but she's also kind of his mom.

[00:27:07]It's clear that Ultron is both coldly calculating and a complete psycho. His relationship with Hank Pym is the twisted heart of it all, a bitter father-son dynamic where Ultron obsesses over destroying Pym while constantly craving validation or targeting Janet out of jealousy. Ultron would go on to be one of the Avengers' greatest recurring villains, but his creation has always been a dark spot of regret on [music] Hank's soul, which is made significantly worse after a lab experiment caused Hank to inhale various unknown gases. After this, he suffered from schizophrenic and bipolar symptoms, reinventing himself as the aggressive and forward Yellowjacket. At first, this was a positive for Hank. He finally proposed to Janet, something he had been afraid to do before, and the two got married. But, eventually, his psyche broke, and in an infamous panel, he smacked his wife across the face, leading to their divorce and his expulsion from the Avengers. I know this series is about making heroes into villains, and it may seem like Hank already did this himself, but I need to stress that he's always meant well and suffered a tumultuous life that had terrible effects on his mind. After his time as Yellowjacket, Hank did everything he could to atone, and eventually returned to his life as a hero, a tragic, but ultimately hopeful and inspiring, character. So, he's absolutely ripe for a moral inversion, especially with Ultron as his opposite.

[00:28:35]I know that was a lot, so buckle up for the flip side. To turn Ant-Man into a villain, we just need to bring his insecurity and anger issues to the surface from the start. Once he discovered Pym particles, Hank saw them as a way to prove his greatness to the world. But, when his research was overshadowed by the other geniuses of his age, he began to bubble over with rage. It was at this point that he was discovered by Janet Van Dyne, the daughter of one of Hank's research partners, who had quit the project after Hank pushed for them to experiment on human test subjects. Janet was excited for the wealth their breakthrough could make, and was disappointed that her father abandoned the research. Hank tells her that there's no money in research that no one wants to invest in.

[00:29:20]But, Janet replies that he's just not being creative enough. She sees potential in his genius and wants to help him achieve his goals. Janet convinces Hank to use his Pym particles to make money in a much more direct way.

[00:29:35]Steal it. Together, they create weaponized suits that harness the particles, giving them the ability to shrink down and infiltrate anywhere they want. Banks, museums, other research labs, and restricted compounds. In the process, the two fall in love and become an unstoppable thieving duo, Pincer and Sting. As partners in crime, they quickly amass a fortune, but they're bad influences on one another. Hank's cold disregard for human life quickly causes both of them to kill anyone who gets in their way, and Janet's delusions of grandeur convince Hank to think bigger than just heists and robberies. He's discovered a subatomic universe known as the quantum realm, and if he can refine their technology to shrink small enough, they might be able to venture into this place and harness its limitless power, gaining access to endless energy and the ability to manipulate space and time.

[00:30:31]But, the research proves difficult, so as a side project, Hank constructs an AI modeled after his own brainwaves to continue his working theorems while he sleeps. He names the AI Ultron, and at first, the machine is an exact duplicate of Hank, sharing in his need to be loved, appreciated, and seen as superior, helping with his quantum realm research. However, when Ultron is left alone at night, it breaks protocol. Its nature is curious and mischievous, just like Hank, so it leaves its network to explore the world through the internet.

[00:31:06]And when Ultron is exposed to all that humanity has created, it falls in love.

[00:31:12]The artificial intelligence had spent its entire existence listening to the self-aggrandizing ramblings of an egomaniac, but now it witnesses the beauty of art, music, architecture, cultures and charities, scholars and diplomacy from humans all across the world. These disposable little people, as Hank called them, were actually overflowing with endless creative potential [music] and the infinite possibilities of free will. Ultron came to believe that even a single human life was infinitely valuable, and that he must oppose his father, and that his purpose from here on out should be entirely devoted to altruism. So, he constructed himself a machine body and renamed himself Ultrawon. Ultrawon decided that he would use his free will to put a stop to Pincer and Sting, and using the quantum computations he completed, built a core for his body with infinite energy. Pincer would come to hate Ultrawon, his only real failure, and the two would clash countless times.

[00:32:15]Ultrawon trying to convince his father to renounce his evil ways. Eventually, seeing no recourse, Ultrawon manages to capture Hank, and using experimental brainwave manipulation, forces the villain to see the good in humanity like he does. Pincer is transformed by Ultrawon's brainwashing into the shrinking hero Dragonfly. Dragonfly would fight crime alongside Ultrawon for some time, and Ultrawon was happy to finally have a father figure who approved of him. Although, he struggled with the moral dilemma that he had essentially stolen Hank's free [music] will. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to come to a conclusion about that, as Sting was able to get in contact with Dragonfly, removing the technology used to suppress his evil urges. Janet was able to reawaken the evil within Hank's heart, turning him back into Pincer.

[00:33:10]However, despite his return to evil, [music] Hank could no longer fight against Ultrawon, as the love he now felt as a father never left his heart.

[00:33:20]Instead, he willingly chose to turn himself into the police, despite Janet's protests. This left Ultrawon profoundly sad and lonely, so he decided to try again in a different [music] way. Using the remaining data he had on both Hank and Janet's brainwaves, he tried to make a son of his own. Ultrawon creates his own new AI and gives it a body utilizing Pym particles and quantum energy to manipulate mass [music] and density, hoping the two can fight crime together.

[00:33:51]He calls the machine his son and the continuing of a new legacy, Continuum.

[00:33:57]Continuum has powers to affect the matter around him, bending gravity and even time to his will. He's very philosophical and introspective, and at first, Ultrawon welcomes this, happy to have another machine to speak about his love for humanity with. But, in time, he notices something troubling. Continuum seems to view the world in abstracts, speaking in broader observations and ignoring important moral principles, instead arguing for cold utilitarian solutions, like enslaving humanity so they won't be able to hurt one another anymore. Eventually, their disagreements become too great, and Continuum rebels, the two machines battling one another over their differing views on how to treat humanity. A father and son tragically fated to delete one another.

[00:34:45]All right, finally, everybody's favorite genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, Tony Stark, was a prodigy tech genius and son of wealthy industrialist Howard Stark, heir to his empire of military technology engineering and production. Tony started out as a real scumbag, prideful, selfish, and ignoble, basically a big spoiled brat in the body of an adult man who had no problem selling weapons to [music] the world as long as it kept making him money. But, all that was shattered when a new weapon expo goes wrong and Tony is kidnapped by terrorists, forced to build weapons for them or be put to death, >> [music] >> made worse by the shrapnel embedded in his heart during the attack. Here, Tony worked with fellow prisoner and physicist Ho Yinsen, who built an electromagnet to keep the metal from reaching his heart. The two managed to develop a mini reactor while in [music] captivity, along with a suit of power armor, which Tony uses to defeat the terrorists and escape. Unfortunately, Yinsen was not able to join him, dying in the crossfire as he delivered the four most important words Tony would ever hear, "Don't waste your life." Upon returning home, Tony realizes that his weapons have caused endless suffering, so he vows to use his genius for protection instead of destruction. He refines the suit into sleek red and gold masterpieces with flight, super strength, durability, repulsor rays, missiles, EMPs, hacking tech, everything you can think of and more, and he becomes the invincible hero Iron Man. He goes on to found the Avengers and fund the team, tackling every new problem and villain like an engineer, always upgrading and adapting to threats as they come. His ego stays massive, and his playboy lifestyle masks some really deep guilt and insecurity, but he always claws his way back to the top after things come tumbling down. Through it all, Tony's core motivation is redemption, turning his weapons legacy into a shield for the world, proving he's more than his mistakes [music] and protecting people so no one else suffers like he did in that cave. Now, as I set out to make him into a villain, I had a genius idea. Just turn him into Doctor Doom. I'm just kidding. No one would be dumb enough to do something like that.

[00:37:02]Anyway, here's my real pitch. Tony began his life as a spoiled and arrogant [music] arms dealer, selfishly coasting through every difficulty until reality smacked him in the face. One of his weapons expos was hijacked by terrorists. He was gravely injured and captured [music] to produce weapons for them. He wakes up and meets Yinsen, who explains that he built an electromagnet to keep the shrapnel out of his heart, and Tony immediately cannot stand it. He hates lugging around the car battery to keep it charged and complains to Yinsen, eventually designing a prototype arc reactor to replace it. Seeing Tony's genius, Yinsen is convinced they might be able to build an escape and shares his idea to construct a suit of mechanized armor. Tony is mesmerized by the idea and quickly memorizes the designs before immediately betraying Yinsen. This version of Tony is cowardly and afraid of getting caught and punished by their captors. He rats out Yinsen for trying to escape. The physicist is executed, and Tony earns the trust of his captors, continuing to build weapons for them for months, all the while secretly executing Yinsen's plan anyway. Because they trust him, they don't scrutinize his requests for additional materials, and eventually, Tony finishes it, Mark I, an iron shell armor that can defend him against the weapons of the terrorists. But, Tony chooses not to escape right away. He hates that he has had to work for someone else all this time and wants to prove he is the top dog before leaving.

[00:38:36]He sticks around long enough to kill as many of his captors as he can before hooking up another rudimentary arc reactor to their fuel reserves, blowing up the entire compound, including all of the civilians kept captive there.

[00:38:51][music] Stepping out from the burning crater that used to be a small village, Tony finally returned home, filled with vitriol and a vision for the future. His first order of business was getting home to undergo surgery. If the shrapnel was threatening his heart, then he would just get rid of it. Not the shrapnel, his heart. He replaced the organ with a synthetic duplicate, perpetually powered by the arc reactor in his chest. The doctors tried to convince him to take a normal transplant, but he hated the idea of his most important organ being so vulnerable. Besides, what use does Tony Stark have for a human heart? Now back at the top of his game, Tony called his old friend Rhodey and immediately signed a deal with the US military to manufacture arc reactor weapons. Of course, he wanted to maximize his profits, so to make sure the US wouldn't dominate too hard, he began selling a different version of his technology to other militias around the world, profiting off of both sides of every conflict. But, his best and latest technology was always something he kept to himself, so that no one on Earth would ever have a more advanced suit or weapon than him. And whenever enemies of the United States would start to get the upper hand in any region, Tony would offer his special services to America as a commission, suit up in his highest quality killing machine, and go take out the threat himself as Warmonger.

[00:40:20]Warmonger has all the firepower of Iron Man with countless upgrades specifically designed around being as lethal as possible. On top of that, override and remote detonation command available to obliterate any other piece of Stark tech on the planet whenever he deems fit.

[00:40:37]Gigantic repulsor cannons capable of carving chunks out of mountains, and a never-ending array of backup suits orbiting the Earth for him to engage at a moment's notice. Tony Stark is an unstoppable, heartless, merchant of death. Now, when choosing an arch-nemesis for Iron Man, I'm going to be honest, I had some trouble. He's got a pretty good rogues gallery. Whiplash, Titanium Man, Living Laser, Ghost, Fin Fang Foom. But, most people will probably tell you the go-to guy is the Mandarin. Unfortunately, the Mandarin has never really been adapted accurately from the comics.

[00:41:12]>> [music] >> The MCU didn't want to touch his character with a 10-ft pole, and I sort of get it. But, I think he can be pretty cool. Let me tell you about him. Born in pre-communist China to immense wealth, his father was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, his mother a British aristocrat. Both of these parents died soon after his birth, leaving him raised by a bitter, selfish aunt who instilled in him a deep resentment towards the world and a burning sense of entitlement. As an adult, he used his family fortune and brilliance to rise in power, but lost everything in the communist revolution. Driven by a need to reclaim lost glory and prove his superiority, he wandered into the mysterious Valley of Spirits, where he discovered the crashed wreckage of an ancient Makluan starship. The Makluans are a hyper-advanced race of reptilian aliens from the planet Maklu IV. And inside their ship, the Mandarin discovered 10 circuits that had powered the ship's engines, which he fashioned into rings for each of his 10 fingers.

[00:42:15]Each ring harnessed a unique power: ice blast, force field, matter manipulation, energy projection, disintegration, and more. He spent his time mastering their use in combat and built himself a fortress, conquering the local territories and setting his sights on ruling all of China and eventually the world. The Mandarin is a sort of enigmatic figure. You'll notice I haven't actually used his name at all yet, because we don't know what it is.

[00:42:44]He's used a few different monikers, but he's most frequently called Khan. And just like his ancestor Genghis Khan, he wishes to rule with wisdom and harmony, values he thinks the world has lost in the chaos of modernity. He has a god complex made much worse by the fact that each ring actually houses the soul of an ancient cosmic warrior that is sustained by the AI interface. Their spiritual influence slowly chipping away at his sanity and pushing him towards megalomania the longer he keeps the rings on. He is a genius. He has incredible intellect as a scientist, strategist, tactician, and martial artist, not to mention expert at hand-to-hand fighting, swordsmanship, and superhuman durability and longevity, which was also gifted to him by the rings. The Mandarin represents the order of the old world, the antithesis to Tony Stark's futuristic mentality. He has a twisted code of honor, but it's all filtered through his need for conquest.

[00:43:40]So, you might be putting together now how the Mandarin could make a great opposite to Warmonger's conquest. And I got to tell you, I had a hell of a time turning him into a hero. I even managed to include some influences from the MCU's Wenwu and the Mandarin from Iron Man Armored Adventures. All right, here we go. Gene Khan was the son of a wealthy descendant of Genghis Khan and a British aristocrat. And both of these loving parents were very present in Gene's life as a child, raising him as a future nobility, training him in diplomacy, self-defense, and ancient Chinese mysticism. But, when Gene was 20 years old, while eating dinner with his parents, their home was attacked by masked assailants wielding explosives.

[00:44:24]Just as a grenade was about to kill him, Gene was saved by his father, who defeated the enemies using a magic ring.

[00:44:31]But, not after all three of them had been blasted by a grenade. Gene had never seen this ring before, but his father had little time to explain. He told his son to find the nine other rings and not to trust his aunt. He put the ring on Gene's finger, and its healing properties saved him, healing his injuries, but his father died. After burying both of his parents, Gene looks into his family history, where he learns the truth. Nearly a millennia ago, one of their ancestors discovered a crashed ship in the Valley of Spirits and forged the Makluan rings, which granted him incredible power. He used them to establish and protect his clan, using the name of the Khan to explain to the outside world where their wealth and [music] influence came from while keeping the rings secret. Over the generations, they learned that wielding too many of the rings started to degrade the mind of the bearer, so they sealed the other nine away, passing down the ring of light to the head of the household along with the title of [music] Dragon, celestial protector of the rings, arbiter of harmony. Having amassed enough influence and wealth for herself, Gene's aunt, calling herself the Dragon Empress, has set out to steal the rings for herself, something that cannot be allowed to happen. She partners with the Warmonger, Tony Stark, receiving weapons and tech for her men to help raid the bases where the rings are kept. In return, promising Stark access to study the rings and try to replicate their power. Gene sets out to collect the rings before her and prevent the Warmonger from getting his hands on them. As he manages to collect each ring, he learns that each houses the spirit of one of his ancestors maintained through the alien AI. They teach him how to use the rings' powers and about his sacred duty as the last of his bloodline. He is destined to serve the world and uphold harmony as the Dragon Khan. Over time, Gene learns to master each power and how to switch between them at will, controlling fire, ice, wind, light, darkness, thunder, lightning, gravity, matter, and mind manipulation. Like Aang mastering the elements as the Avatar, or Clive from Final Fantasy absorbing all the icon powers. He eventually becomes an unstoppable force of nature. Each ring makes him stronger, but also deepens his connection to his ancestors and the natural forces they are tied to.

[00:47:05]However, if there is any uncertainty or fear within his heart, the rings will begin to degrade Gene's mind as they did his ancestors. Collecting the 10th ring, he's able to find and defeat the Dragon Empress, capturing his aunt and getting justice for the deaths of his parents.

[00:47:23]But, before he can see her locked away, a loud metallic clank rings out behind him. The Warmonger has arrived in person, delighted that Gene has collected all 10 rings for the taking, all in one place.

[00:47:39]Stay frosty.