M.O.D.O.K.

The Red Hulk did not stumble out of a gamma accident — he was a product, and M.O.D.O.K. was on the design team. In Fall of the Hulks: Alpha #1 (2009), by Jeff Parker and Paul Pelletier, the prelude to the Fall of the Hulks saga lays out the conspiracy in flashback: M.O.D.O.K. approaches the Leader with intelligence he has harvested and a proposal to pool their genius, founding the Intelligencia, a secret cabal of the smartest villains alive — the two of them plus the Wizard, the Mad Thinker, the Red Ghost and the late Egghead.

Their flagship project was a Hulk of their own. Working from data M.O.D.O.K. siphoned from orbital satellites during the Hulk’s exile and return, the cabal dosed General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross with a cocktail of gamma radiation and cosmic rays — the cosmic component is exactly why Ross came out crimson instead of green. The result debuted in Hulk Vol. 2 #1 (2008) as a mystery monster who killed the Abomination, while his makers kept Ross’s identity — and their own authorship — hidden for two years of publication.

The partnership ended the way M.O.D.O.K.’s partnerships tend to. The Intelligencia went on to revive Betty Ross as the Red She-Hulk and mutate Rick Jones into A-Bomb, but Ross eventually learned what the cabal had done to his daughter, tore through his creators, and absorbed the Leader’s gamma power for himself in Hulk Vol. 2 #23 (2010) — the same issue that finally confirmed Ross as the Red Hulk and M.O.D.O.K. as one of his makers. The Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing had, for once, designed something that out-killed the brief.