M.O.D.O.K.

On Battleworld, the stitched-together planet ruled by God Doom, one domain ran on a single civic principle: Killville, where murder was the local economy and its top earner was a familiar giant head. The M.O.D.O.K. of Killville had, by local legend, already murdered every superhero in his domain, and he took contract work the way other men take coffee orders.

Then a member of Doom's thunder-wielding police force, the Thor called Angela, was blasted out of the sky over the border and crashed inside his territory. M.O.D.O.K. arrived at the crater as a professional, fully intending to add a Thor to his record. Instead, the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing fell head over heels — a short trip, given the proportions — in love.

Affection made him hopeless by Killville standards: he shielded her from the blast of one of his own bombs, teamed up with her against the Assassins Guild killers sent after them both, and set about unravelling who had grounded her in the first place. The trail led upward, to a baronial scheme that needed a dead Thor as bait — a plan that only worked if M.O.D.O.K. performed the killing, which was precisely the step his new defect had deleted from the programme.