Harvey Rupert ElderMole Man

Shunned by society for his visage, the genius Harvey Elder ends up on Monster Island in a cave, where he discovers abandoned Deviant technology, masters it, and rules the Moloid race. He makes it his mission to attack the surface world with his minions as the Subterranean tyrant known as Mole Man!

Subterranean Solitude

A genius born in the late 1910s, Harvey Rupert Elder is shunned for his homely appearance. Hearing rumors of an underground kingdom where he might find acceptance, or at least solitude, Elder spends years searching for it. He tries to join the Explorers Club in 1956 on the basis of his exploits, but is ridiculed and rejected. Fuming, he happens to observe the Eternal Makkari organizing the Monster Hunters to fight the Deviant Kro and his monstrous, genetically engineered Mutates. Believing the group’s destination was his fabled subterranean goal, Elder stows away on their plane and is separated from them during their battle with Kro. Washing up on the shores of Monster Island in the Sea of Japan, Elder explores cavern after cavern until finally discovering a tunnel into Subterranea, only to get caught in an earthquake and almost blinded in the mystic Valley of Diamonds. Undaunted, Elder explores Subterranea’s vastness to create a kingdom of his own; his early activities may have influenced various subterranean incursions into the United States and other nations during the late 1950s and early 1960s. 

Overcoming overwhelming odds, he discovers and masters an incredible array of abandoned Deviant technology, claiming uncounted miles of territory and becoming a rival to the underground kingdoms of the monstrous Two-Headed Thing and the immortal Tyrannus. Slowing his aging process through unrevealed means, Elder, calling himself the Mole Man, becomes ruler of the so-called Moloid race, docile servants engineered and abandoned by the Deviants centuries ago, as well as many Mutates once used for conquest or sport by their former masters. His underground exploration eventually leads to the surface of a second Monster Island, or Isla de Los Monstruos, in the Caribbean, and he claims this territory as well. 

Self-Trained Genius

Although severely myopic to the point of near-blindness, the Mole Man, through unidentified means, develops a compensatory radar sense; his brain generates a 360-degree electromagnetic signal via whose deflection he receives sensory signals from his general vicinity, providing a close analogue of human sight. His radar sense, combined with heightened senses of hearing, smell and touch, grants him an awareness of his surroundings somewhat superior to that of an average human’s, enabling him to detect objects behind him or in total darkness. 

Lacking formal instruction, he is a self-trained genius in many scientific fields, capable of mastering and improving advanced technology created millennia ago by non-human cultures. Almost a century old, he possesses the appearance of a man roughly half his age and the vitality of one even younger, although his radical behavior shifts suggest a possible untreated bipolar disorder. 

He wears an early version of nuclear test-range flash-goggles to reduce incoming light to tolerable levels. He is a formidable combatant and customarily carries a staff, usually made of aluminum or wood, which he wields in a unique fighting style, similar to kendo, which he develops to capitalize on his enhanced senses and low height. The staffs are constructed with patterns of ridges and bumps around the handgrip areas, conveying information to him by touch, and keyed to his unique skin conductivity in order to induce galvanic shock in anyone else who attempts to use them. He possesses several such staffs, equipped with low-energy radar, flame-throwers, high-energy ultrasonic beams, electrical bolts up to about 60,000 volts, gravity control, holographic projection, laser fire to carve through several feet of granite per minute, and other functions. 

He has access to literally caverns full of technology based upon that of the millennia-old Deviant civilization and is invariably accompanied wherever he goes by dozens or hundreds of his Moloid servants, also commanding gigantic super-powered Mutates in battle. When active on the surface, he sometimes rides a flying Mutate called a Skreeal.

Surface-World Scum

In Mole Man’s exploits to destroy the surface world, he runs afoul of the heroic First Family, the Fantastic Four, who often thwart his plans and defeat his horde of giant monsters. The FF become his lifelong enemies.

Mole Man also goes up against Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers, as his hatred for the surface world grows. 

He also often struggles against fellow underground dweller, Tyrannus. Mole Man’s son, Mole Monster, also proves to be a difficult adversary and launches a Subterranean civil war.

Monstrous Mates

As the de facto ruler of Subterranea, Mole Man leads the Moloid race and other mutates, whom he sees as fellow rejected monsters like himself. He often maintains superiority, calling them his subjects, but eventually sees them as his children whom he must protect. He furthermore embraces the alien Sakaarians when they are left behind on Earth from the Bruce Banner, AKA Hulk’s devastating destruction.

Kala, the Queen of the Netherworlders, on-again, off-again relationship with Mole Man, though she betrays him for Tyrannus. They eventually reunite against the Deviants.

Dig Into History

In recent years, the Mole Man, having achieved a satisfactory power base, launched his first recorded attack on the surface world. Using Deviant technology, he sank and destroyed atomic power plants on four continents to weaken humanity before an all-out invasion. His campaign earned attention from the Fantastic Four, who had gained their super-powers only weeks before. Penetrating the Mole Man’s defenses on Isla de Los Monstruos, they defeated his Mutates and closed off his passage to the surface, not fully understanding the extent of his domain. Nevertheless, much of his Caribbean base was damaged, prompting him to rethink his plans. 

After over a year of work placing huge hydraulic platforms under several of the world’s major cities, he planned to sink the cities and spark a world war, ruling the survivors; trying to forestall interference in this scheme, he lured the FF to another island, but they escaped his traps, sabotaged his equipment and sank his island, setting his plans back further.

While his subjects rebuilt his empire, Mole Man occupied himself by stealing what he deemed the surface’s greatest works of art, only to be foiled by the FF and Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man. He set off an artificial earthquake in New York, thinking to extort the FF’s cooperation, but again failed. Forgetting his enemies for a time, he tried to liberate the Mutates and other creatures held in the Canadian base of Taneleer Tivan, AKA The Collector, perhaps thinking to augment his kingdom’s forces, but the creatures escaped both megalomaniacs. Growing more extreme, Mole Man developed an atomic gyroscope that could dangerously speed up the Earth’s rotation, planning to give humanity the choice of surrender or annihilation, but despite a fleeting alliance with Ivan Kragoff, AKA Red Ghost, he was defeated by the Avengers. Months later, a new incarnation of that team defeated his Minotaur and Moloid underlings.

After he and many others were drawn by Victor Von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom’s Emotion Charger device to attack the wedding of FF members Reed Richards, AKA Mister Fantastic, and Susan Storm, AKA Invisible Girl, Mole Man eschewed surface affairs entirely. He instead dealt with encroachment by rival Subterranean monarch Tyrannus, ruler of the so-called Tyrannoid Subterraneans for over a thousand years. Tyrannus had refrained from outright war for years because the Moloids greatly outnumbered the Tyrannoids, but his Fountain of Youth proved too tempting a target for Mole Man; the pair were evenly matched for a time, with Tyrannus setting  the Hulk against Mole Man’s Octo-Sapien robot, while Mole Man manipulated the X-Men into joining his Diamond Android against Tyrannus’ Super-Cobalt Robot. 

When Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, developed experimental earth-borer technology, Mole Man sought to gain advantage by stealing it but failed despite using his Mechanical Dragon. Nonetheless, he eventually felt secure enough to shift his focus back to conquest. Developing a computer that generated a frequency scrambling the signals transmitted to the human brain by eyesight, he plotted to blind humanity, as he felt it had been blind to his accomplishments, the better to conquer it. In another preemptive effort, he trapped the FF in a hightech house, but this only gave them better access to his technology, hastening yet another defeat.

Mole Man returned his attention to Tyrannus when the latter sent both the Hulk and robot Mogol against him, only for the Hulk to turn against Mogol and decimate both sides. Following chance encounters with Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, and the X-Men, Mole Man ultimately defeated and enslaved Tyrannus, apparently absorbing his rival’s kingdom into his own. Seeking alliance with yet another subterranean realm, he courted centuries-old Queen Kala of the Netherworld, beside whom he planned to flood the surface world in molten lava. On the verge of defeating even the FF, he was betrayed by Kala for the more comely Tyrannus, who simply betrayed her in turn, only to flee after the FF rallied against all three would-be invaders.

Retreating into solitude, Mole Man resurfaced months later, his Moloids having acquired the otherworldly Omega-Stone. Although Mar-Vell, AKA Captain Marvel, was trapped in the stone, Mole Man disregarded his presence and fitted the stone to power a laser cannon to flood the surface world in molten magma. Mister Fantastic and Spider-Man arrived in pursuit of the stone, as did the super-criminal Basil Elks, AKA Basilisk, who wanted it to magnify his newly acquired powers. Briefly joining the Subterranean monarch against their shared enemies, Basilisk then turned on him, distracting him long enough for Captain Marvel to switch places with ally Rick Jones. The resultant shift in the Omega-Stone’s power opened Mole Man’s magma pits prematurely, leaving him to seemingly perish as the surface superhumans escaped. Rescued by the Moloids, he embarked on a more modest mission to treat his partial blindness with a Russian medication, but it proved to be protected by the Hulk, who had befriended its intended recipient.

Mole Man’s eyes were soon opened in another way; reminded by Kala’s treachery of the rejections he had suffered decades before, he resolved to spare others similar scorn and sent Moloids to bring disabled, disfigured and otherwise disenfranchised New Yorkers to his kingdom. Although the FF intervened, many of the abductees preferred to remain in Subterranea as Mole Man’s first human subjects, and he empowered four of these Outcasts as superhuman guardians. When Kala led a third Subterranean race, the fiery Lava Men, in attacking Mole Man’s kingdom, he agreed to a contest between the Outcasts and Olympic athletes abducted by Kala. After the Hulk and Spider-Man were drawn into the fray, Kala’s youth-maintaining helmet was shattered, reverting her to old age and causing her army’s abandonment. Caring little about her altered appearance, Mole Man accepted her into his kingdom, renewing their romantic relationship. With new subjects and a queen beside him, Mole Man grew more peaceful, and when he learned of the Dire Wraith infestation of Clairton, West Virginia, he freed many of the Wraiths’ underground prisoners, an unprecedented act of benevolence. Despite minor run-ins with heroes, such as Luke Cage, AKA Power Man, Danny Rand, AKA Iron Fist, and the Asgardian God of Thunder, Thor Odinson, AKA Thor, he seemed content to leave conquest of the surface world to others.

Mole Man and Kala ruled peacefully until mad would-be Messiah Alden Maas tried to expand the Earth by pumping heat into the planet’s core, unleashing magma flows in Subterranea and killing many inhabitants. Although he ended Maas’ endeavors with help from the FF’s Ben Grimm, AKA The Thing, and Johnny Storm, AKA Human Torch, Mole Man was abandoned by Kala and left half-mad with grief and rage. He proved a receptive recruit for the demon Mephisto’s Legion Accursed, although the short-lived group’s campaign against the Beyonder failed. 

 Soon afterward, having taken the troubled Thing as a second-in-command, Mole Man sought to raise a new continent for his people, not caring that such a tectonic shift would cause devastation rivaling that of Maas’ plans. As if already abandoning Subterranea in his mind, Mole Man became obsessed with holographic illusions of the surface society that had rejected him so long ago, barely noticing when the Thing abandoned him and the FF halted his continent-creating procedure, burying him and his equipment beneath tons of rock. Surfacing with his sanity months later, Mole Man found his Moloids and Tyrannoids at war with the Lava Men, hostilities having risen in the wake of Herbert Wyndham, AKA High Evolutionary’s attack upon, and partial sterilization of, the Subterranean races. With the FF’s help, he ended the war and eventually united the tribes under his rule, although an ill-timed meeting with deranged FF clones renewed his anti-surface grudge.

When Skrulls, alien cousins to the Deviants, invaded Monster Island seeking a stolen Inorganic Technotroid robot, Mole Man allied with a substitute FF team to fight both the Skrulls and the thief they sought, De’Lila, who briefly manipulated the true FF before being defeated. Soon afterward, the Deviants, themselves fragmented following a civil war, were led to more war by the vicious, Mutate-loathing Brutus in an effort to reclaim Subterranean realms and resources from Mole Man and other claimants. Mole Man formed an alliance with the returned Tyrannus and the newest ruler of the Lava Men, Grotesk, last survivor of yet another underground race, the Gor-Tokians; their alliance also joined forces with the Avengers, who ultimately exposed Brutus himself as a Mutate, prompting his former followers to kill him. Meanwhile, Grotesk betrayed everyone by trying to use the crisis to pursue his own world-destroying agenda, but the Avengers stopped him. The war reunited Mole Man with Kala, whose fellow Netherworlders had rejected her. After assisting Jennifer Walters, AKA She-Hulk, in defeating an encroaching challenger, Spragg the Living Hill, Mole Man demanded she become his bride, but was briefly transformed into an actual mole by mutagenic liquid from the Valley of Diamonds before the wedding could take place. Restored to human form, Mole Man again turned isolationist, apart from abducting the Hulk, the Thing, and other surface beings to drain their energy. Hoping to restore Kala’s youth, he was dissuaded by Kala herself, who accepted his marriage proposal. 

As before, Kala’s love made Mole Man more open to surface alliances, and he offered sanctuary to Adam Warlock and the Infinity Watch on Isla de Los Monstruos, but their presence prompted invasions by UN forces, manipulated by Warlock’s enemy Man-Beast; for a change, Mole Man triumphed over surface forces as he drove off UN soldiers, clothing the triumphant Moloids in their uniforms. Tyrannus seized control of several Mutates and tried to turn the Watch against their benefactor, but Watch member Drax the Destroyer, uniquely in tune with the Mutates’ primitive minds, turned his new friends against Tyrannus instead. Growing annoyed by the cosmic crises into which the Watch were consistently drawn, Mole Man was perhaps glad to see the team disband and depart, particularly when the temporary resurfacing of Atlantis kept him busy protecting his underground realm from accompanying catastrophes. Despite his best protective efforts, however, his faithful Moloids fell ill from surface pollution, and, with Kala again inexplicably absent, he grew more disgusted than ever with the surface world, ultimately withdrawing to bear his royal burden alone.

After the FF and other heroes vanished during the Onslaught crisis, the Mole Man, evidently bored with protracted peace, planned yet another surface invasion. When word of the heroes’ return reached him, however, he chose practicality over ego and abandoned the effort. When the giant alien Terminus used a virus to fashion thousands of the long-suffering Moloids into a composite host body, Mole Man again encountered the FF, who were led to Terminus when their ally Norrin Radd, AKA Silver Surfer, sensed the Moloids’ pain. The Mole Man helped the heroes destabilize Terminus’ new body and cure the Moloids of the alien virus. Regrettably, the creatures could not be cured so easily of pollution-based poisoning caused by surface contamination of Subterranean water aquifers. For the first time in years, Mole Man used his kingdom’s unique methods to steal an entire building, in this case a New York sewage treatment plant, to purify his water supply. Ironically, when his Moloids inadvertently damaged the plant, he found its mundane human engineering less comprehensible than the ancient Deviant technology he had upgraded for so many years, and he recruited the extraterrestrial Warlock (Technarch) and his friends to repair it. The pollution crisis finally solved, he abruptly found his kingdom’s outskirts invaded by renegade Morlocks, including the murderous Fugue, who was defeated by James Howlett/Logan, AKA Wolverine, and Spider-Man. After being manipulated against the FF by their archnemesis Doctor Doom, Mole Man was preemptively imprisoned in the Negative Zone, along with many other potential menaces, by none other than FF leader Mister Fantastic, himself manipulated by the Mad Thinker. While many prisoners remained in custody following the Thinker’s defeat, Mole Man, as a recognized head of state, was apparently released, but his kingdom suffered further losses when many Moloids sacrificed themselves to stop the miles-high Apocalypse Beast. 

Mole Man remains conflicted in his attitude toward the surface world, having formed alliances with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Daughters of the Dragon, claiming he no longer entertains invasion plans, but also clashing with the Runaways and T’Challa, AKA Black Panther. During the mad robot Ultron’s latest attack on humanity, Subterranea suffered yet another catastrophe with many of Mole Man’s subjects perishing, but Mole Man has otherwise remained aloof from the series of crises plaguing the superhuman community. 

Most recently, learning of Puerto Rico’s inadvertent displacement of its native Mutate-like Chupacabras, he took the creatures under his kingdom’s protection. He withdrew when the FF took the reconstruction of the Chupacabra ecosystem as their own challenge, but his willingness to disregard human deaths caused by the Chupacabras does not bode well for the surface world that he has hated for over half a century.

When several of Mole Man’s Moloids started to evolve and abandon him due to the High Evolutionary’s Ascension Engines causing such a change, Mole Man sought a solution. On his way, he ran into Reed Richards from alternate reality Earth-4280, who was one of a handful of the Interdimensional Council of Reeds trapped on Earth-616 and seeking a way home through energy created by the War of Four Cities. Read-4280 offered Mole Man assistance with his Moloid problem as long as he would help him in the war. Mole Man aided the alternate Reed in destroying one of the cities, Old Atlantis, which brought him into direct conflict with his long-time enemies, the Fantastic Four, now the Future Foundation. Once one of the other alternate Reeds from the council stopped an Ascension Engine, Mole Man negotiated with Forever City’s leader to close his doors to the outside world so no other Moloids would leave him to which they agreed. When the Inhumans intervened, attacking the High Evolutionary’s Ascension Engine within the Lost City, Mole Man absconded.

Back at home in Subterranea, Mole Man faced an invading underground army, led by Ra’ktar who quickly turned Mole Man into a slave. Sending his Moloids out to find the king of the Surface World, they kidnapped J. Jonah Jameson. Spider-Man and General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, AKA Red Hulk, soon showed up to liberate Jameson, but was apparently killed in the process. Seeing his death as an opportunity, Mole Man convinced Ra’ktar to leave his world and claim the surface world instead since their champion was no longer a threat. But Spider-Man bested Ra’ktar in battle by embarrassing him, and led to a truce. Red Hulk returned from his seeming demise and Mole Man was freed. His kingdom was effectively destroyed by the destruction Ra’ktar, Spider-Man and the Red Hulk brought, but he saw it as a symbol of the future.

The Mole Man soon became a Mandarin, i.e., a ring bearer, host to the Mandarin Six (“Daimonic”) and joined five other Mandarins against Malekith the Dark Elf, vicious ruler of Svartalfheim, and owner of four rings. Though it was Iron Man and Shevaun Haldane, AKA Dark Angel, a magic/tech expert, who succeeded in taking Malekith’s four rings. The six ring bearers banded together, and absconded to Mandarin City, located miles beneath the earth where Mole Man and his minions could build Mandarin-ring-powered weapons to explode beneath the surface world’s cities. The first weapon was stopped by the Fantastic Four, though Mole Man revealed that the charge wasn’t loaded and it was merely a test, which he claimed was a success. Though the Mandarins bickered and Mole Man maintained that he was superior to them, calling himself King of the Earth. Iron Man soon interrupted having tapped into the rings’ communication system and created a master ring with alien-science, magic and Stark know-how. With his allies the Trojan Guard and journalist/activist Abigail Burns, Stark soon attacked Mandarin City to collect the rings from their bearers and in the fight, all other Mandarins were neutralized, making Mole Man the Mandarin Prime. But Mole Man knew better and tossed the ring away, fleeing deeper underground with his minions behind him.

Mole Man soon had another run in with Fantastic Four but this time it was just Susan Storm Richards, AKA Invisible Woman, as he tried to break out a mining company’s CFO Athol Kussar, who was held in an underground cell. Invisible Woman stopped Mole Man from completing his extraction.

Soon Mole Monster, Mole Man’s son whom he abandoned, dethroned his father and became leader of Subterranea. Avengers Kamala Khan, AKA Ms. Marvel, Miles Morales, AKA Spider-Man, and Sam Alexander, AKA Nova, ended up in Mole Man’s arena fighting a giant monster, but in no time, Mole Man’s Moloid minions ran scared and Mole Man with the trio of heroes were under attack by Mole Monster’s army. Mole Man explained what happened to his underground kingdom and did not understand why his son was so upset. Despite Nova trying to deescalate the situation with Mole Monster, Mole Man ended up captured and in his son’s dungeons. 

When Mole Man noticed Doreen Green, AKA Squirrel Girl, he became obsessed with dating her and gave her an ultimatum: he’d stop stealing buildings if she’d go on a date with him. His proclamations resulted in the underground monster Tricephalous admitting her feelings for Mole Man. But she refused to be with him since he could not love himself first and how he referred to her kind as “monsters.” Tricephalous attacked Squirrel Girl and her allies and the more she looked like she was winning, the more Mole Man fell for her. So Squirrel Girl and team suffered defeat on purpose and Mole Man’s interest for Doreen waned.

When the subversive organization Hydra took over the surface world, Mole Man settled for a mutually-beneficial trade agreement with Avenger Sam Wilson. Mole Man would let Sam and his allies travel underground peacefully in exchange for surface world items, such as jewelry, memorabilia and blu-ray collections of TV shows. But when Sam brought his Avengers underground and they attacked one of his monsters, Mole Man was displeased with their arrival. They were soon interrupted by Hydra’s dreadnoughts, robots equipped with Adaptoid technology. Mole Man saw the intrusion as a violation of their agreement and ended it.

When the new Intelligencia invited Mole Man to be part of their diabolical plans to test Kei Kawade, AKA Kid Kaiju’s abilities to create monsters from pencil drawings, he instead kidnapped the young boy to force him to raise his dead monster children. Kei explained that his powers did not work that way. Marguerite Hellbender, AKA Lady Hellbender, of the New Intelligencia interrupted and a fight broke out between her and Mole Man, who implored Kei to bring his children back to him. Kei instead drew a few friends in his notebook and even though his bodyguard and oft monster hunter, Elsa Bloodstone, came to his rescue, Lady Hellbender teleported herself and Kei away to Intelligencia’s headquarters where they trapped Kei’s new creations. Mole Man and Elsa soon arrived to liberate Kei who used the distraction to create a new commanding monster to help them out. As Kei, Elsa, and the new monster were about to leave for the Island of Mu to save Kei’s parents from Intelligencia’s latest monstrous creation, Mole Man begged to join them as Kei was the key to saving his children, and they allowed him to accompany them. Rescuing surface dwellers proved an exciting endeavor for Mole Man. After the Intelligencia group and their monster was defeated, Kei thanked Mole Man for helping save his parents, giving him a drawing of Mole Man with his monster children. Kei also suggested that Mole Man make a home on the island, which had caves underneath, and would become known as Monster Island. 

Many monsters stayed on Monster Island and Mole Man took his place as its ruler. Though he was challenged by Googam over leadership. Disrupting their argument was the FF’s Human Torch and The Thing. Seeing them as intruders, Mole Man declared that whoever’s supporters bested them would get to rule. Amidst the ensuing battle, Doctor Doom interrupted and defeated the intruders, making him the new ruler of Monster Island, despite Mole Man’s protests. Doom then threw his political rivals deeper into the earth.