For the inaugural post here at Super Doctor Astronaut I wanted to discuss one of my favorite entities in the Marvel universe: Advanced Idea Mechanics, otherwise known as AIM, otherwise known as those people in the yellow beekeeper looking outfits. Who is AIM. and why are they awesome?

History

AIM first appeared in Strange Tales #146 in July of 1966, originally as one of the two branches of THEM, a committee set up by Baron von Strucker. The other branch was Secret Empire, making it a part of Hydra. It was conceived as the scientific wing of Hydra, creating weapons and other exciting and dangerous technology to help Hydra do nefarious things, and first appeared doing what they would often be seen doing: trying to sell weapons and then failing miserably. They split from Hydra soon after and became their own independent entity, which is good because it would be difficult to like them if they were Nazis.

I think of AIM as Marvel’s lovable losers. Their aims are ostensibly take over the world via the use of technology while turning a profit, which doesn’t make much sense, and is generally ignored by writers. Instead, they are typically found making extremely hazardous weapons and selling them to whomever can afford them. They are responsible for a few major characters and incidents in the history of the 616, including the creation of MODOK (we’ll get to him in a little bit), the subsequent assassination of MODOK (well, they paid for that), the Cosmic Cube, the Super Adaptoid and also AIM Island, their own sovereign nation.

When AIM isn’t being run by MODOK they are headed by the Scientist Supreme, which a title that has gone to at least five different people, one named George Clinton (!) but the only one being even remotely interesting being Monica Rappaccini. The Scientist Supreme gets a slightly cooler costume and doesn’t get murdered as much as the rank and file, but I’m not sure if its worth really even going into them.

Despite members of AIM being almost exclusively scientists and engineers they are also required to act as security and troops, which goes about as well as you would expect. Put a nerd in a bright yellow beekeeper outfit, hand him a rifle and send him after Wolverine? Yeah, good luck.

So, AIM is a publicly traded company, because they believe in two things, science and capitalism. Roberto da Costa (aka Sunspot, formerly of the New Mutants and X-Force and one of Marvel’s many billionaires) wanted help solving a big problem, so he literally just bought AIM and made them his personal research wing, which was fun. He and Sam Gutherie (Cannonball) had partied with a couple of AIM members in a Hong Kong casino (pictured above and had a good time. He even brought in Monica Rappaccini as his secretary of Affairs for like two minutes before she betrayed Bobby and tried to blow up the board of directors (who were unhappy about the AIM purchase and presumably even unhappier about the whole getting blown up thing).

With his ownership stake at risk he paid a little visit to AIM Island with Hyperion in tow and booted the Scientist Supreme. Some members of AIM were happy about this, as they were just there to build cool shit and didn’t care about taking over the world or any of that nonsense, but some were not, leading to a lot of them defecting to WHISPER, which was run by the Maker. They later reclaimed the name AIM when Marvel decided they were bored with AIM being legit.

As far as I know AIM has never received their own series, but they deserve one. Occasionally they do something important but usually are just there in the background for someone heroic to punch. I’d love to know about the day to day there.

If you saw Iron Man 3 AIM might also sound familiar as they were the company started by Aldrich Killian. While they did make some unstable weaponry they lacked the beekeeper suits (or if they had them they never appeared on screen) so there is an opportunity lost there. Maybe AIM can come back in another film? They’d be so much fun onscreen.

MODOK

Let’s talk about MODOK, as no discussion of AIM would be complete without him. MODOK (Mental Organism Designed Only for KILLING, which is just about the best name ever) was originally a technician at AIM named George Tarley, who was originally from Bangor, Maine if you believe Wikipedia or Erie, Pennsylvania if you believe the Marvel wiki. His fellow scientists decided to experiment on him with mutagenic technology to increase his brainpower, becoming what they hoped would be called MODOC (Mental Organism Designed Only for Computing) to whose job would be to work on the Cosmic Cube. This wildly increased his head to just an enormous size but left his body as an afterthought, leaving him comically small arms and legs. George wasn’t happy with the situation (even thought they built him a sweet flying chair) and changed his name to MODOK. He also used this opportunity to kill his boss (and who hasn’t wanted to do that) and took over control of AIM.

MODOK is straight up hilarious. I’m not sure how seriously the writers took him originally, but he has evolved as a ridiculous opponant. The cartoon Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes really got this. Check out Thor and Wasp encountering him for the first time.

His powers are pretty much all to do with killing. He can zap people with the crystal on his head or control their minds, and sometimes has missiles and other fun things that are a part of the flying chair that supports his enormous noggin. AIM hated him so much that they paid the Serpent Squad to kill him, but like most comic book characters he returned. There have been a couple of female MODOKs as well but that’s a whole other thing.

Recommended Reading

During Secret Wars MODOK was sheriff of Killville, which is just about perfect. The whole series M.O.D.O.K. Assassin (written by Christopher Yost with art by Amilcar Pilla ) is pretty hilarious and definitely worth a read.

As far as AIM goes, they are almost always used as background fodder, other than stories in the Silver Age that took them too seriously.