There’s no way to have too many villains, but it always feels like we never have enough. With as many villains as we’ve gotten over the years in the various Marvel Legends lines and sublines through two different companies, it’s amazing how many bad guys are still out there waiting for their opportunity. Those stupid do-gooders usually get multiple chances before some bad guys get even a single shot. No wonder they turn to evil.
The Wizard has been villaining his way through the Marvel Universe for multiple decades. He’s been a headliner of the Frightful Four, and he was one of a handful of elite villains picked to oversee the Acts of Vengeance against the Marvel heroes. In fact, while I can’t say we’ve gotten completely definitive versions of all the main villains in the Acts of Vengeance storyline (some not even in the right costume), the Wizard is the only one to never have a Legend at all. From headliner to also-ran… seems like a shame to me.
Born Bentley Wittman, the Wizard is one of those “frustrated genius”-types like every other bad guy in comics who shakes his fist at the fact that he’s not ruling the world. Unfortunately, since that schtick is pretty common (Dr. Doom, Mad Thinker, Aunt May), the Wizard doesn’t quite stand out from the crowd as much as the more often used world-crushing tyrants. That doesn’t stop him from giving it his best shot on every occasion he can, though, so he pops up pretty regularly. He’s spent a significant portion of his time matching wits with the Fantastic Four, but he takes on others when the situation arises.
His overall look has remained fairly consistent, with his oversized helmet occasionally shrinking, changing color, or getting even larger, but overall he’s recognizably the Wizard. His more modern appearances feature some of that light-up doohickey in place of some of his regular costume detailing in Marvel’s apparent and obnoxious need to turn every Marvel character into a nightlight. At some point the Photoshop effects kind of need to be dialed back a bit.
In addition to the other Acts of Vengeance elite, we’ve had enough fellow members of the Frightful Four to put together a handful of different versions of that ever-shifting evil version of the Fantastic Four. Let’s face it: we may never get a perfect Fantastic Four, so why bother trying to put together a perfect Frightful Four? It’s time to lower the standards and aim for close enough. While that will never be a bumper sticker, sometimes you have to make some concessions. We’ve got a Medusa, a Sandman, we’ll be getting a Thundra, and maybe we may get a Trapster one day… although I’d poop kittens if they actually called him Paste-Pot Pete. Because come on… that’s awesome. Put some of them together with a Wizard and you’ve got a few decent options for some Frightful Four iterations.
The Wizard is not completely toy-free. While the Wizard hasn’t even had a 4-inch MU figure, he did receive a figure back in the ’90s when he was regularly appearing on the Fantastic Four cartoon. He made an appearance in the Fantastic Four line, and then ended up being repacked on the original Marvel Universe card-backs that ended up in places like Kay-Bee toys or discount bins. I managed to find an original one on the Fantastic Four card-back at a Big Lots for a couple of bucks, along with the rest of that hard-to-find wave and the 5-inch Alpha Flight figures. An Alpha Flight action figure line of their very own. Madness.
That was about 1996 when I stumbled across that figure, which means 19 Wizard-free years have passed in toyland. Is that something we as a people can tolerate? I know I can’t. I’m not sure if the Wizard qualifies as an upper-tier villain or not, but who cares, we’ve gotten plenty of bad guys, it’s time for the extremely unique-looking, large-helmeted Wingless Wizard to get a chunk of colorful plastic of his very own.