Egghead

Egghead, birth name unknown, is an American villain and former government scientist. He believes himself to be extremely intelligent, but his plans often leave that assertion in doubt.

Biography

Conflicts with Ant-Man and the Wasp

A brilliant scientific mind, Egghead was found to be selling atomic secrets to foreign entities and fired from his federal position. He was then promptly hired by a group of criminals who sought a way to defeat Ant-Man, and saw Egghead's exceptional intelligence as the key. Egghead accepted this task with significant payment, and took to studying Ant-Man's abilities and methods. Deducing Ant-Man's core power to be his communication with ants, Egghead developed the same technology that Ant-Man uses. He began commanding the ants to do his bidding, with the promise of making them Ant-Man's superiors rather than the other way around: Egghead believed that appealing "to their greed, and their vanity" would make his plan succeed.

Egghead told the ants to lure Ant-Man into a trap, using a jewel heist as the bait. His ploy failed however, and the ants remained loyal to Ant-Man, notifying him of the trap. Fully prepared, Ant-Man was easily able to defeat Egghead's henchmen and deliver them to police custody while Egghead escaped. Egghead retreated to a flophouse in the Bowery, distraught over being outsmarted by insects. After some time in the flophouse, Egghead soon learned of Ant-Man's new association with the Wasp from small-time criminals Twister and Ape, and saw this as a way of getting back at Ant-Man. He devised a plan to publicly pose as an entomologist and, with help from his new cohorts, construct an exhibit on wasps at a local zoo. With that done, Egghead and the others enacted a heist on a nearby diamond cutter, stealing a precious jewel under the cover of darkness. Egghead placed the diamond amidst the wasp exhibit precisely so that Wasp herself, naturally drawn to the display, would recognize the diamond and take action, falling into his trap.

Egghead's plan worked like a charm at first: Wasp arrived at the exhibit as a civilian and later returned alone, an inch high and in costume. She had decided to come without Ant-Man to prove that she could handle things alone, but wound up trapped inside of a model wasp nest under Egghead's watch. Ant-Man himself soon arrived, summoned by Wasp's antennae, and himself was soon trapped in a tank with a large, insectivorous iguana. Egghead gave him a pin to give him a sporting chance, and Ant-Man plunged the weapon into the lizard's scales, defeating it. Wasp was soon freed from her own trappings, only for the two to be confronted by Egghead's next minion, an anteater. Ant-Man used a powerful fiber lasso to snag and swing the animal, using his full-sized strength to easily subdue it. The heroes then took the fight to the criminals themselves, easily taking down Ape and Twister, but allowing Egghead to escape. Egghead returned to his lab, still determined to take down the insectoid heroes.

After many months in hiding, Egghead finally devised a plan to defeat his nemeses. He used his ant-communication technology to coerce the ants into telling Ant-Man (now primarily known as the twelve-foot Giant-Man) that the hero Spider-Man was looking to defeat him. This resulted in a major fight between the two on one side of the city: as Egghead planned, this allowed him and his underlings to steal an armored car on the other side while the police were distracted. As they took the car to a nearby warehouse to make off with its cash, the ants proved to be Egghead's downfall. They informed Giant-Man of the truth, and he, Spider-Man, and Wasp arrived at the warehouse to easily take Egghead down and finally bring him and his men to justice.

Some months later, Egghead escaped from prison after spending his incarceration time plotting his revenge against Giant-Man and Wasp. In his hidden underground laboratory, Egghead created a large android that obeyed his commands, designed to stand up to and battle Giant-Man. He sent a letter to the heroes pretending to be a TV producer, and invited them to a dark, abandoned warehouse. Egghead set up the android there while he waited in his lab, able to see and hear through the android's senses and give it commands. The heroes arrived as expected, and Egghead locked the building with them inside, leaving them with an hour's worth of oxygen. The android attacked them, and they fought. Eventually, Giant-Man grabbed the android by the legs and spun it such that its controller Egghead became unbearably dizzy, desperately releasing the lock on the door and allowing their escape. With Egghead out of commission, the mindless android wandered out of the building and off of a pier to its demise. Not long after, police arrived at Egghead's lab and took him back into custody.