Masters of Evil

The Masters of Evil are a team of supervillains formed by Baron Zemo to combat the Avengers, and especially Zemo's nemesis Captain America. Their membership is loosely defined—to date, they have essentially consisted of whomever Zemo saw fit to recruit at the time. Following Zemo's death, and with several other members in prison, the future of the Masters of Evil is in significant doubt.

Biography

First incarnation

In 1964, Baron Zemo learned that his World War II nemesis Captain America was still living, and that he was fighting with the Avengers, and sought to gain vengeance against him for having adhered his red hood to his face with his own Adhesive X decades earlier. He sent his personal pilot out to recruit three villains who had history with members of the Avengers: Black Knight had recently fought Giant-Man and the Wasp; Melter was a direct foe to Iron Man; and Radioactive Man had fought Thor. Soon the team was in New York enacting Zemo's plan, successfully administering Adhesive X across the city. The Avengers arrived as expected, and though the adhesive proved to be an effective weapon against them, they soon rebutted with a "super-dissolver" courtesy of imprisoned villain Paste-Pot Pete. This gave them the upper hand against the Masters, defeating them and bringing them all to justice.

Asgardian assistance

But Zemo was able to escape, fleeing back to his jungle kingdom. He was soon visited by mental projections of the Enchantress and the Executioner, a pair of Asgardians who had recently been banished to Earth and sought revenge against Thor. Zemo agreed to an alliance to defeat the Avengers, informally creating a second edition of the Masters of Evil. Executioner disguised himself as a former ally of Zemo's and met with Captain America, telling him Zemo's location in order to bait him away from New York and the other Avengers. By coincidence, Giant-Man and Wasp had just left the city for scientific research, while Iron Man had recently been suspended from the team, leaving Thor as the only active Avenger in the city. Enchantress used her sorcery to hypnotize Thor into thinking that the Avengers were his enemies. He radioed Giant-Man and Wasp to return, leading to a fight that soon involved Iron Man as well. Zemo's underlings met Captain America as he arrived in the jungle, but Cap bravely fought through them and hitched a ride on Zemo's getaway plane to New York. Meanwhile, Iron Man was able to snap Thor out of his hypnosis with a blast of reflected sunlight into his eyes. As Zemo and the Asgardians came together for the first time, Thor caught them and their ship in a space warp that sent them to a random location in the multiverse.

The Wonder Man experiment

The Masters of Evil drifted between dimensions, but the Enchantress's magical powers allowed them to escape Thor's space warp and land back on Earth, in Zemo's jungle hideaway in South America. There they plotted their coming riposte at the Avengers for weeks. Eventually, as they flew an advanced jet over New York City, Executioner spotted a newspaper detailing the story of an embezzling inventor. The man in question, Simon Williams, had embezzled money from Tony Stark after Stark's brilliant patents had left his own inventions in the dust. Enchantress paid Williams's bail, and she and Executioner led him to Zemo's jungle base promising to get revenge on Tony Stark by way of defeating his ally Iron Man of the Avengers. There in his laboratory, Zemo bombarded Williams with a barrage of ionic rays, granting him great strength and purported invincibility: further testing proved his flesh to be bulletproof. Zemo provided him with an appropriate costume and dubbed him Wonder Man. The suit also came equipped with a rocket-powered belt to give him the ability of flight. After Wonder Man had proved his might, Zemo informed him that the ionic rays would kill him within a week unless he remained loyal, in which case Zemo would supply him with a weekly antidote. Wonder Man was shocked, but pragmatically realized that loyalty was his only option.

Zemo's plan to defeat the Avengers would be one of infiltration. He and the Asgardians committed a robbery in New York which drew the attention of the Avengers, causing an evenly matched fight. But Wonder Man soon arrived to turn the tide, "defeating" the Masters of Evil on his own in rapid succession. As the others escaped, Wonder Man approached the Avengers and offered to join them. He further explained that he had a terminal illness and hoped that they could help. With that, the scientists of the team got to work searching for a cure. Meanwhile, Wonder Man kidnapped the Wasp and took her back to South America, then radioed Iron Man claiming that he and she had been taken by Zemo. Iron Man arrived the following day into a trap, soon followed by the other Avengers. Wonder Man and the other Masters incapacitated the Avengers, and Zemo began plans to kill them all. Seeing now that his actions could cause the deaths of five great heroes, Wonder Man had a change of heart and fought back against Zemo, reviving the Avengers and fighting back the Masters of Evil. Zemo and the Asgardians escaped, their victory torn from them at the last moment. His honor restored, Wonder Man's illness overtook him, and he collapsed dead in Iron Man's arms.

The Immortus anomaly

A month later, as the Masters continued to plot the Avengers' defeat, they were suddenly stunned by the appearance of an ominous-looking man calling himself Immortus. He had probed Enchantress's mind from across time and space, apparently to gauge her location, and she could not resist his powerful advances. The Asgardians recognized him as the ruler of Limbo, the vague, nebulous space between realities. Immortus was interested in allying with them to defeat the Avengers, declaring that they were in the way of his plans to conquer the world of this century. Zemo insisted that Immortus prove himself on his own first, and Immortus boldly claimed that he would destroy all of the Avengers. The Masters observed Immortus's actions from afar: using his time-traveling abilities, he imprisoned Avengers ally Rick Jones in 18th-century London, and used him as bait to lure the other Avengers. He soon took Captain America into the past as well, and the other Masters leapt into action to battle the lessened Avengers team. However, Cap soon returned with Jones in tow, and the restored heroes easily defeated the Masters of Evil. Desperate, Enchantress cast a spell to reverse time to before they had met Immortus. As a result, only the Masters of Evil were left to remember the events that transpired as a result of Immortus's arrival, while for everyone else that period simply never happened. Back in time, Enchantress was now able to resist Immortus's call, preventing his arrival from ever occurring.

Zemo's last stand

Zemo continued to plot the Avengers' defeat, and his next plan involved combining the two iterations of his team. Commanding the team from afar in his Amazon hideout, he had Enchantress and Executioner spring the Black Knight and Melter from prison, while some of his lesser underlings used an advanced plane to kidnap Rick Jones. The Avengers began to pursue Zemo's minions in the plane using one of Tony Stark's design, but Black Knight and his winged horse were tasked with fending them off. Thor arrived to battle him in midair however, and the two fought out of the paths of the planes. Melter further antagonized the heroes, and he and Iron Man fought. Before long, four Avengers and four Masters of Evil squared off while Captain America followed the plane all the way to Zemo's South American base. Cap rescued Rick Jones and fought Zemo, indirectly blinding him with a solar reflection off of his shield. Zemo misfired his weapon into a wall of boulders that came down and crushed him, accidentally killing himself. With that, Steve Rogers finally avenged his friend Bucky's death at the hands of Zemo in World War II.

Back in New York, the Avengers and Masters were oblivious to the events in South America. Realizing that a full-blown conflict in the streets would jeopardize innocent lives, Thor instead used his hammer to create a space warp and, just as he had done to the Masters many months ago, attempted to teleport both teams to a distant planet. The Asgardians saw this coming and managed to escape, but Melter and Black Knight bore the brunt of the portal, along with the Avengers. There, the Avengers handily defeated and restrained the outnumbered villains, returned to Earth, and brought them back to police custody while Enchantress and Executioner escaped. With their leader dead and half of their active members in prison, the Masters of Evil may be defeated for good.

Several months after Zemo's death, the other members of the Masters of Evil were all coerced by Doctor Doom's emotion machine into attacking the Baxter Building on the day of the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm. A veritable legion of villains fought a similarly powerful force of heroes defending the Baxter Building. Though Black Knight, Melter, Enchantress, and Executioner fought alongside one another, there was no acknowledgment of their allegiance in Zemo's absence. In the end, Reed Richards used a device provided by Uatu to transport all of the villains back slightly in time and wipe their memories of these events. Reed and Sue Storm were thus successfully and peacefully married.

Members

• Black Knight
• Melter
• Enchantress
• Executioner

Former members

• Baron Zemo (deceased)
• Radioactive Man
• Wonder Man (deceased)