Doctor Trick

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These days, when one hears the expression "the mad scientist to end all mad scientist", one automatically thinks of Madman. But a long time ago, there was someone else with that title.

His name was Arthur Brown - or, as he preferred to call himself, "Doctor Trick". In the seventies and early eighties, he was one of the most frightening villains of the North American continent. He wasn't after money, power, revenge, or any of the traditional villainous motivations; he was motivated solely by scientific curiosity - and any collateral damage caused by his experiments simply failed to bother him.

Unfortunately for the world, Trick was a scientific polymath. Biology, chemistry, physics, engineering...He excelled at them all, and was cunning enough not to get caught. His crimes have included, among many others, testing out his "death ray" (a device that jammed the human nervous system) on Woodsfall, Montana (588 casualties), the use of his teratogene on San Francisco civilians (28 individuals turned into bloodthirsty monsters, 381 bystanders killed by said monsters, including one of the superheroes trying to contain them), and of course the infamous incident of Riverfield, Ohio, where he managed to take over the city and turn it into his private laboratory for nearly a year before the outside world found out.

Then, beyond a certain point, nothing. Over a year went on before some of the media started asking "where is Dr Trick?". It is still unknown what happened to him, or even if he's still alive.

It is suspected, though, that Doctor Knack was his apprentice during the year preceding his disappearance.