“Fragile Minds and Fallen Angels: The Viktor Mentok Story” – The New Yorker, 23 August 1994

Selected extracts from the new biography by Miles Green

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It is typical to view Hell as a place of fire. But to the people of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942, Hell was the cold. Cold, which never abated, which wasted extremities, froze provisions, took people you cared about in the night. It is difficult for us now, with modern comforts and fire so easily conjured, to imagine this kind of cold. To imagine the Hell that was Stalingrad, the greatest and possibly deadliest battle in pre-superhuman history.

Viktor Mentok was born and orphaned in Stalingrad. His father fell to the fighting – one of the millions who gave their lives to halt the German advance; his mother, a month later to the frost. The young Mentok, only ten at the time, could easily have perished there too – but he did not. Instead, he became an errand boy for the Russian defenders, running messages and relaying orders through the type of devastation no child is equipped to see. Even then, recounts his uncle Ivan Mentok, a former Soviet rifleman, he was resilient; determined to do his part. No one can flourish in a place like Stalingrad – they can only endure.

It is difficult to reconcile the photograph of the bright-faced, underfed boy which Ivan Mentok hands me with the grim, weathered guise of the Viktor Mentok lead away in chains from an Oklahoma courtroom at fifty-eight, convicted of fourteen counts of Abuse of Powers and two-hundred and twelve counts of Mental Violation. This Mentok’s nose is bent and prominent, his overarching eyebrows thick and dark, his lips sallow and his eyes almost black. He is, to the tabloids’ delight, the splitting image of the Russian supervillain he has been made out to be – a hunched, sour-faced old man who sits silently in the docks, unmoved by tear-stained testimony from witness after witness about how he used them, controlled them, violated their bodies and minds. He is as cold and unfeeling as his Stalingrad upbringing – the child inside him long since dead.

At least, that is what the papers would have us believe. The truth, I think, is not so simple…

…And so on a hot August morning in 1969, a lone Russian by the name of Viktor Mentok strode unannounced into the Legion of Heroes camp and impatiently offered those assembled his services. With a generation of “Red Peril” still firmly entrenched in many minds, the arrival of this young, self-proclaimed “genius” was met with suspicion and surprise. So far, the newly-formed Legion had struggled to bring in members. Few, if any, had sought them out, let alone arrived from nowhere looking to swear allegiance on their doorstep. But Viktor Mentok was different. He claimed he’d anticipated the emergence of something like the Legion and was adamant in his belief that it was mankind’s best hope in these turbulent times – which, he assured the Legion, would not end without intervention…

…and throughout it all, Mentok remained tireless. When he was not co-ordinating operations or on the frontlines in Siegfried, his iconic 12-foot suit of mechanised armour, he was hard at work in his laboratory experimenting, innovating and calculating the Legion’s best response against rising threats…

…Yet despite the Legion’s many years and successes, the death of Captain Dawn’s wife, Caitlin Reid, seemed to invoke a darker change in Mentok. He became markedly more pro-active, outspoken in his advocacy of intervention in a larger number of situations on ever‑less substantial grounds. When his calls were not heeded he grew increasingly isolated, withdrawing into his research. Caitlin’s accident and its random, almost trivial nature was to Mentok tantamount to a personal failing – a failure to protect a woman he had respected, admired and maybe (in his own platonic, yet doggedly loyal way) even loved from a pointless, unnecessary death. If a life as vibrant and wholesome as Caitlin’s could be snuffed out by an unemployed drunk in a Chevrolet, how could anything the Legion did matter? People could be liberated from tyrants, protected from psychopaths and malicious regimes – but it was meaningless, Mentok argued, if the Legion could not save people, save society, from their own poor choices…

…The morning of February 5th 1989 brought snow – and the discovery of an empty room. Reclusive as he’d become, Mentok’s disappearance was not noticed until Harsheel Singh came calling with a bowl of lamb madras, having not seen Viktor for several days and concerned for his wellbeing. When, exactly, Mentok had departed Morningstar was unclear – he left no note, no clue where he was going. In fact, the only indication the Legion had that their comrade had not been kidnapped was that, along with his files having been wiped, an additional administrator account had been added to Morningstar’s security servers for Elsa Arrendel. Talks of a search party were shortly dismissed, with the White Queen stating in no uncertain terms that the Grandmaster obviously did not want to be found. His quarters were sealed off in case of return, and as weeks turned to months, the Legion came to muse that Viktor Mentok’s disappearance was simply as sudden and unexpected as his arrival…

…but they were wrong. Late in the evening on January 9th 1990, in the small town of Athens, Ohio, Viktor Mentok pushed open the door to Copperfield’s Bar, produced his Legion of Heroes Insignia, and proclaimed to the gathered crowd that their town had been infected by a bioengineered plague. In addition to closing the roads, he told them, he would have to administer protective implants to everyone, and quickly, before symptoms manifested and the disease became untreatable. The townspeople, alarmed but moved by the urgency of these claims as well as Mentok’s fame, did not hesitate to submit to his demands, and without resistance allowed themselves to be affixed with small metallic devices, embedded in the backs of their necks. By the time they realised their mistake, it was too late…

…Captain Dawn entered Athens alone – his first departure from Morningstar in months - insistent that he face his former comrade alone, that the reports were wrong. Once in the town, to his surprise, he found no dead, no destruction, no signs of disaster. But his relief soon turned to shock as every person in Athens greeted him in unison – their bodies, implanted with neural override receivers, under the complete and total domination of Viktor Mentok. He had created a prototype for utopia, Mentok told Dawn through a thousand, united voices, a place free from violence, mistakes or malevolence, where everyone would always be safe…

…and Dawn’s report lacking detail, it is difficult to know the exact circumstances of Mentok’s surrender. Some say he submitted after his central control console was destroyed, others that he voluntarily relinquished control after realising that forcing the Athenians to fight placed them in the same danger he was trying to prevent. Some say he simply spoke to Captain Dawn and, when their conversation ended, allowed himself to be arrested rather than fighting his oldest friend. Regardless of what transpired, the town was released without casualties and Captain Dawn emerged with Viktor Mentok in custody, alive…

…Though unharmed, to those who knew him, something in the man now being dubbed ‘The Mindtaker’ had broken; something had changed. At first, they simply believed it was emotional – guilt, depression, the burden of failure – but as time went on it became apparent that something deeper, something worse, was afoot…

…Scarlett Syndrome: a degenerative disease of the mind which had only recently been identified as occurring in as many as 1 in 10 geniuses. Still widely misunderstood, doctors initially viewed the disorder as an abnormal form of dementia – only to later realise that the brains of those afflicted were not breaking down, but speeding up… In essence, like Logan’s Disorder, the problem stemmed from the power growing erratic, strengthening even, to the point of detriment… Mentok’s intelligence, instead of settling, was accelerating, his thoughts getting faster and faster – until his brain became too fast for his body… a disability that would render him comatose, paralysed by overthinking and disconnected from the real world…

…in light of his condition and in consultation with Captain Dawn, Justice Karim’s decision came after only a day’s deliberation. Viktor Mentok, The Mindtaker, would be relinquished to medical custody… a new section, built primarily with a sizable donation from the Legion of Heroes, of the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Fremont County Colorado (unofficially known as ADX Florence or ‘Supermax’). Dubbed the ‘Nightingale Wing’, the purpose-built facility would serve as the ailing Mentok’s resting place for the remainder of his days… stripped of control of his body, an ending of bitter irony, for a man who once stole control from so many others…