Want to meet more overlooked villains? Check out my profiles on King Tut, the Matador, Peek-a-Boo, Man-Killer, Mad Mod, Big Wheel, and KGBeast! Under delusions of godhood, Abdol did what anyone would: become a villain called the Living Pharaoh and kidnap Alex straight from his graduation ceremony. The first time Alex realizes he has mutant powers is when he suddenly blasts the Living Pharaoh with an energy field. He became the hero Havok in Issue 58, but first, he gets his power zapped. This allows the Living Pharaoh, now with augmented powers, to turn into a giant called the Living Monolith. For about a minute. He is immediately defeated by Alex’s nascent powers and doesn’t do much for the rest of the storyline. First, we find out that Abdol had a wife and daughter, both of whom are now dead. Two, this issue shows Abdol’s human (rather than despotic) side. After watching a man sacrifice himself to save someone else, he is so touched that Abdol hurls himself into space, where his giant body becomes the surface of a new planet. (A Living Planet, if you will.) Third, a more famous Egypt-themed villain, Apocalypse, made his debut in this issue, at least retroactively: it was later revealed that he was one of the Living Pharaoh’s candy striper henchmen. Apocalypse would later be revealed to be much more important in Abdol’s backstory than anyone suspected, but we’ll get to that momentarily. After a while, Abdol’s planet self fell out of the sky and into the Utah desert, where he possessed a teenage girl, Akasha Martinez. Using her body, he stole an ancient Egyptian staff from a museum, which gave him/her enough power to become the Living Pharaoh again. This displeased Spider-Man a lot. But Abdol’s hold on Akasha wasn’t complete. She retained enough control to fight against his more violent impulses and ultimately kicked him out of her brain. As a reward, the Egyptian gods granted her the power of flight. That’s weird, right? It’s not just me? Apparently, Marvel didn’t like this trajectory for Abdol’s character. This incident was never mentioned again and got overwritten by his next major appearance in… Turns out our malevolent mutant isn’t really a mutant at all. He was kidnapped off the street and mutated by Mister Sinister, at Apocalypse’s direction, using Havok’s DNA. This explains why the supposedly “near-infinite” cosmic rays could only power either Havok or Pharaoh, but not both simultaneously: their powers are physically linked. Apocalypse planned to use the Living Monolith as a power conduit through which he could claim the power of the 11 most powerful mutants on Earth. This caused Abdol to lose what few marbles he still possessed and go on another take-over-the-world rampage. Both he and Apocalypse were, of course, defeated in the end. Both of these covers were drawn by groundbreaking artists: Issue 56 marks the late Neal Adams’s introduction to X-Men, while John Byrne’s reinterpretation is often hailed as one of the greatest comic book covers of all time. You could argue that a lot of supervillains are pretty one-note characters: all they want is revenge, or world domination, or ultimate power. But some of those characters get a chance to gain a little nuance or grow out of their restrictive roles. At the minimum, we learn more about what makes them tick, which either allows us to sympathize with them to some extent or at least view them as more three-dimensional. Aside from Marvel Graphic Novel #17, Abdol really never gets more development than what we see in his first appearances. This makes him feel more stagnant than other villains. He’s just not that interesting as a person. I would like Marvel to keep using him until they actually color him right, i.e., not like a white dude. And it certainly is noteworthy to have a pharaoh-themed villain who is actually Egyptian, but honestly, there are better pharaoh felons out there.
