“There is no great genius without a touch of madness.” This belief was conveyed by Aristotle almost 300 years before the Common Era began, and human beings all throughout the world appear to have just accepted it as reality. Every creative aspirant has toyed with the idea that there is a narrow line separating genius from insanity, no matter how scientifically wrong the concept of a “Mad Scientist” maybe.
Creators of comic books are never afraid to show readers what may happen if, say, the leader of Marvel’s First Family transforms into a sadistically-warped multiversal supervillain. Because of his unique existence, James “Logan” Howlett has been subjected to several cases of abuse throughout his life. Wolverine’s monstrous Healing Factor makes him practically difficult to kill, so his foes focus on the one aspect of his being that they know they can manipulate in any way they want: his mind.
Before Charles Xavier came along and implanted powerful psionic blockers in Logan’s mind, antagonists such as Professor Thorton and William Stryker repeatedly broke him mentally and reassembled him for their own ends, frequently subjecting him to memory wiping and heavy indoctrination effective enough to drive Logan insane for a short time. However, what Jason Aaron and Yanick Paquette constructed in 2009 leapfrogs over the thin line dividing genius and lunacy, then rips it with chainsaws for the sheer joy of it.
Dr. Rottwell, who first appeared in Wolverine: Weapon X #6, maybe the only person who has ever tampered with Logan’s mind and gotten away with it, and if that does not worry you, we do not know what will. The Origins of Dr.Rottwell, the Hopelessly Insane Genius, are explained here.
The Madman Dr.Rottwell: Origin
Amongst the otherworldly cosmic horrors that plague the works of H.P. Lovecraft, there exists a monstrous entity deadlier than Yog-Sothoth, Cthulu, Azathoth, or any Outer and/or Elder God: the simple yet mortifying prospect of madness. You see, Lovecraft’s literary works revolve around the concept of cosmicism; the idea that in relation to the Universe and the multitude of beings that populate it, human life is so insignificant that it should terrify us to our very core. But if we were to follow that line of thought, then an even more horrifying prospect awaits us.
Human life is inherently propped up on two pillars- reality and rationality. We work, eat, sleep, and repeat every cycle of behavior based on the preconceived notion that these actions give meaning to our lives. When people realize how meaningless their lives truly are, they give up on order and give in to insanity and that is where you will find the real horror of a Lovecraftian novel.
If we were to go by that metric, then Dr.Rottwell is the loftiest Lovecraftian villain to ever hit the pages of a comic book. Born Bentley Newton, Rottwell was spared the traumatic experiences that a character from the CthuluMythos usually experiences before going insane; because he was born that way. As a child, he tried to create a zombie after drilling a hole into a cat’s skull and filling it with battery acid; his plan failed, but his determination only intensified. By the time he was 13, it was clear that the boy was highly unstable as he burned a man to death and ran away laughing from the experience, enthralled by it.
At some point in time, he was institutionalized at the Dunwich Sanatorium where he was declared “incurable” and quarantined in a ward built specifically to contain him. The Sanatorium staff deemed isolation the best course of action because they had never seen a specimen like Newton; utterly without fear, but also absolutely off his rocker. The longer he stuck around the other patients, the more his madness would rub off on them, and the consequences of that would be unspeakable, to say the least.
However, in true Lovecraftian fashion, Newton’s insanity began infecting the other residents of the Sanatorium, driving them to their breaking point and instigating a riot that put the Madman in charge of the Madhouse. Changing his name to Algernon J. Rottweil (a homage to two key literary contributors to the ChtuluMythos), he replaced the slaughtered doctors and nurses with the patients and assumed his role as Dr. Rot- the maniacal, brain-harvesting “neurologist” who was now in charge of the Dunwich Sanatorium.
Using his newly-gained “position”, Rottwell started conducting experiments on humans that would make even Orochimaru squirm; all in an effort to keep the Sanatorium’s cover intact (it was a breeding ground for hitmen and assassins) while thoroughly pursuing his twisted vision of “medical science”. To keep his life’s work going, Rottwell needed brains, which he procured from a homeless shelter in San Francisco; that’s how he popped up on reporter Melita Garner’s radar, and consequently, Wolverine’s.
Sadly, for both of them, this was one tracking mission Logan wouldn’t be coming back from unscathed. The man formerly known as Weapon X would be forced to relive his worst nightmares at the hands of the Mad Doctor many times over after he was incapacitated and captured from the shelter and brought to the Sanatorium. Rothwell’s experiments were unlike anything Logan had previously endured, and he had been brainwashed, manipulated, and lied to pretty much his entire life.
He completely subdued Logan to the point he became tame and pried deep enough into his brain to uncover secrets even though he didn’t know where there were. Although Logan was able to regain control of his mind thanks to Psylocke and Nightcrawler and nearly-disemboweled Dr.Rottwell after, he managed to escape with something that would make Logan’s life a waking nightmare.
Dr.Rottwell Is Using Wolverine To Commit Murders
See when Rottwell was subjecting Logan’s exposed brain to amounts of electricity that would make a regular person explode, he found something buried deep within his consciousness. If you’ve seen any MCU film featuring the Winter Soldier, you’ll know that his villainy wasn’t exactly a choice. When he was captured by the Soviets (or rather, Hydra), Bucky was subjected to extreme mental and physical torture that essentially left him a blank slate. His handlers programmed his now-broken mind to respond to a set of words that would trigger instant subservience to them; priming him for his next assassination.
Weapon X did pretty much the same thing to Logan, except they buried so many protocols in his brain that Dr.Rottwell was instantly transfixed by his scans. He used the knowledge he’d gained to implant a few commands of his own. After escaping, Dr. Rot gave a call to Logan and uttered an unrevealed phrase that caused Logan to lose all sense of consciousness and become Rottwell’s personal brain harvester. Under the influence of Rottwell’s conditioning, Logan embarked on a shockingly massive killing spree across the United States, killing and harvesting the minds of dozens of people for Rot’s Ultimate Creation.
Thanks to his psionic blockers and years of experience dealing with Telepaths, Logan is aware of what he is doing. Unfortunately, that makes it all the more upsetting that he’s unable to resist the Pavlovian response the trigger phrase elicits. We’ve seen Wolverine being influenced or outright controlled by malevolent handlers before, but never have we seen one’s programming take hold of him so insistently. Even after locating the Mad Doctor and his equally-crazy “family”, Logan almost lost himself yet again. Rottwell captured the unsuspecting leader of the X-Force and programmed his brain to take on the personality of “Tater”; one of his other pet projects.
Eventually, Logan was able to overcome the psionic manipulation and take out all of Rottwell’s extended family, including the man himself. He leaves the Rottwell Family Home a changed man, having lost more pieces of himself in the process of putting down yet another crazed menace to society. Or so it seems, anyway, because Wolverine #308’s final panel shows Dr.Rottwell come back to life alive, well & ready to toy with Logan again. If what we’ve seen from him already is any indication, Logan will need more than mental blockers to overcome Rottwell’s gruesome tricks & tactics.
Why Dr.Rottwell Is So Dangerous
Superhuman strength, speed, reflexes, flight, laser beams, fundamental force manipulation; the very thought of this man possessing any of those abilities send shivers racing down our spine. Unlike many Marvel villains, Dr.Rottwell is 100% human; no enhancements, no mutations, no billions of dollars in the bank, nothing. And that’s for the best because if he can treat the legendary Wolverine-like his personal plaything without any powers, we don’t want to imagine what he would do if he had them.
Rothwell’s greatest weapon also happens to be the very thing that got him locked up in Dunwich in the first place: his sick, sadistic, revoltingly brilliant mind. Rottwell is an exceptionally skilled scientist and a highly-efficient doctor, capable of performing precise brain surgeries and clean amputations without a medical degree. Unfortunately, his “subjects” aren’t recommended for either of those things out of necessity.
Rottwell’s object of obsession is the human mind. Capable of processing more information than a Supercomputer, the brain is an organ we haven’t even begun to fully understand; Rottwell treats it like the back of his hand. He can keep people alive for multiple hours after removing their brains, brainwash them to an astonishingly effective degree, create entire machines using the brains he has harvested, and is working hard on creating the God Brain Machine: a mega-collection of scores of brains, powerful enough to render Professor X’s psionic blockers ineffective and penetrate the psyche of a telepath as powerful as Psylocke; although she manages to disarm the Machine before it goes off.
He also created the Flesh Puppets using grey matter he retrieved directly from Logan’s brain. These Xenomorph-Esque meat monsters can shape-shift and take the appearance of people close to Logan, disorienting him mid-fight and leaving him wide open; additionally, because they’ve grown from parts of Logan’s brain, their creation caused him to lose many of his memories which can be very dangerous for a man who has as many enemies like him.
Rottwell’s regular Brain Machines aren’t any less of a nuisance, as they allow the Mad Doctor to go through and manipulate a person’s memories and can also act as surveillance drones for him. He can also craft psychic bombs from brains that render their targets uncontrollably insane for 30 seconds; long enough to make them regret what they did while Rottwell gives them the slip. The God Brain-Machine functions like both of these creations in conjunction; albeit on a much higher scale. Rottwell always carries a pair of giant nutcrackers to easily retrieve brains from his selected samples; it also doubles as a nasty blunt-force melee weapon, so you better watch your back, or rather, your head.
If he weren’t batshit crazy, we’d have tacked on pain immunity onto the list, because he was able to survive an intestine-spilling slash from Wolverine and actually proceeded to strangle the man with his own guts! The pay-off to issue #308 seems to indicate that the God Brain-Machine can also create clones; which, if confirmed, will take Rottwell’s threat level from a solid 7 to a scale-breaking 15. Though he possesses no special abilities of his own, it is his ingenuity that makes him such a deadly force to be reckoned with. Dr. Rottwell might not be one of the most-recognized adversaries Logan has gone up against, but he is certainly the most unpredictable out of the lot; and that alone, makes him the most dangerous human being on planet Earth.