The Untold Truth Of Marvel's Angar The Screamer

The slate of upcoming Marvel movies and TV shows is populated by plenty of weirdness. Doctor Strange looks set to finally crack the multiverse, Spider-Man: No Way Home may or may not see the return of that face that Tobey Maguire does when he tries to stop a runaway subway train, and in the noble tradition of Star Wars, Bob Hope, and Shrek, the Guardians of the Galaxy are getting their own holiday special.

But even in a crowded field, Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. stands out as potentially the most bizarre adaptation of a Marvel property. The animated series, produced by the same animators behind Robot Chicken, stars Patton Oswalt as the titular M.O.D.O.K., a former underling of an evil organization, artificially transformed into a mechanical organism designed almost exclusively for killing. The series puts a twist on the character's six decades of comic book history, reimagining him as a rocket-propelled head who's struggling to balance evil work and family.

In a recent Twitter post, the series introduced prospective fans to a bevy of supporting characters that'll be along for the ride, including a very Derek Smalls-looking gentleman by the name of Angar the Screamer, voiced by Bill Hader. Who is Angar the Screamer? So glad you asked.

Angar the Screamer — born David Angar — never had much of a chance at a normal life. He premiered in Daredevil #100, an issue that opens with the notably vision-impaired Daredevil nonchalantly flying an airplane. When that's your creator's read on a standard day, you're pretty much in trouble from the get go.

Angar comes by his powers honestly. A disillusioned hippie with vengeance on his mind, he volunteered to have alien experiments performed on him, resulting in his ability to cause wild hallucinations in his victims through the power of his voice. The effects of his powers range from paranoia and hysteria to full-on catatonia. Whether they can wipe a person's natural instinct to distrust anyone in a tasseled leather vest is a subject that's never been addressed. Eventually, he even developed the ability to exist as a being of pure sound.

Between movies, TV shows, streaming series, cartoons, and video games, comic book adaptations have become an omnipresent, all-encompassing, aerosolized mist of popular culture. There are only so many thousands and thousands of characters for studios to burn through. It shouldn't be surprising, therefore, that Hulu's M.O.D.O.K. series won't be Angar the Screamer's first onscreen appearance. Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. introduced a new take on David Angar, this time minus the convolution of his original backstory. This version of Angar was a man who underwent experimental surgery to treat his throat cancer, granting him a voice that sent anyone who heard it into a coma.

From the looks of things, Angar is going back to his 1970s roots for his latest gig. We'll know more when Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. premieres on Hulu on May 21.