Every time a comic book character makes the leap from the page to the screen, it's a big deal. Everything from their design to their personality will be closely scrutinized by hardcore fans and people who just found out about them recently. However, with a character like MODOK, there is at least one other on-screen iteration to compete with.
Fun fact about Hulu, it's mostly owned by Disney. That's why it can be purchased as part of a bundle with Disney Plus and why a few episodes of Andor are available on the service. Hulu has played host to a few minor Marvel shows in the past, but most of them have been unmitigated disasters. The best of the bunch is the Adult Swim-esque comedy M.O.D.O.K.
Among other things, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is set to be the Marvel Cinematic Universe debut of MODOK. The Mental/Mobile/Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing isn't particularly famous for his comic book appearances. He was introduced in 1967 as a Captain America villain before being upgraded to an all-purpose antagonist role for the entire cast. A lot of fans first heard of him in 2011, when he was introduced as a playable character in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Both the original 2008 Iron Man and 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier featured MODOK in early drafts before he was cut in favor of other antagonists. After years on the D-list, MODOK went to the favorite home of minor Marvel characters with solo series potential. Right after Hit Monkey, he got his own show on Hulu.
M.O.D.O.K. came to Hulu from the minds of Jordan Blum and Patton Oswalt. Blum was best known as a writer on Seth MacFarlane's American Dad, and he also served as a writer on M.O.D.O.K. Oswalt is a stand-up comedy legend with a long history of fantastic voice acting roles. He's also one of the more prominent comic book nerds in the industry and the star behind the title character. The aesthetic of M.O.D.O.K. would be familiar to any fans of late-night Cartoon Network programming. It's animated by the stop-motion wizards over at Stoopid Buddy Studios, who are best known for their work on Robot Chicken. The show was meant to follow the aforementioned Hit Monkey, and be followed by a series about Tigra and Dazzler and Howard the Duck. In grand cinematic universe fashion, the scattered anti-heroes and villains would gather into a team called The Offenders. None of that came to pass, Hit Monkey and M.O.D.O.K. were the only shows released, and they were both canceled after one season.
M.O.D.O.K. follows the titular mutated scientist as he struggles with a midlife crisis. He's a failure as a villain, his family doesn't respect him, and his company is falling apart fast. Even as his life crashes down around him, he treats everyone he encounters as if they're beneath him. His organization, Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.,) is taken over by a hotshot new twenty-something businessman. MODOK loses his wife, alienates his kids, and descends into a self-destructive series of hijinks out of dissatisfaction with his silly life as a failed villain. It is, in many ways, a joke at the expense of the idea of an unloved supervillain. Countless other minor villains make appearances, and they're treated like jokes just for showing up. It's the opposite of James Gunn's approach to minor characters. Instead of upgrading a nobody by showing the world what was cool about them, they question whether there was ever a good idea behind the character.
M.O.D.O.K. casts its title character as a pathological failure. He's a joke at his own expense, and he can't help but make all his problems worse at every turn. As the series gets where it's going in the latter half of the season, it becomes a battle between MODOK's career and his family straight out of a lesser Robin Williams film. It's a sci-fi twist on a classic story structure, and it's willing to go to some impressively dark places near the end. MODOK has always been played pretty straight on the comic book page, but his pop-cultural perception was generally mocking. The show is about being the kind of minor character who will never make the MCU lineup. Now that its protagonist has made it to the big leagues, can he find a home there?
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has done a lot with very little in many cases, but some characters may be better served by the lower tiers. M.O.D.O.K. makes a lot of silly gags at its title character's expense, but it also seems to understand his place in the fanbase on a fundamental level. Sure, MODOK might make a fine villain in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but he'll always feel a little bit out of place in any form of mass-media entertainment. Even if he's been changed to fit the medium, it'll be weird to see that big head on the big screen.
