Mr. Immortal

Mr. Immortal
File:MisterImmortal.jpg Mr. Immortal with his pals Flatman and Doorman in the background. Art by Paul Pelletier.
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Avengers West Coast (Vol. 2) #46 (July 1989)
Created by	John Byrne
In-story information
Alter ego	Craig Hollis
Team affiliations	Great Lakes Champions, GLX-Men; Great Lakes Avengers
Abilities	True Immortality

Mr. Immortal (Craig Hollis) is a fictional mutant superhero in the Marvel Comics universe and leader of the Great Lakes Avengers who first appeared in the pages of the Avengers West Coast in 1989.

Fictional history

Mr. Immortal is the leader and founder of the Great Lakes Avengers, a regional offshoot of the Avengers made up of heroes with almost-but-not-quite-useless abilities. Their base of operations is Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which appears to be their shared birthplace.

Mr. Immortal possesses the superhuman ability of immortality. Before her untimely death, his teammate and sometimes lover Dinah Soar was the only one able to calm him down when he was revived, as he was prone to fits of rages upon returning to life. This unique ability has always given him the courage to try daring, reckless life-endangering stunts and he is quite ready to sacrifice himself for the rest of the team. It has also left him in frequent states of depression by having to watch his loved ones die around him. He discovered his ability after attempting suicide several times.

Boyhood friendship

This is something he has had to cope with since the start of his life, as the cosmic entity Deathurge regularly appeared to him. Deathurge first appeared before Craig shortly after his birth and the untimely death of his mother. His mother made Deathurge promise that he would look after Craig, and he has done so ever since in his own unique way. Craig would dub Deathurge, "D'urge", and the two became the best of friends. His father believed Deathurge to be an imaginary friend, but Deathurge was quite real, and constantly urging Craig to endanger his life by, for example, playing in traffic. Each attempt at the boy's first death was averted and Craig wrote it off as: "Just playin' with D'urge, daddy."

On Craig's 8th birthday, Deathurge had once again stimulated Craig into a daring stunt, first setting his house on fire, and then telling Craig to hide under the house, while it was burning down. Craig was ultimately saved by the firemen, but he was forced to see Deathurge take his father to the afterlife. Deathurge stopped visiting Craig afterwards, and Craig was moved into a new home.

A new life

His new father, a Mr. O'Doughan, was an abusive man, but Craig persevered, in large part thanks to the daughter the O'Doughans already had, a girl named Terri. She became his first real friend, and this would ultimately develop into love. Like a lot of young loves, the couple moved out and tried to live on just that, love. Craig had to work long and hard, but he kept going, until the day Terri left, leaving only a Dear John letter on the table.

She had committed suicide, and once more Deathurge appeared, revealing that he was in fact real. Grief-stricken, Craig begged Deathurge to take him as well, but Deathurge refused and departed again. Craig wanted to kill himself as well, and his first suicide attempt was jumping off a building, only to find he had survived. Every successive suicide attempt (from dynamite to drowning) failed as well, and to his surprise, Craig found out he couldn't die.

Mr. Immortal and the GLA

Seeing the amazing potential of having superpowers, Craig found his calling and decided that he would become a superhero! And thus... Mr. Immortal was born. And killed. On his first outing as a superhero, trying to foil a bank robbery, Craig was shot and left for dead. He decided it might be best to form a team, so his abilities could actually be useful.

Response to the ad he then placed could be called relatively successful, as the Great Lakes Avengers were formed, with its founding members Mr. Immortal, Doorman, Big Bertha, Dinah Soar and Leather Boy! They would come into contact with the West Coast Avengers, where they were even able to convince Hawkeye and Mockingbird to join them. They fought the occasional supervillain, but mostly spent their time playing cards.

Over that time, Craig would develop a loving relationship with Dinah Soar, as he was also the only one who could understand her language. It turned out that he and her were soulmates and he was her ageless-love, as she herself also possessed a degree of immortality.

Craig was close to calling the GLA quits, when the real Avengers were disassembled and Craig happily rejoiced that they were now the real Avengers. In their following outing against Maelstrom, Dinah Soar was killed, and Deathurge appeared to take her away to the afterlife. The former friendship between him and Deathurge was now truly over.

File:Immortaldeath.jpg

One of the many deaths of Mr. Immortal.

Mr. Immortal would meet Deathurge again at Dinah Soar's funeral, where Deathurge expressed his regret, showing that he had truly come to love Craig as something as a son. Craig himself was enraged at Deathurge, having taken away all that Craig had ever cared about, so he attacked Deathurge, but received only a sound thrashing. In his grief, Mr. Immortal starting spending a lot of time downloading the Magnolia soundtrack. Not only that, but he also dressed up in Dinah Soar's costume and impaled himself on gigantic scissors.

Craig was able to return the favor when Deathurge appeared to take away Monkey Joe and appeared in the form of a squirrel, leaving him in a vulnerable state. It was then that Deathurge revealed to Craig what his destiny was: to outlive everyone as the one true immortal, and then learn the grand secret that will reveal itself at the end of things. Deathurge, by taking away some of his loved ones, tried to prepare Craig, so that he could truly live to that destiny, and the villain Maelstrom was at the point that he could very well take that purpose away, ending the universe, in its entirety, prematurely. Explaining his role as Homo Supreme in the grand scheme of things gave Mr. Immortal a new incentive to live and he set out to stop Maelstrom and save the universe.

The GLA stormed Maelstrom's base, and it was ultimately Mr. Immortal that was able to save the universe, although at the cost of his friend Doorman (although Doorman would later be resurrected). Coming close to Maelstrom, Mr. Immortal was able to play on his feelings, that ultimately Maelstrom would be the one left alone, and that was the grand secret of things. Horrified by the thought, Maelstrom wanted a way out, and Mr. Immortal offered him one: suicide.

Not knowing that Mr. Immortal would be able to come back from the injury, Maelstrom killed himself like Craig had done, and Craig was able to push the button that stopped the machine Maelstrom had created to achieve the destruction of the universe. The GLA saved everybody, but gained no recognition, and were even forced to drop the Avengers name, but the group persevered, becoming the GLX (Great Lakes X-Men).

During a poker tournament hosted by the Thing, in Thing #8 (2006), members of the GLX are throwing around new names for the group after Rachel Summers telepathically dissuades them from continuing to use the GLX name. Eventually, the team is renamed the Great Lakes Champions (after the song "We Are The Champions", sung upon Flatman's victory); much to the disgust of Hercules, former member of the Champions of Los Angeles, the name sticks.

Powers and abilities

Mr. Immortal is immortal. Any fatal wound he instantly recovers from, although it is not clear if he dies and comes back to life or simply doesn't die. It is also unclear if he comes back in another body or his body heals as he is resurrected. Whether a healing factor is involved or not is unclear, as is the question of if he recovers from non-fatal wounds. Any wounds he does sustain heal almost instantly upon his next resurrection, so the point might be moot, as even if he didn't otherwise heal he could always commit suicide to recover. This healing factor is apparently omnipotent; Mr. Immortal has gone so far as to blow himself to smithereens with dynamite, and walked away unscathed.

The origin of this power may have been that Deathurge (a sort of Angel of Death character) took an interest in him when he was young, or perhaps Deathurge took an interest in him because this potential was already there. Deathurge once explained to Mr. Immortal that he is a mutant, but not homo superior, the traditional Marvel mutant who has simply taken the next step in evolution, but rather a man who has evolved past death itself, and is therefore Homo Supreme. He has been told that he will be around until the end of the universe itself, to be revealed at the end its final secret.

As seen during certain fights (such as in Avengers West Coast #46 and Great Lakes Avengers #4), Mr. Immortal appears to have a certain degree of acrobatics skills that seems to be unrelated to his Homo supreme powers. It is unknown when or where (or if ever) he learnt such skills, but it might be due to him finding out that immortality alone does not make someone a superhero (after his initial attempt as seen in Great Lakes Avengers #1). Knowing that he is unable to die might help him be more confident when performing such acts, allowing him to do feats such as dodging gunfire (Avengers West Coast #46). However, since his skills are not actually superhuman, they rarely help during battles.

Because of the latter remark, there is a legitimate debate whether Craig is an Omega-level mutant or not.

List of deaths

Mr. Immortal has been "killed" numerous times, each time walking away unscathed in the end. A list of these incidents contains:

• Automatic gunfire to the chest (Avengers West Coast #46)
• Hurling himself from high buildings (Avengers West Coast #46, Great Lakes Avengers #1)
• Radiation exposure (Avengers West Coast #49)
• Crushed by Terminus (Avengers Annual #19)
• Burned by the Human Torch (Avengers West Coast #64)
• Crushed by flying building debris, courtesy of Graviton (Thunderbolts #17)
• Shot and blown up by Deadpool (Deadpool #10-11)
• Blown up with dynamite (Great Lakes Avengers #1)
• Drowned (Great Lakes Avengers #1)
• Consumed gallons of lethal substances (Great Lakes Avengers #1)
• Gunshot to the head (Great Lakes Avengers #1)
• Death by energy blast, courtesy of Maelstrom (Great Lakes Avengers #1)
• Self-impaled on giant novelty scissors (Great Lakes Avengers #2, GLX-Mas)
• Getting his neck snapped (Great Lakes Avengers #3)
• Getting impaled by rods (Great Lakes Avengers #3, GLX-Mas)
• Self-inflicted gunshot to head (Great Lakes Avengers #4)
• Death by bear trap, cannon, chainsaw, piranhas, ferrets, spear, and python (GLX-Mas)
• Decapitated by Deadpool (Cable and Deadpool, #30)

External link

• Great Lakes Avengers