Professor Ivo

Professor Anthony Ivo (pronunciation: EYE-voh) is a fictional character, a mad scientist in DC Comics.

Publication history

Professor Ivo first appeared in The Brave and the Bold #30 (June 1960) and was created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky.

Fictional character biography

Anthony Ivo grew up with a crippling fear of death. The thought of his life ending was so great that he even avoided his own mother's funeral. For Ivo, avoiding death became his life's obsession. Ivo took to studying cybernetics and soon became an employee of the criminal organization Locus, where he gained new insights through the dissection of one of the Appellaxians. He used this knowledge to build Amazo. Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths, his desire to perfect Amazo was so great he had little qualms with killing his own father and a complete stranger in the benefit of the mental and biological templates he needed to create the android. In any case, both Pre- and Post-Crisis, he had Amazo attack the JLA^[1] in the hope of using their powers to imbue himself with immortality. Pre-Crisis he tried to use Amazo to steal long-lived creatures. He captured the JLA, save Batman and Superman, in gas filled cylinders, stole their powers and placed them in Amazo. The powers enabled him to make a potion that would allow him to live for 500 years, and when needed he can make more of the potion. He then told Amazo to remove their memories. However Green Lantern recharges his ring, having used the yellowish-greenish gas he had inhaled, then exhaled to protect him from the ring, and draws the powers out of Amazo and back to their rightful owners, also giving them back their memories. Ironically at the end of the story Ivo is sentenced to 500 years, while Amazo is stored in the trophy room.

Years later, Ivo discovered an immortality potion and drank it, but found that the immortality brought with it horrible disfigurement that made his skin scaly.^[2] He blamed this on the JLA and drifted further into insanity as he attacked the League on numerous occasions. Ivo built duplicates of himself to keep him company. These duplicates were repulsed by the insanity of their creator and locked him away, then carried out his dreams of revenge by attacking the new Justice Leaguers (Vibe, Gypsy, Steel and Vixen) and killing Vibe.

A year later, Ivo built a private island populated by robots. There, Ivo created "Men In Black" nicknamed Amazoids who had similar powers to Amazo. The Amazoids could steal one superpower each; they succeeded in robbing the powers of Red Star, Rebis, Valor, Power Girl, Starman and Geo-Force. However, this time Ivo's goal was not revenge, but suicide. Ivo realized that the disfigurement was not the side effect; it was the immortality. His body was becoming more and more infected, more and more immobile, until he would be nothing but a pain-filled living statue. Fearing this even more than death, he ordered the Amazoids to turn their full power on him. It didn't work. The JLA'er Ice, sympathizing with him, unknowingly invoked the power of Guy Gardner's Power Ring to cure him.

Professor Ivo's disfiguring experience was not enough to keep him from the temptation of the immortality serum and he once again brought about his own deformity by drinking it. As both Ice and the Green Lantern rings were gone, Ivo apparently consigned himself to his own horrible fate and was later imprisoned. Later, he would form a partnership of sorts with fellow mad scientist T.O. Morrow, constructing the powerful mechanized superheroine Tomorrow Woman as a trap to mindwipe the JLA with an electromagnetic pulse. While both men bickered and bantered all the while, they formed a friendship or camaraderie of sorts, even drinking a toast when he was imprisoned by the JLA. Still, T.O. Morrow was deeply annoyed at Professor Ivo's boasts about Amazo, and to spite him, snitched on him to the JLA when Professor Ivo planned to use the android to escape. Still, they remained comrades of some sort and still delight in spiting and belitting each other.

Later on, the nearly omnipotent android Hourman sought Professor Ivo to have him explain the very nature of androids. As the father and precursor of the entire race, Professor Ivo gave him the best explanation he could in exchange for a minor piece of knowledge Professor Ivo wanted: whether he would die or not in the end. Hourman gave him an answer, which the reader is not privy to, and left Ivo in his lair to meditate on it.

Professor Ivo recently returned in Infinite Crisis as a member of the Secret Society of Super Villains. He then appeared in Brad Meltzer's Justice League of America sans disfigurement. However, in a fight with Black Canary, Arsenal and Green Lantern, he claims to still retain his immortality. In Justice League of America #4, it is revealed that he is not the mastermind of the events, but rather working for an intelligent Solomon Grundy. It appears Grundy is using Ivo to build him an Amazo body to live forever, despite Grundy already being immortal.

He also took part in the Salvation Run storyline.

Prof. Ivo and Red Volcano on a mission for the SSoSV.

The Secret Society of Super Villains also assigned him to collect soil samples in Auschwitz, Poland which will be used to create the Wonder Woman villain Genocide.^[3] Professor Ivo brings along his newest android Red Volcano as an aid. During this mission, it is revealed that Professor Ivo isn't in agreement to create the new villain but follows through with orders at the prospect of having other Secret Society members create an antidote for his physical disfigurement. Following the Final Crisis, he was with Cheetah III's Secret Society of Super Villains.

After tiring of Professor Ivo's torment, Red Tornado coordinated with his Justice League teammates to have his former creator captured and incarcerated. Maxwell Lord later approaches Professor Ivo with a job to reprogram the Metal Men and to help Lord build OMAC Prime, an android who, like the original Amazo, could copy the powers of any superbeing in proximity.^[4]

The New 52

The first storyline takes place five years in the past and details the retconned origin of the original Justice League. In the back of Justice League #4 which contains S.T.A.R. Labs Employee files, it is revealed that Professor Ivo is a 37-year-old male who served as the Head of the Cellular and Structural Biology department at Ivy University for over a decade before he was recruited by the S.T.A.R. Labs project director of the Red Room (a level 9 S.T.A.R. Labs facility in Detroit built to collect and analyze foreign, extraterrestrial and sentient technology deemed too dangerous to share with the world) Silas Stone to oversee the biotechnological efforts of S.T.A.R. Labs. Soon Professor Ivo became the Project Director of the A-Maze Operating System and has pioneered the organic pattern process: the means of creating technology to mimic organic life down to a cellular level, which lead to the successful creation of A-Maze OS that mimics cellular regeneration in the field test with the mice.^[5]

Consequently, a parallel support program based on Ivo's design, the B-Maze Operating System, was built without Ivo's knowledge. It has showed results comparable to those of A-Maze OS.^[6] However, according to the files Professor Ivo is one of the most unpredictable members of Dr. Stone's team, disappearing for days at a time, often consumed by his personal projects which have been constantly frowned upon by S.T.A.R. Labs. Ivo suffers from thanatophobia:a fear of death. This often manifests in panic attacks and drug use and has led to several confrontations with Ivo's fellow team members. Silas is currently looking to replace Ivo, calling him "a bomb waiting to go off".^[7]

5 years later into the current day, Amazo had officially appeared in Justice League #8 being defeated by the Justice League. ^[8] Later the Head of A.R.G.U.S. and World's former Liaison to the Justice League Colonel Steve Trevor and his aide Etta Candy were discussing the events saying the League's fight with Amazo caused million dollars of damage and the city's want to sue someone which leads A.R.G.U.S. establish and result of damage was Green Arrow's fault stating the "Justice League" doesn't make mistakes. ^[9]

It is shortly revealed that Ivo faked his death. He teams up with a mysterious villain known as the Outsider" to establish a new Secret Society of Super Villains.^[10]

Powers and abilities

Professor Ivo is a criminal mastermind and a scientific genius. He is responsible for the creation of the androids Amazo and the Tomorrow Woman. He was also able to create an immortality serum.

Professor Ivo created a serum which provides him with an extremely long life span. The serum has however left his body twisted and malformed. As a result of his "immortality" serum, Ivo has developed a thick, resilient second skin. The skin appears to be bulletproof, and impenetrable to most forms of energy.

Professor Ivo's Androids

The following androids were created by Professor Ivo:

• Amazo -
• Amazoid - A bunch of androids that are similar to Amazo, but can only copy one superpower.
• Composite Superman - Professor Ivo created Composite Superman in his retconned origin as an earlier attempt to duplicate the Justice League's powers.^[11]
• Kid Amazo -
• Red Volcano -
• Tomorrow Woman -

In other media

Television

• Professor Ivo (listed on the computer screen at one point as Arthur Ivo) appeared as a cameo in the Justice League episode "Tabula Rasa" as AMAZO's creator. Ivo worked for LexCorp, but was fired when Mercy Graves took over the company. When Lex Luthor goes to see Ivo, he is already dead (contrary to the comics, where he has longevity) but Luthor finds AMAZO instead. Luthor briefly quips that the "... cigarettes finally got you".

• Professor Ivo appears in several episodes of Young Justice, voiced by Peter MacNicol.
  • In the episode "Schooled", Ivo sends Amazo after the League, and subsequently, his M.O.N.Q.I. robots to retrieve the parts of Amazo. Superboy trails the M.O.N.Q.I.s back to Ivo, who unleashes Amazo on him. The fight ends at Robin's school, where Superboy destroys Amazo, but Ivo escapes.
  • In "Terrors," Professor Ivo makes a cameo as an inmate at Belle Reve.
  • In "Humanity," the team and Zatanna visit Professor Ivo in Belle Reve to interrogate him on where T.O. Morrow's hideout. Zatanna magically induces him to snitch that T.O. Morrow's base is beneath Yellowstone National Park somewhere near Old Faithful. Afterwards Professor Ivo makes contact to T.O. Morrow (who was being impersonated by Red Volcano) warning him that the team is heading their way.
  • In "Insecurity," Sportsmaster springs Professor Ivo from Belle Reve while an android of him visits T.O. Morrow's bedside. Professor Ivo is brought before Brain and Klarion the Witch Boy stating to them that T.O. Morrow's scientific mind is in a coma. Ivo, Brain, and Klarion experiment on the Starro sample and managed to complete their experiment. When Artemis crashes into their lab, Klarion uses his magic to get himself and the other villains out of the warehouse. Professor Ivo returned to Belle Reve where he thanks his android duplicate for filling in for him while he was away.

• Professor Ivo appears in DC Nation Shorts voiced by Jason Marsden. In a two-part short featuring Vibe, he creates a breakdancing android named Extreme-O to beat Vibe only for it to be destroyed by Vibe.

• Anthony Ivo appears in Arrow, portrayed by Dylan Neal, as the employer of the crew of a ship called Amazo. He is looking for a sunken submarine containing a serum created by the Japanese Army during World War II known as Mirakuru ("Miracle" in English). His search leads him to the island of Lian Yu where Oliver Queen was stranded for five years. He claims that he intends "to save the human race".^[12] However, a radio conversation between Ivo and his wife Jessica indicates he may have come to the island seeking a cure for her unspecified, worsening illness.^[13] After having his right hand removed by Slade Wilson, he began to suffer blood poisoning, creating the appearance of skaly skin on his torso and arm as shown in the comics. After revealing the Mirakuru could be cured, he asked to be killed to be granted a quick death; Oliver Queen shot him dead soon after.^[14] This version is never referred to as "Professor Ivo", and instead uses the title "Doctor".

Film

• Professor Ivo makes a brief appearance in Justice League: War. He is seen pressing a button to alert S.T.A.R Labs security before being captured by a Parademon.

References