In the sixth episode of “She-Hulk: The Lawyer” on Disney+, a character with an outrageous superpower shows up: Mr. Immortal (David Pasquesi) is actually immortal! Do who is he anyway, where did he get his superpowers and what is his story in the Marvel comics? We get to the bottom of these questions in this article.
MR. IMMORTAL’S APPEARANCE IN “SHE HULK “
But first, let’s start with a quick memory refresher. Episode 6 of “She-Hulk” not only follows Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) to a wedding, but also features a subplot. In it, Jen’s representative Amelia (Renée Elise Goldsberry) takes care of a strange case together with her assistant Nikki (Ginger Gonzaga). A certain Craig Hollis, who calls himself Mr Immortal, has a habit of killing himself every time he wants to divorce his numerous wives (and in one case even a husband).
In this way, he avoids direct confrontation with his partners and can go on living. After all, he is immortal and with his numerous suicides he would only die in a legal sense. But now his numerous former lovers have found out about him. Together, the former spouses demand compensation. This makes for some comedic banter, but we don’t learn much about Craig Hollis’ origins and powers in the MCU series.
While the greying middle-aged man emphasises that he has possibly married more times than any other human being, which suggests that he has been alive for a very long time, exactly how long remains unclear. He also gives a small presentation of his superpower when he jumps out of a skyscraper, breaking numerous bones in the process, but simply sets them again and continues to run as if nothing had happened.
To find out more about Mister Immortal, we have to take a look at his comic book history. But beware: the MCU’s Craig Hollis is already very different from his original. So the following information only refers to the comic version and does not necessarily have anything to do with the Disney+ series.
THIS IS CRAIG HOLLIS AKA MR. IMMORTAL IN THE COMICS
Also in the comics, Mister Immortal’s real name is Craig Hollis. Basically, he has only one superpower: he heals any injury within a very short time and is therefore immortal.
He has had this ability since birth, but only really became aware of it after several suicide attempts. But already as a child, a cosmic entity called Deathurge became aware of him (a kind of Marvel variant of the Grim Reaper that picks up the deceased to lead them into the realm of death).
Craig’s parents thought the jet-black super-being the boy called D’urge was an imaginary friend. But in fact he really existed. His goal was to lure the child into deadly situations to make him aware of his immortality. During one of these actions, when Craig was eight years old, his father died. Afterwards, Deathurge disappeared from the boy’s life for a long time.
Marvel ComicsMister Immortal looks
It wasn’t until he was a young adult that Craig truly realised he was immortal, after making several unsuccessful attempts to kill himself. When he discovered his superpower, he formed his own superhero team called the Great Lakes Avengers, who occasionally assisted the real Avengers. However, the team was later renamed the Great Lakes X-Men.
So Mr. Immortal is very different from the MCU version in the comics. After all, in the colourful booklets he is a real superhero and not a marital cheat. Moreover, there he is a young man with blond curls and not a meanwhile grey-haired older gentleman. In the series, Craig Hollis is more of a joke character who has to serve as a subplot for a short while.
WHERE DOES MISTER IMMORTAL GET HIS POWERS?
Deathurge addresses these words to Mr. Immortal shortly after his lover Dinah Soar dies and he mourns her:
“Fate has chosen you. It made you who you are – the final stage of human evolution. A man who has even conquered death itself. Do you understand that? There are Homo sapiens and there are mutants, that is, Homo superior, but you, Mr. Immortal, are a Homo supreme!”
The supernatural being then explains to Craig Hollis that it is his job to outlive everyone else in order to learn the cosmic secret of the universe in the end.
But although Deathurge draws a clear line between ordinary mutants and Mr. Immortal, the latter has already called himself a mutant in the comics. And indeed, the suspicion is that it was a genetic mutation that gave the Immortal his powers. After all, various Marvel mutants such as Deadpool or Wolverine have already shown similarly extraordinary regenerative abilities.
There is no contradiction with the Fate rationale. It would simply have been fate that triggered the mutation.
However, all of this seems irrelevant to “She-Hulk”. Since the Disney+ series changed the character so radically, taking away his tragic dimension and making him a joke character, we think it will remain with this one-off mini-appearance in the MCU.
