Nefaria also greatly valued his family tradition of utter respectability, yet his lust for even greater wealth and power led him to become a powerful figure in the Maggia, the notorious international crime syndicate which has its origins in southern Europe, but included no noblemen. As a young man, Nefaria quickly made himself a powerful force in the Maggia through the offering of large sums of money to established Maggiosi, the financing of major criminal operations for the Maggia in return for shares of power, the advanced weaponry his scientists devised for him, and his own immense talent for criminal strategy.

The newly formed Avengers devoted much of their time in the early history of that group to the capturing of Maggia criminals and causing the shutdown of many profitable Maggia criminal operations. Count Nefaria decided to deal with the Avengers himself. Having planned to move to America anyway, Nefaria had his ancestral castle in Italy disassembled stone by stone and re-assembled atop the New Jersey Palisades. He announced that he was opening the castle to the public and that profits from admission fees would be donated to charity. He invited the Avengers to the opening day ceremonies.

Once the Avengers were inside the castle, however, Nefaria trapped them under so-called “time transcender beams,” which, in effect, put them into suspended animation. Nefaria then created life-size hologram-like images of the Avengers which he could project over great distances, which he could cause to move like living humans, and through which he could project recreations of the real Avengers’ voices. Nefaria caused the images to publicly proclaim that the Avengers were going to seize control of the United States.

As a result, the real Avengers, once they were set free, found them selves in conflict with the United States Army. The Avengers finally defeated Nefaria, who confessed his guilt in framing them. The Avengers were cleared and Nefaria was publicly exposed as a criminal and deported to Italy. Many of Nefaria’s criminal allies and employees deserted him and he was now no more than one among many Maggia “family” heads.

By now, Nefaria was virtually destitute. He decided he would have himself given superhuman powers greater than those of virtually any other human being. Nefaria formed the second Lethal Legion, consisting of the Living Laser, the original, criminal Power Man, and the Whirlwind. Nefaria then had Profally Klaus Sturdy, former chief assistant to Baron Heinrich Zemo, increase these three criminals’ powers for roughly an hour, and sent them to battle their old enemies, the Avengers.

But Sturdy and his assistants had also analyzed the cellular and genetic structure of the three superhumanly powerful criminals, and used their findings to duplicate their powers in Count Nefaria, but magnified a hundredfold. Once empowered, Nefaria mortally wounded Sturdy so that he could never give. equal powers to someone else. Bu the dying Sturdy told Nefaria that his new powers were causing the count to age at incredible speed, so that Nefaria would be dead in two days. (Actually, Sturdy was lying, and Nefaria lived beyond the two day limit.) Sturdy said that only he himself could control the aging process, but now he could not because he himself would be dead. Crazed with fear and rage, Nefaria attempted to destroy New York City, but was stopped and captured by the Avengers.