Doctor Sun (gh)

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During the “Cultural Revolution” of the People’s Republic in 1966, Sun somehow incurred the wrath of a general who held power in the government. The general had Sun convicted of unknown charges and sentenced to death. Further, the general decided, Sun himself would be the test subject for Project:Mind.

After doctors caused Sun’s heart to stop, they quickly removed his brain surgically before it could undergo cellular deterioration, and placed it within a receptacle which was designed to provide it with oxygen and nourishment.

With this done, the doctors then linked Sun’s brain to a network of computers. Drawing upon the electrical energy in the computers, Sun attacked the doctors with blasts of psionic force. Using his new found powers, Sun forced a number of people to serve him, and to conceal his whereabouts from Chinese authorities. Eventually Sun left China altogether, now intending to rule the entire world.

In order to survive, Sun’s brain needed continual fresh supplies of human blood. Therefore, he undertook the study of vampires, who also sustained themselves with blood. He decided to take control of the world’s vampires, so that they could obtain blood for him and serve as an army for him as well. Capturing the most powerful of Earth’s vampires, Dracula, he attempted to transfer his memories into the mind of Brand, a vampire agent of Sun’s, so that Brand could then take control of the rest of the world’s vampires. Brand failed to destroy Dracula, however, who then defeated Sun.

Dracula retained his memories, but, unknown to him, Sun had also initiated a process by which Dracula’s superhuman powers were slowly being drained into Sun himself. Dracula, his powers tremendously reduced, finally confronted Sun in the latter’s new lair in Boston, Massachusetts. Sun and his underling, Juno, an assassin with a silver spear in the place of his left hand, had already captured Dracula’s nemeses Frank Drake, Quincy Harker, and Rachel van Helsing.

Sun had Juno kill Dracula and incinerate the body. He then allowed Drake and his companions to escape. As Sun intended, they returned with a large number of soldiers to attack his headquarters.

Using the hypnotic powers he had stolen from Dracula and magnified with his technology, Sun took psionic control over the minds of the soldiers. He planned for these troops to be the nucleus of his own army, and to mesmerize any other attacking troops so that they would also join his forces.

Drake, van Helsing, and pulp writer Harold H. Harold invaded Sun’s headquarters and made off with Dracula’s ashes. Reluctantly, realizing they needed Dracula’s powers to defeat the greater menace posed by Sun, Drake and his allies resurrected the vampire lord. Now that Dracula had a new “life,” he once again possessed his full level of power, as if it had never been reduced, although Sun did not lose any power. Dracula again confronted and battled Sun at the latter’s lair. A fire began during the battle that, before the eyes of Dracula, Drake, and other witnesses, consumed the brain they believed to be Sun’s.

However, Sun had deceived them: he had decapitated Juno and it was his brain that had been destroyed by fire. Sun had secretly teleported his own brain to an alternate headquarters.

Sun eventually had a robotic body constructed for himself, in which his brain was placed. Learning of the young costumed crimefighter Nova - who was secretly student Richard Rider, Sun investigated further and discovered Nova’s link with a Xandarian spacecraft orbiting Earth. Capturing Nova, he had them both teleported aboard the spacecraft. Here, Sun intended to make use of the ship and its computers, which were linked to the massive, highly advanced computers of the planet Xandar, in his plans to conquer Earth.

Sun was thwarted by the arrival of the more powerful Sphinx, however, who commandeered the ship and took it to Xandar. Fleeing the starship as it approached Xandar, Sun went to that world himself. There he projected his consciousness into the great Xandarian computers.

After being aided by the Fantastic Four, the grateful Xandarians permitted the establishment of a link between their computers and the robot known as H.E.R.B.I.E. (Humanoid Experimental Robot, B-Type, Integrated Electronics) which had been created by the team’s leader, Mister Fantastic. Sun’s consciousness transferred itself into H.E.R.B.I.E. and returned to Earth in that physical form.

Once back on Earth, Sun (in H.E.R.B.l.E.’s form) attempted to destroy the Fantastic Four. In the course of the battle, Sun managed to transfer his consciousness into the Fantastic Four’s master computer. Mister Fantastic sealed off the master computer from other systems; thus trapping Sun who could only escape by transferring his consciousness back into H.E.R.B.I.E.

H.E.R.B.l.E., now free from Sun’s control, which was prevented by its programming from allowing any danger to befall the Fantastic Four if it could prevent it, hurled itself at the master computer. The resulting collision caused an explosion that destroyed both H.E.R.B.I.E. and the master computer. Sun’s consciousness thereupon apparently ceased to exist on the mortal plane.