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50 |
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Popularity: |
5 |
Real Name: Maynard Tiboldt
Occupation: Professional criminal, manager, director, and ringmaster of a small traveling circus
Legal Status: Naturalized U.S. citizen with a criminal record, former Austrian citizen
Identity: Publicly known
Place of Birth: Vienna, Austria
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: Fritz (father, alias Ringmaster I, deceased), Lola (mother, deceased)
Base of Operations: Mobile
Past Group Affiliations: Circus of Crime
Known Powers:
None
Equipment:
Hat: Hypnosis: The Ringmaster’s hat has Monstrous powers of Mind Control. It can affect all individuals in a large range at least as large as Madison Square Garden. When the Ringmaster’s victims awaken from their trance, they remember nothing of his crimes; the Ringmaster can substitute his own suggestions in place of their lost memories.
Talents:
Ringmaster has Business and Leadership talent. He has an Excellent Reason with Electronics.
Contacts:
Ringmaster is the leader of the Circus of Crime, and has connections within the circus. He has worked for the Headmen, but they abandoned him.
Role-Playing Notes:
The Ringmaster is a two-bit con man who managed to hook on to a very powerful device. He remains slick but relatively unimaginative, preferring to bilk customers with his traveling circus instead of planning grandiose crimes.
History:
For generations, the Tiboldt family has run a small travelling circus in Austria. During the 1930s, Franz Tiboldt became more ambitious and turned his circus into a front for criminal activities. During World War II, he was directed by Hitler to travel the U.S. to recruit people for the Maggia and to murder U.S. government officials. These activities were eventually foiled by Captain America, and Tiboldt and his circus was deported.
After the war, Tiboldt and his wife Lola cooperated with the Allied officials by testifying against various war criminals. Fritz and Lola Tiboldt continued to manage Tiboldt’s circus, and brought up their only child, Maynard, to become its ringmaster some day. Maynard, a born showman, developed a deep and sincere love for the circus, and proved to be a master at staging performances. Eventually Fritz Tiboldt and his wife were murdered by Nazis who had escaped capture at the war’s end who were seeking retribution for their testimony against Nazi leaders. Maynard, who did not share his parents’ sympathy for Nazism, became leader of the circus and decided to move it to America, far from the scene of Hitler’s rise to power and his parents’ death. There, Maynard planned to build a new, honest life.
But once in America, Maynard found that he could not compete against enormous troupes such as the circus owned by Amos Jardine (see Nightcraw!er). Tiboldt had dreamed of making his circus a major success, but instead he could barely cover his expenses. Blaming Americans for the failure of his circus, and for his parents’ humiliating capture, Tiboldt decided to turn to crime; if Americans would not enrich him and his performers willingly, they would be forced to do so. The key lay in the plans of the “Nullatron,” a device designed by unknown scientists in Nazi Germany. The Red Skull murdered these scientists and then used the device to enslave several superheroes during the war. Somehow Fritz Tiboldt had acquired the plans of the Nullatron during the war; Maynard inherited these from him and decided to put its principles to his own uses. Using his own talent for electronics, Tiboldt adapted the Nullatron plans so as to construct a small but powerful device, which he could hide in his large ringmaster’s hat and use to mesmerize an enormous crowd all at once. Tiboldt then formed the Circus of Crime out of the members of the circus troupe that agreed to join him in criminal activities, hypnotizing those who wouldn’t join so they forgot about his illegal proposal.
The Circus of Crime have met with mixed success, with many of their actions being foiled by superheroes such as Daredevil and Spider-Man. Nonetheless, because most of his victims have been hypnotized, few charges against him or his troupe have stuck. Recently, he attempted to use She-Hulk as a pawn in the Circus’s latest scheme and it backfired. The police have stated that they finally have evidence to put Tiboldt in prison for a long time, but it remains to be seen if this will occur.