Sheesh. Talk about being a control freak. Introduced in Iron Man #12 (1969) by Archie Goodwin and George Tuska, Basil Sandhurst was a brilliant but controlling neuroscientist. Once day he was involved in a lab accident that left him horribly scarred and disabled. His brother, who was the one at fault, built him an automated home. Basil used this equipment to fashion himself an exoskeleton and began his quest to control the world. Using his control disks, he began enslaving people to increase his power and would battle Iron Man for the first time.

He was sent to prison but used his powers to control his transfer to another prison and eventually took over the staff there. Iron Man would battle and defeat him again. He was later contacted by Thanos, who upgraded Controller’s equipment, but was defeated by Captain Mar-Vell. He would later meet the Scrounger, a homeless man, who would aid Controller of his own will, before he sent the Blood Brothers after Iron Man. During the Armor Wars, Iron Man happened upon Controller in California, where he had set himself up as a self-help guru to control his followers. He would later team up with Red Skull to control Namor into attacking Captain America, but the heroes would team up to defeat him again.

He would later take control of Sarah Jessup and would attack Iron Man but Sarah’s powers allowed the Mindstorm to be released. Iron Man and Controller had to team up to stop the psychic entity. He would later try to capture Genis-Vell to use against the Master of the World, who would begin using the Controller for his own purpose. He later gave the U-Foes a slave disc to control the Hulk and sent them to attack the United Nation. They were stopped by the Heroes for Hire. He would go into hiding and set himself up as a doctor. Tony Stark went to this doctor for help and Controller tried to use him to destroy Iron Man, who at the time was still believed to be a separate person from Stark.

He was later seen as one of the prisoners in the Raft during the massive breakout that would lead to the formation of the New Avengers. He went into hiding and began using the residents of the FuturePharm Complex to feed his powers but was discovered by Maria Hill. A bit later after Tony Stark had died and been resurrected, Controller sent a controlled Bethany Cabe to steal Stark Solution’s secret tech. He used the eScape cyber space to syphon off the mental energy from its users and grow in size. Iron Man discovered this and went to stop him, alongside other heroes like Wasp. He was later recruited by Korvas in the mad man’s effort into becoming a god and would control Jim Hammond.

Controller is not someone many people outside of comics would know about, but he is one of Iron Man most frequent foes. He would receive a figure as the BAF of his self-title Avengers wave.