The Mandarin is, according to the narration, “the most feared Oriental of all time !”. A master scientists and engineer, he builds super-science thingies that are roughly on par with the technology of Tony Stark. His castle is full of them.

This scion of the yellow peril is also a great master of the martial arts. Back then he was of course referred to as a master of karate, though it presumably was some Southern Chinese style. He is also a great swordsman, and his reflexes and senses are uncanny. One of the reasons he’s so dangerous is that he almost constantly has the Initiative over even Tony Stark, allowing him to keep his enemy on the defensive.

At this stage, the Mandarin also has superhuman strength - although he’s never observed lifting anything (STR), he can cleave large block of solid stone or thick bars of steel with his bare hands (Martial Artist, Unfettered Fist Schtick) and is repeatedly described as possessing strength rivaling that of Iron Man ; he could also take superhuman blows without serious damage. It is likely this strength was derived from some sort of superhuman treatment ; I’d imagine he later stopped using it because of harmful side effects.

The Mandarin and Iron Man routinely expend impressive amounts of HPs when fighting each other - in fact, the Mandarin enjoys putting HPs behind the EV of his rings to make them inflict terrible damage. He has, after all, a lot of HPs. It works, too — as can be seen, the Mandarin generally was evenly matched with Iron Man during this era, and more or less won their early encounters.

History

The Mandarin (real name unknown) was a wealthy Chinese youngster. He was presumably born during the last years of Sun Yat-Sen’s life (who died in 1925) - or perhaps in the first years of the Guomintang’s reconquest of China from the warlords. He seems to have grown up in the pacified northern regions during the Chinese Republic. His father was a Chinese notable, and his mother an English traveller who established herself in China.

When the Mandarin was but an infant, his father died, crushed by a toppled statue of a god. This was widely considered as a bad omen, a punishment for having fathered a kid with a foreigner. The Mandarin’s mother later died of a broken heart. Thus was the child raised by his aunt, who hated him - the family was one of the richest in China, and the wealth would have been hers if not for the kid. She even strongly considering taking him from his crib and abandoning him in a random village, but a falling chandelier then nearly killed her. Considering this a second omen, she resolved to protect the kid - but also to teach him her hatred of the world.

The Mandarin’s fate during Word War II and the Japanese invasion at Nanking and beyond is unknown, but during the 1930s he was reputedly a high government official, presumably during the last years of the civil war and before the Revolution. It is also known that an aunt of his was a dedicated scientist, and taught the youngster about science - which fascinated him, and led him to become a genius-level amateur scientist. Even back then, the citizenry simply knew him as “the Mandarin” and regarded him with near-mystic awe.

Though he presumably had strong Guomintang connections, the Mandarin and his remaining family did not follow the ragged remains of the Nationalists to the island of Taiwan. After the 1949 revolution, the government seized all of the Mandarin’s assets, leading to the death of his aunts. The Mandarin himself fled into the wilderness, to avoid deportation and/or death. Although he hated the Communists, his goal was power than revenge, as he considered that a man of his birth was entitled to power.

The Valley of Spirits

Deep into the countryside (possibly in Tsinghai / Qinghai), the Mandarin came across an area known as the Valley of Spirits, reputedly haunted and thus avoided by all. Having nothing to lose and casting aside peasant superstition, he was the first to walk there in centuries. Braving the terrifying skeleton of a long-dead dragon guardian, he discovered a crashed otherworldy spaceship. The Mandarin studied the alien technology for years, focusing on a set of ten ring-like artefacts he started wearing on his fingers. One day he emerged from his research, proclaiming himself the sovereign lord of the Valley.

The Mandarin declared a long-since abandoned castle to be his, and subjugated nearby villages, becoming their feudal lord. The genius then easily defeated the units of the PLA that were sent against him, and became one of the most feared men in China. He turned the local populace into his servants, and immersed himself in scientific research. From time to time, the PLA sent officers and/or troops to deal with him in some manner or the other, but they never were able to have much of an effect on the Mandarin.

In the early 1960s, the Mandarin attempted to enlist the help of other brilliant scientific minds to study the ten alien rings. He had the famous Vietnamese professor Ho Yinsen captured by his man in Viet-Nam, a Viet Cong senior officer called Wong Chu. He also plotted so that American industrialist and engineering genius Tony Stark would come to Viet-Nam to investigate troubles in his holdings there. The plan worked, and Wong Chu captured both Yinsen and Stark. However the two captive geniuses teamed up the produce the earliest Iron Man armour. Yinsen sacrificed his life to save Stark, who became Iron Man seconds later. The Mandarin killed Wong Chu for his incompetence - but, for reasons unknown even to himself, did not take the opportunity to destroy Iron Man, whom he watched from the shadows as he walked away from Wong Chu’s camp.

During this general time frame the Mandarin fathered a son, Temujin, whom he sequestered in a remote monastery. Temujin’s mother may have been young Mei Ling, who had been betrothed to the Mandarin as a child, before the Revolution (see Mei Ling’s writeups.org profile).

The Mandarin also took the girl later known as Madam Macabre as a student for a few years, and discovered the dormant alien robot Ultimo within a volcano. Using Earth science, alien technology and Chinese magic, the Mandarin toiled for years to find ways to reactive Ultimo under his control.

Iron Man

Since he couldn’t access the full power of his rings at this point, the Mandarin researched various new weapons, dreaming about the day where he would have enough of those to make himself master of the world. He started studying those who could resist him - and determined that the most dangerous of all was the American called Iron Man, bodyguard to industrialist Anthony Stark, whom he had unwittingly helped create.

The two men quickly clashed when the Pentagon sent Iron Man on a reconnaissance mission into Red China to learn more about the dreaded Mandarin. The powerful tyrant had the American walk through numerous gauntlets in his castle, then fought him man-to-man - quickly winning by using his paralysis ring.

Deactivating much of Iron Man’s armour, the Mandarin then confronted his great foe in unarmed combat. Stark stopped in the middle of the fight, which he was obviously losing, to use his wrist calculator. The Mandarin was puzzled for a time, then delivered the coup de grace - but Stark had been calculating the best parry to counter the Mandarin’s might, and broke his forearms. The power of his transistorised armours being very low, Iron Man then had no choice but to leave to catch the spy plane of the US Air Force and leave China, leaving the situation a stalemate.

Shellhead and the Mandarin clashed again soon after that, when American test ICBMs started disappearing in flight. Stark was certain that everything was right with the missiles, and determined that they were affected by outside forces. Deciding that only the Mandarin could have built such a device, he entered the Valley as Stark, since he knew Iron Man would be instantly shot. Stark tricked the guards to get close to the castle, then changed into Iron Man and went in. However, the Mandarin won by running Iron Man through a new gauntlet of strange weapons, exhausting the power in the armor and capturing him.

His power depleted, Iron Man bluffed and told the Mandarin that Stark was no doubt destroying the missile override technology as they fought. The Mandarin left Iron Man bound in magnetically-guided steel cables and went to check his device, as well as the stolen American missiles. Stark used the delay to repower his armour with his internal generator, shatter the cables and shadow the Mandarin while continuing to recharge. At that point a new American test missile was launched ; Iron Man used the distraction to save the missile from the Mandarin’s missile-capturing beam, and wreck the emitter. Furious, the Mandarin unleashed his disintegration beam ring and took Iron Man through even more traps within his castle. Despite those, Iron Man eventually managed to punch his foe, and used the few seconds he gained to run away and further wreck the missile-stealing ray. Stealing back the test missiles, he launched them, riding them back to the US.

The Mandarin decided to avenge himself by building a killer satellite, which he used to destroy Stark’s house ; the industrialist was reported dead, which had been confirmed by Iron Man (Stark was then in the middle of a Subplot and couldn’t leave his armor). As the Mandarin anticipated, Iron Man came to confront him over Stark’s reported death. Stark was caught by a magnetic tractor beam, slammed to the ground, weakened by hypnotic lasers and taken down by the robot named Koto. The Mandarin then told of his origins to Stark, and left him to die by binding him on a rapidly-spinning wheel. He then moved on to the next part of his plan.

The Chinese government had previously asked the Mandarin to give them ICBMs out of loyalty toward the Chinese people. Although the Mandarin had always contemptuously refused, he pretended to change his mind, telling the Party that he would give them a test missile after all. However, the missile had been rigged to hit Formosa (the isle that would later become Taiwan), as the Mandarin hoped to trigger World War III and rule everything that remained.

Meanwhile, Iron Man had freed himself, and proceeded to intercept the missile and explosively return it to its point of origin. He then ambushed the Mandarin as he was returning to his castle. The Mandarin quickly gained the upper hand, however, using the power of various rings to batter his opponent and outmaneuver him. A nearby Chinese commander, furious that the Mandarin had betrayed his country with a missile that ended up killing Chinese soldiers, then had his tank open fire on the Mandarin, forcing him to retreat with his jet ring before he could kill Iron Man.

Ultimo and other master weapons

In 1965, the Mandarin struck against the Avengers, to eliminate allies of Iron Man. At this point, the Swordsman was being hunted by the Avengers despite his good intentions, and the Mandarin teleported him to his castle before he could be captured by Cap’s kooky quartet. The Mandarin’s goal was to use the Swordsman as his Trojan horse against the Avengers. The Chinese’s arrogant manner provoked the Swordsman into attacking him, but the Mandarin easily neutralized him. The genius went to work on the Swordsman’s sword, using Makluan technology to turn it into a far more powerful and versatile weapon.

The Mandarin then used his matter recreater to project an illusion of Iron Man within the Avengers’ Mansion, pretending that it was a genuine communication from the Golden Avenger that endorsed the Swordsman’s candidacy to the Avengers. The Avengers more or less believed the hologram’s message, and accepted the Swordsman for a probationary period. The Swordsman quickly planted a very small bomb that was powerful enough to raze the mansion, despite being closely watched by the Avengers.

Eventually, the Mandarin grew impatient and decided to have the Swordsman detonate the bomb even though Iron Man wasn’t at the Mansion, reasoning that the death of his allies would leave him vulnerable. However, the Swordsman decided not to detonate the bomb - since he saw himself as a warrior and not a murderer, and was unwilling to harm the beautiful Scarlet Witch. The Swordsman was caught meddling with the bomb by the Avengers, and had to use his sword’s new powers to flee and dispose of the bomb before the Mandarin realized he had been betrayed and detonated it.

Seething with anger, the Mandarin started working on a new project. Its completion made him so happy that he spared the lives of most of the PLA soldiers that attacked him, and that he used his teleportation technology to summon Tony Stark to him. He had wanted to get Iron Man, but since he couldn’t locate him settled on Stark to be the helpless witness to the ravage of the Mandarin’s new master weapon - Ultimo !

The giant robot emerged from a volcano amidst an eruption ; as the PLA renewed its latest attack on the Valley of Spirits, the Mandarin, his good mood gone, unleashed Ultimo against them. Stark tried to intervene, and the Mandarin blasted him away. Stark survived thanks to the vest he was wearing under his shirt, and managed to recover his armour to confront Ultimo. Through clever maneuvering, Iron Man eventually lured Ultimo into pulverising the hard lava plug on top of a volcano, catching the fantastic juggernaut into a fierce pyroclastic explosion.

A short time later after the temporary loss of Ultimo, the Mandarin came back - again to strike at Iron Man ! At this point, Stark’s cardiac troubles had worsened so much that he had to ask “Happy” Hogan to wear the armour as Iron Man. Hogan had barely had time to learn the basics of the armour when the Mandarin teleported him away. Predictably, Hogan was mauled and captured by the Mandarin, then thrown into a cell to be interrogated. Knowing that the Mandarin was behind this, Stark feverishly worked on and built a new generation of “Golden Avenger” class armour - the Iron Man Mod IV Mk I suit, which incorporated a much more powerful pacemaker, allowing him to ignore his current health issues. While the Mandarin was busy interrogating “Iron Man”, Stark entered the Valley of Spirits and stormed the castle once again.

While the Mandarin had made some of his rings more potent, the new Iron Man armour was considerably more powerful than the old - and was no longer vulnerable to the formidable unarmed blows of the fantastic Chinese menace. This time, the fight was much more balanced between the two fighters, and Iron Man eventually beat the overconfident Mandarin in hand-to-hand combat - not forgetting, of course, to loudly proclaim the obvious superiority of good ol‘ American know-how and fighting spirit over treacherous Oriental malarkey !

Meanwhile, the Red Chinese had accepted to test one of the Mandarin’s ICBM, since the previous test ICBM had been destroyed by Iron Man. The Mandarin again rigged the ICBM he gave them to trigger World War III - this time the missile was hacked to hit an American base. Iron Man, however, reprogrammed the missiles to hit the castle the flew away as a nuclear mushroom covered the Valley of Spirits.

Return from the ashes

Of course, the Mandarin survived, teleporting to another dimension before the explosion could overtake him, then back to Earth. He started having his castle and much of his technology rebuilt after cleaning up the Valley of Spirits of debris, radiation and fallout, then started to work on his terrible vengeance.

This time, his plot hinged on an a machine inducing murderous hatred in all those who witnessed its prism - but this prism needed to be a diamond. The Mandarin thus needed to conquer the greatest diamond-producing nations to rule over Earth.

His daring plan being to attack three such nations on three continents (apparently Brazil, India and South Africa), he uncharacteristically recruited allies to lead this attack. The attack by mercenaries on Brazil would be lead by Power Man I and the Swordsman I ; the army of Asgardian trolls in India would be lead by the Executioner and the Enchantress ; and in South Africa the Living Laser would receive the backing of a recently recovered Ultimo.

To counter this, a full roster of all available Avengers assembled. In Brazil, the Mandarin’s forces were met by the Wasp, Goliath I and Iron Man ; the trolls in India were met by the Scarlet Witch and Hercules ; and the Laser and Ultimo were met by Thor and Hawkeye. Meanwhile, Captain America and Quicksilver were monitoring the situation. As all Avengers vanquished their foes, Cap and Quicksilver triangulated the radio signals giving orders to the felons and, using a ballistic missile, flew to new hideout of the Mandarin… a space station !

Captain America counted on their foe’s supreme confidence and strong curiosity, and it worked - the Mandarin allowed their craft to reach his station so he could personally confront them. The two Avengers managed to fight him for a while - long enough for their comrades to also board the station. However, while the assembled Avengers looked unstoppable, the Mandarin unveiled his master hate-inducing machine, powered by a gigantic diamond. All the Avengers fell under the power of the ray and started fighting the nearest person… all, including the winsome Wasp, who was charging the Mandarin at that time, without being noticed due to her minuscule size. She hatefully sucker-blasted the nearby Mandarin under the influence of the machine, making him blast the control panel of the hate inducer — and freeing the Avengers from its emotional grip.

The Mandarin next triggered powerful energy beams scouring the life-support-enabled rooms of the space station, but Quicksilver rushed the control device and knocked the beams out of alignment, saving the Avengers and prompting the station’s gradual destruction from within under the unleashed force of the ricocheting beaMs. One of the beams perforated the hull, sucking the Mandarin outside ; the Avengers barely managed to plug the hole using the giant synthetic diamond. They then sabotaged the station and left as it exploded.

Of course, the Mandarin handily survived by using one of this rings or Gadgets. He then built a new stronghold in the Gobi desert that looked very much like his Valley of Spirits one. Still looking for a good servant, he decided the Hulk would be ideal for the position and teleported the brute into his stronghold to test his capabilities. Being a reasonable person, though, he had himself represented by a robotic duplicate to run these tests. The Hulk overcame every single test, destroying the robotic duplicate in the process, and even handily dispatched the Giant Green Mustachioed Android by hurling him into space. Now very angry, the Hulk refused to hear the Mandarin’s recruiting pitch and charged him, only to pass through an hologram and sink into a pit of quicksand.

Mei Ling

After that incident, the Mandarin made his fiancee Mei Ling his accomplice. Presumably inspired by having witnessed the Hulk in action, the Mandarin proceeded to build a robotic version of the jade giant. This sophisticated, remarkably powerful android was used to kidnap Janice Cord, a strange move that was driven by but one reason - to confirm the Mandarin’s intuition that Iron Man and Tony Stark were the same man. Although the Hulk robot was ultimately destroyed, its mission succeeded - now the Mandarin and Mei Ling knew Anthony Stark’s greatest secret.

The Mandarin immediately leveraged this knowledge into a plan - he faked photos of Stark meeting with Soviet operatives, and had Mei Ling distribute them to the press. Stark could not defend himself, since all these fictional meetings had taken place while he was operating as Iron Man. The plan succeeded, and Iron Man even ended up being hunted by S.H.I.E.L.D. The Mandarin then had Mei Ling contact the fugitive, to draw him to her traps-ladden exotic antiques shop. The traps eventually brought Iron Man down - but, using a LMD and a mask, he fooled the Mandarin into concluding that he wasn’t Tony Stark. The Mandarin, suspecting a trick, left to investigate “Stark”, leaving Iron Man in Mei Ling’s care. The Golden Avenger escaped, and reached the Mandarin seconds before the rings-bearing genius would realize the deception.

The fight drew reporters in, and Iron Man was thus publicly seen battling the Mandarin. Realizing Stark could use this to counter the accusations of treason, the Mandarin decided to retreat — grabbing Stark’s love interest, Janice Cord, and rocketing away to be picked by an aircraft piloted by Mei Ling. Iron Man managed to catch up and break into the aircraft, though, and the Mandarin grabbed Cord to threaten to kill her if his nemesis stayed aboard. Mei Ling, aghast at how her future husband treated a young, defenseless woman in love, interposed herself and was killed by an accidental power blast from the Mandarin.

The Mandarin, furious, tried to kill Iron Man but was knocked into the aircraft’s computer by the Golden Avenger, who then bailed out with Cord seconds before the craft crashed and exploded.

The renegade genius survived, of course. After he observed the Sandman being narrowly defeated by the Hulk, he convinced the sandy thug that they could together defeat the jade giant, and gain their revenge against the Hulk. Pairing up, the villains promptly captured the Hulk and Betty Ross. The Mandarin subjected the Hulk to his inescapable Contra-Power Rays — but the monster spotted Ross, which made him angry and strong enough to break the hold of the beaMs. The Sandman and the Mandarin proved unable to hold the furious Hulk back ; out of spite, the Mandarin betrayed the Sandman, kicking him into equipment which turned the Sandman into glass. He then fled as the U.S. Army came in and captured the Hulk.

In 1970, the Mandarin attempted to worsen the situation in Viet-Nam and weaken both global superpowers. In order to to so, he captured Doctor Hoskins, a peacemaker and healer well-respected by both the US and the Viet Cong, who promptly accused each other of the deed and intensified hostilities. Captain America was sent in by the State Department to retrieve Hoskins, and soon stumbled on Vietnamese soldiers serving the Mandarin. Letting himself be captured, he was taken into the mountain stronghold of the Mandarin, where he acrobatically escaped and located Hoskins in a cell. Cap then succesfully fled with the peacemaker.

The Eye of Yin and the Unicorn

Hoping to enhance his rings’ already phenomenal power, the Mandarin decided to obtain the mystic Eye of Yin, created centuries ago by Makluan-trained sorcerers. He allied with an ancient Chinese scholar who conducted the research for him, and managed to locate the artefact in Tibet. The Mandarin sent an armed digging party to recover it ; unfortunately for him, the site was very close to the Great Refuge of the Inhumans, and the Royal Family easily routed his soldiers. Furious, the Mandarin seemingly went there personally. He confronted the Inhuman Royal Family, and took out most of them, before being taken down by Black Bolt.

It was, however, a ruse — “the Mandarin” was but a perfect robotic double, and the clash had awakened the curiosity of the Royal Family, who investigated the timeless, buried temple the Mandarin was trying to reach. It was all part of the megalomaniac genius’s plan - to have the Inhumans trip and neutralise the defenses of the Eye of Yin in his stead.

They did so, and the Mandarin summoned the now-unprotected Eye of Yin to him, commanding it to dissolve itself and imbue his rings with fantastic power. He banished the Sinological scholar to another dimension, then defeated the Royal Family again as they came for him. Black Bolt, however, managed to hypnotize him as the Mandarin was busy ranting how he would bring down the Earth with his now all-powerful rings. The Inhumans captured the Mandarin, took his rings away and left the deadly jewelry in the temple, which was soon engulfed in molten lava.

The Mandarin eventually escaped the hypnotic trance, but nearly fell into a depression over being separated from his rings. He forced himself to study the books accumulated by the banished scholar, though, to learn more about the Eye of Yin. He discovered that the ancient, proto-Chinese civilization behind the Eye also had had an encounter with a Makluan vessel. Donning his old silk robe, he pilgrimmaged to their lands (presumably in Tibet) ; investigating, he discovered more intact Makluan skeletons, just like in the Valley of Spirits - and another crashed Makluan ship !

This ship, which he studied for weeks, was different. Although it wasn’t controlled or powered by ring-like artefacts, its interface was a headband that the Mandarin learned to wear and control. Using the link between all Makluan tech, he contacted his rings and had them free themselves from their tomb by permanently burning out the extra power from the Eye of Yin to burst free.

A short time after this feat, the desperate Unicorn, dying from radiation exposure, came to the Mandarin for a cure. While the Mandarin never really intended to cure the Unicorn, he discovered that he could use the alien headband to take control of the sick man’s body as his mind slipped away into a vegetative state. Delighted at the discovery, he declared the practically mindless Unicorn to be his “eleventh ring” (see the Unicorn’s writeups.org entry).

In the identity of union leader Gene Kahn, the Mandarin stirred unrest among Starks employees, by accusing Stark of being in league with Communists — accusations which many of Stark’s fellow Americans, including many of the patriotic workers at Stark Industries, were all too eager to believe. When exposed, the Mandarin fought Iron Man alongside the Unicorn, and they defeated the Golden Avenger. Stark narrowly escaped, and survived the encounter thanks to an unexpected remission of his cardiac condition.

Recovering, Stark ruined Kahn’s union propaganda through some charismatic public speaking and communication, then tracked down the Mandarin and the zombified Unicorn to confront them anew. The fight was definitely not turning into the Golden Avenger’s favor - however, careless use of the headband inadvertently switched the Mandarins consciousness with that of the terminally ill Unicorn. Trapped into the Unicorn’s ravaged body, the Mandarin hurriedly grabbed his actual body and fled to find a way to fix his situation.

The Yellow Claw strikes !

At that time, the extradimensional Black Lama had launched the so-called “super-villains war”, promising the power to control his mystical golden globe to the criminal who could defeat other competitors. The nefarious mastermind, the Yellow Claw, quickly emerged as the most terrifying of the contestants ; as part of the competition, he seized control of the Palace of Star Dragons. Thus, when the Mandarin, still in the Unicorn body and carrying his original, comatose body, came back, he ran into the Claw’s forces. The Mandarin had to flee to a secondary base, an undersea dome.

Working feverishly, the Mandarin in the body of the Unicorn designed a cure to switch their minds back, but discovered that the power source of his secondary base could not provide the necessary energy. Using special sensors, he found a possible source of energy to perform the operation — the mighty Japanese mutant Sunfire, who was then operating in Viet-nam. Expending the last of his delta energy reserves, the Mandarin teleported Sunfire to him and made him his prisoner. Sunfire, however, had been fighting Iron Man at that time, and the Golden Avenger soon came in hot pursuit.

A lucky torpedo hit drove Iron Man away by cracking the Plexiglas shields over his eye and mouth - an important fashion victory for the Mandarin, since the new mask Iron Man designed to recover from the incident had… a nose. Which was terrible. While Stark was tinkering with aesthetic disaster, the Mandarin taunted Sunfire, who discharged tremendous amounts of energy trying to escape. The nuclear energy of the Japanese was such that it eventually triggered the mind switch — restoring the Mandarin to his body and leaving the vegetative Unicorn behind.

The Mandarin and Iron Man fought in the wrecked undersea base ; Iron Man managed to free the trapped Sunfire, but was eventually defeated and knocked unconscious ; a powerful karate blow to the chest then triggered Iron Man’s propulsive systems and sent him flying through the atmosphere. The Mandarin assumed Iron Man would eventually die in outer space and turned his attentions over to retaking the Valley of Spirits from the Yellow Claw.

In his anger, the Mandarin stormed the Valley of Spirits by himself. He had a hidden objective, though, and when he reached one of the volcanos he blew it open, revealing… Ultimo !

The Mandarin and the invincible behemoth then strode toward the Palace of the Star Dragons, knowing that even the formidable arsenal there could not hope to stop the alien giant robot. Sunfire, eager for revenge against the Mandarin, tried to attack Ultimo, but to no avail. As the two struggled in the Valley, the Mandarin used a secret underground entrance to his castle, and scattered giant automatons and monstrous mutations left there as guards by the Yellow Claw.

The Mandarin was now riding on pure, righteous anger. When he broke into his own castle, he shattered the cannon the Yellow Claw was using against him. He then struck a mighty blow in the head of the Claw — which proved to be a robotic double. The robot then exploded, finally brining the Mandarin down as he had spent practically all of his HPs.

As the Yellow Claw taunted him from a nearby video screen, the fatally wounded Mandarin staggered off, refusing to die — but even his powerful will ran out, and he eventually collapsed.

The Yellow Claw then ordered Loc Do, one of his servants, to dispose of the corpse — but the wily man palmed the rings of the Mandarin before doing so, hoping to use them to become as mighty as the Mandarin had been.

Can it be… the END OF THE MANDARIN ?

Description

The first known costume for the Mandarin was somewhat weird-looking, in retrospect. Also, for reasons unknown to this writer, he was sometimes depicted as having Vulcan-like pointed ears. Perhaps that was the side-effect from his superhuman strength treatment ?

Personality

The Mandarin is at this stage an arrogant, power-mad genius out to conquer the world and prove his superiority. He’s overconfident and generically evil, though he’s not a casual killer. One of his earliest goals was to destroy all rival military powers so he could reign supreme, and he generally seems to desire nothing more than the world acknowledging his genius, and his vast skills and power of personality.

The Mandarin, while overconfident, does not have misplaced pride - he has no problem with running from an enemy… to lead him through a variety of deadly traps and counter-attacks. Gauntlets of traps, robots, weapons and the like is a staple of the early Mandarin. On the other hand, he often prefers to use his martial skills or weapons he build over his rings, perhaps because he feels humbled by being unable to determine all of the rings’ secrets. He typically uses his rings strategically at key points of a fight, rather than blast every Phase.

The Mandarin is so haughty and overconfident that he prefers to operate alone and avoid alliances ; he also tends to consider any setback as a defeat, and absolutely hates being touched by anybody not worthy of it - i.e., anybody. As illustrated by the quotes, he’s a master of the Great Marvel Villain Dialogue (and monologue, too), with his tirades usually being written by Stan “the Man” Lee himself. Being a scientist, he’s usually interested in investigating mysteries, phenomena and new foes.

The Mandarin sometimes displays an incredibly spiteful streak, often leading him to dispose of his allies — seemingly just because he can. He also has a soft spot for revenge, a certain amount of cruelty, and occasional contempt for any Occidental.