Doctor Deranged's History
Young Stevie Strange was a precocious magician who, at only five years of age, humiliated a clown at his birthday party by summoning a powerful demon without effort.[1]
As an adult he was known as Doctor Stephen Deranged,[2] sometimes called John, and he was an active superhero with several superpowered enemies, including his personal nemesis Baron Mordodo. A Master of the mysticklish arts and sorcerer supremo, Deranged took the lovely Cleanex, alias Klea, as his personal apprentice and taught her magic (not to be confused with Magik) in his sanctum sancyouverymuch at Greenwich Village, where they were attended by the faithful butler Bong.[3] A number of other mystically-oriented superheroes tended to go to Deranged for advice.[4]
At some point during his career, Doctor Deranged met Michael Jackson and said that Jackson's head was burning. Jackson, who had not noticed that up until then, ran away in panic.[3] At some point, Deranged also met a caterpillar, an event which was later captured in Deranged's comic-book series.[2]
At some other point, the supervillain Scarecrow manipulated two teams of superheroes, the X-Persons and the Offengers, to fight each other, each team believing that the other was being controlled by a supervillain. The fray attracted many other superheroes, including Doctor Deranged. Deranged battled superhero Brother Hoodoo using magic. This conflict suddenly ended because the artist had a heart attack at the need of drawing too many characters.[5]
Deranged returned to his sancyouverymuch but became overwhelmed because of the requests of Magik, the Scarlett Wench and Shroud. Shame-man insisted in performing traditional hails to Deranged, and Brother Hoodo and Spiral were also present, while Cleanex projected slides of her holidays in a different dimension. Suddenly sick of solving other people's problem, Deranged decided to use his dimensional travel to escape to somewhere beyond the omniverse so that those people could not follow him. He reached Cen*sure, a place beyond the copyright where he expected not to be recognized.[2]
Once there, the mystical character of the AC Universe, Zatananana recognized Deranged as a magician and, flirting with him, tricked him to enter the AC Universe and take her place. Once in AC, Deranged met another character who recognized him, the nerdy Fandom Stranger, who had read Deranged's comic-books. The Fandom Stranger kept his fanboy attitude and Deranged decided to step on his face. A different AC character who had seen this, Doctor Feet, reacted by stepping on Deranged's face in reprisal and attacked Deranged by shooting bolts from his feet because of his mocking attitude towards other people and towards copyright issues. Deranged then met Dead, Man, who did not attack; however, Deranged carefully prepared to fight him too, just in case.[2]
The situation was escalating and a powerful entity of the AC Universe, The Spatula, step forward to separate all the involved people from reality. However, the Aunty Monitor intervened. Deciding that the AC Universe was too complicate and required to be changed anew, the Aunty Monitor used extreme power to make the first six pages in that comic-book to story to not have ever happened. Deranged got angry at being ignored, but Aunty Monitor said that this was the way things were done in the AC Universe. Sick at that, Deranged escaped, looking for a place where things made sense instead of changing every instant, and thus he ended at Pittsburgh.[2]
Deranged then returned to his usual activities at his sancyouverymuch. He graduated Cleanex and took a new apprentice, the young comic Benny Barumpbump, who had showed a great potential for magic. Deranged ignored that his enemy, the Dread Doormammoomoo, had embedded that magic into Barumpbump so that Deranged took the guy under his wing. This would allow Doormammoomoo to monitor Deranged's activities and, as Deranged had no patience for Barumpbump's constant jokes, Doormammoomoo found this situation very amusing. Barumpbump even tried to convince Deranged to start his spells by saying "have you heard the one about" in exchange for Barumpbump's taking his studies more seriously.[4]
Barumpbump told Deranged that he had a scheduled TV appearance in "The Tonight Show", live broadcast, but Deranged was not committed to see it because he reasoned there could be a better program at the same time. Indeed, at that moment, Deranged was watching Nightline, but decided to switch channels and see Barumpbump's during the publicity stop. Deranged was surprised at seeing Barumpbump's interviewing Doormammoomoo as the special guest. Deranged's first instinct was to go to the set and rescue Barumpbump, but he suddenly reasoned that he could get rid of Barumpbump's bad jokes and decided to stay and return to Nightline.[4]
Changin his mind again, Deranged went to the set of The Tonight Show and made a dramatic entrance taking his cue at Barumpbump's knock-knock joke. But Doormammoomoo was expecting Deranged and summoned a mace that knocked Deranged down. However, Barumpbump was in league with Cleanex against Doormammoomoo: Barumpbump distracted Doormammoomoo by dressing as a Mexican and performing a Mel Blanc gag, and Cleanex took her chance to defeat Doormammoomoo. Deranged then woke up and Barumpbump and Cleanex explained what had happened. Deranged was very happy with his two disciples.[4]
Deranged was next seen as the medical officer of the starship Booby Prize, on a mission to look for lifeforms and civilizations under Captain Jim Quirk. Quirk asked his first officer Mr. Schlock for the star date for the log and Schlock answered with a long speech about the accuracy of it. This angered Deranged who reacted with a filibustering end-less spit-bursting two-word rude-insult elocution for the whole rest of the mission. The mission ended when the villain Tanhose made the police to impound the ship and at that point Deranged started insulting Tanhose.[6] Deranged then returned to his usual activities, got rid of Barumpbump and again took Cleanex as his apprentice.[3]
After four appearances in the What The--?! comic series, including two starring roles, Deranged wanted the recognition of being in the cover of the series, something he achieved on #19—but he would not have been as glad if he had known he was to share that spotlight with Ghost Writer and Pulverizer.[7] In that issue, Deranged also appeared in a (fake) advertisement of "Deranged Tales: Dr. Furey & Nick Deranged, agent of M.Y.S.T.I.C.", another proof of his popularity,[8] plus in a new story starring him. However, during this time he also stopped paying attention to his apprentice, Cleanex.[3]
Deranged then decided to walk under the rain talking to himself, but Cleanex went looking for him, reprimanded him and took him back to his sanctum. Once there, Deranged decided to meditate, and got asleep. Cleanex took her chance to leave for good, sick of her relationship with Deranged, and told Bong. Bong then went to Deranged and hoped that his master would perceive Bong's presence, but Deranged did not; Bong decided to wake Deranged up with a bong. As soon as Deranged woke up, Bong told him that Cleanex was no longer there. Interrumpting Bong, Deranged assumed that one of his many enemies had kidnapped Cleanex to satisfy their dark desires. Deranged quickly assumed his astral form to search for Cleanex, and specified to rescue him after cleaning his drools. Meanwhile, an anthropomorphic mouse vainly tried to call Deranged attention and offer himself as a replacement apprentice of magician. As Deranged left his lifeless body behind, Bong assumed he was dead and buried him.[3]
Meanwhile, the invisible astral form started looking for Cleanex in Mordodo's Castle, the Tibetan home of his arch-enemy Baron Mordodo. Deranged entered Mordodo's secret lair by dodging a group of tourists in a guided visit, and discovered that Mordodo only lusted a delivered pizza, as they were difficult to find on Tibet in the early morning.[3]
Deranged returned to his body and found it buried in a cemetery. He accidentally occupied a different body, and then "resurrected" his real body, scaring the heck out of visiting Bong. Deranged then reached the inaccurate conclusion that Cleanex was outside Earth, and decided to search through several dimensions.[3]
Deranged visited the Dimension of the Great Unshowered Ones, realm of the Living Nighty-Nightmare, and woke the Living Nighty-Nightmare; but this villain explained that he was too busy to kidnap Cleanex, as he was on court fighting for rights of nightmare-themed stories with Freddy Krueger. Deranged nonetheless accused Nightmare to have Deranged's beloved, and Nightmare admitted to have taken Deranged's teddy bear. This convinced Deranged to search through different dimensions.[3]
He then went to the Dimly-Lit-Dimension-That-Didn't-Pay-Its-Light-Bill, where he could only see thanks to The Flashlight of Mister Moto. After a hard fight, Deranged got rid of the (really) Mindless Ones, but attracted the attention of Doormammoomoo, who by then went by the monnicker of Dreaded Dormamoomoo. Dormamoomoo decided that Deranged was too stupid to be allowed to live, and the Deranged mentioned Dormamoomoo a fact that Dormamoomoo had been missing for a long time: His head was burning. Dormamoomoo ran away in fear.[3]
But Deranged still could not find Cleanex and, having checked every of his main enemies, he returned home empty-handed. Once there, Bong explained that Cleanex had left willingly to Tahiti to get a tan and start a new life away for Deranged. While Deranged was travelling through dimensions, Cleanex had sent a goodbye postcard from No-Bikini Atoll, explaining that there was no more magic among the two of them and that each of them should be seering [sic.] other people. This caused Deranged to sink in depression and alcoholism, which in turned caused Bong's presence to be more hard to perceive.[3]
Later, the supervillain Thermos (previously Tanhose) decided to impress his beloved Death by using the Infinity Mitten to kill half of the population of the Universe. The surviving superheroes, including Doctor Deranged, met to decided how to fight the threat and why: Deranged thus met the X-Persons, Offengers (by then known as the Revengers), Spidey-man, Clunk and others, and explained the importance of restoring the cosmic balance, the status quo, the eternal equilibrium and some other stuff, but the heroes decided to act because the insurance companies forced them to. However, before starting, Deranged and the others posed for a photograph.[9]
Deranged joined Spidey-Man, the Inedible Bulk, Sore, No-More, Ironed Man and others to beat Thermos up as a crowd, but Thermos escaped and the heroes instead beat Spidey-Man up before they could notice their mistake.[9]
Chaplain America then asked for ideas to separate Thermos from the Mitten, and Deranged offered to read Thermos' palm. They decided to go after Wolveream's idea of playing strip-poker, but Thermos won the card game and the naked superheroes, including Deranged died of pure shame. Thermos then destroyed all the people in the Marvel Universe, but Death still rejected him as a lover, taking instead Super Mario because video games were killing the whole comic industry.[9] Soon afterward, apparently, things went back to normal in Earth-9047 and most if not all the dead superheroes returned to live.[10]
