title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: Politics in the 1880s was still of less importance to MacDonald than furthering his education. In 1886–87, MacDonald studied botany, agriculture, mathematics, and physics at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution (now Birkbeck, University of London) but his health suddenly failed him due to exhaustion one week before his examinations, which put an end to any thought of a scientific career. He would however, later be appointed a Governor of the institution in 1895, and continued to have a great fondness for the mission of Birkbeck into his later years.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In 1888, MacDonald took employment as private secretary to Thomas Lough who was a tea merchant and a Radical politician. Lough was elected as the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for West Islington, in 1892. Many doors now opened to MacDonald: he had access to the National Liberal Club as well as the editorial offices of Liberal and Radical newspapers; he made himself known to various London Radical clubs among Radical and labour politicians; and he gained valuable experience in the workings of electioneering. At the same time he left Lough's employment to branch out as a freelance journalist. Elsewhere, as a member of the Fabian Society for some time, MacDonald toured and lectured on its behalf at the London School of Economics and elsewhere.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: The Trades Union Congress (TUC) had created the Labour Electoral Association (LEA) and entered into an unsatisfactory alliance with the Liberal Party in 1886. In 1892, MacDonald was in Dover to give support to the candidate for the LEA in the general election, who was well beaten. MacDonald impressed the local press and the Association and was adopted as its candidate, announcing that his candidature would be under a Labour Party banner. He denied the Labour Party was a wing of the Liberal Party but saw merit in a working political relationship. In May 1894, the local Southampton Liberal Association was trying to find a labour-minded candidate for the constituency. Two others joined MacDonald to address the Liberal Council: one was offered but turned down the invitation, while MacDonald failed to secure the nomination despite strong support among Liberals.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In 1893, Keir Hardie had formed the Independent Labour Party (ILP) which had established itself as a mass movement. In May 1894 MacDonald applied for membership and was accepted. He was officially adopted as the ILP candidate for one of the Southampton seats on 17 July 1894 but was heavily defeated at the election of 1895. MacDonald stood for Parliament again in 1900 for one of the two Leicester seats; he lost, and was accused of splitting the Liberal vote to allow the Conservative candidate to win. That same year he became Secretary of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), the forerunner of the Labour Party, allegedly in part because many delegates confused him with prominent London trade unionist Jimmie MacDonald when they voted for "Mr. James R. MacDonald". MacDonald retained membership of the ILP; while it was not a Marxist organisation it was more rigorously socialist than the Labour Party would prove to be, and ILP members would operate as a "ginger group" within the Labour Party for many years.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: As Party Secretary, MacDonald negotiated an agreement with the leading Liberal politician Herbert Gladstone (son of the late Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone), which allowed Labour to contest a number of working class seats without Liberal opposition, thus giving Labour its first breakthrough into the House of Commons. He married Margaret Ethel Gladstone, who was unrelated to the Gladstones of the Liberal Party, in 1896. Although not wealthy, Margaret MacDonald was comfortably well off, and this allowed them to indulge in foreign travel, visiting Canada and the United States in 1897, South Africa in 1902, Australia and New Zealand in 1906 and India several times.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: It was during this period that MacDonald and his wife began a long friendship with the social investigator and reforming civil servant Clara Collet with whom he discussed women's issues. She was an influence on MacDonald and other politicians in their attitudes towards women's rights. In 1901, he was elected to the London County Council for Finsbury Central as a joint Labour–Progressive Party candidate, but he was disqualified from the register in 1904 due to his absences abroad.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In 1906, the LRC changed its name to the "Labour Party", amalgamating with the ILP. In that same year, 29 Labour MPs were elected, including MacDonald, for Leicester, who then became one of the leaders of the Parliamentary Labour Party. These Labour MPs undoubtedly owed their election to the 'Progressive Alliance' between the Liberals and Labour, a minor party supporting the Liberal governments of Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H. H. Asquith. MacDonald became the leader of the left-wing of the party, arguing that Labour must seek to displace the Liberals as the main party of the left.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In 1911 MacDonald became "Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party", the leader of the party. He was the chief intellectual leader of the party, paying little attention to class warfare and much more to the emergence of a powerful state as it exemplified the Darwinian evolution of an ever more complex society. He was an Orthodox Edwardian progressive, keen on intellectual discussion, and averse to agitation.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: Within a short period, his wife became ill with blood poisoning and died. This deeply and permanently affected MacDonald.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald had always taken a keen interest in foreign affairs and knew from his visit to South Africa, just after the Boer War had ended, what the effects of modern conflict would be. Although the Parliamentary Labour Party generally held an anti-war opinion, when war was declared in August 1914, patriotism came to the fore. After the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, warned the House of Commons on 3 August that war with Germany was likely, MacDonald responded by declaring that "this country ought to have remained neutral". In the "Labour Leader" he claimed that the real cause of the war was the "policy of the balance of power through alliance".


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: The Party supported the government in its request for £100,000,000 of war credits and, as MacDonald could not, he resigned from the party Chairmanship. Arthur Henderson became the new leader, while MacDonald took the party Treasurer's post. Despite his opposition to the war, MacDonald visited the Western Front in December 1914 with the approval of Lord Kitchener. MacDonald and General Seeley set off for the front at Ypres and soon found themselves in the thick of an action in which both behaved with the utmost coolness. Later, MacDonald was received by the Commander-in-Chief at St Omer and made an extensive tour of the front. Returning home, he paid a public tribute to the courage of the French troops, but said nothing then or later of having been under fire himself.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: During the early part of the war, he was extremely unpopular and was accused of treason and cowardice. Former Liberal Party MP and publisher Horatio Bottomley attacked him through his magazine "John Bull" in September 1915, by publishing an article carrying details of MacDonald's birth and his so-called deceit in not disclosing his real name. His illegitimacy was no secret and he had not seemed to have suffered by it, but, according to the journal he had, by using a false name, gained access to parliament falsely and should suffer heavy penalties and have his election declared void. MacDonald received much internal support, but the way in which the disclosures were made public had affected him. He wrote in his diary:


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: ...I spent hours of terrible mental pain. Letters of sympathy began to pour in upon me. ... Never before did I know that I had been registered under the name of Ramsay, and cannot understand it now. From my earliest years, my name has been entered in lists, like the school register, etc. as MacDonald.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In August 1916 the Moray Golf Club passed a resolution declaring that MacDonald's anti-war activities "had endangered the character and interests of the club" and that he had forfeited his right to membership. In January 1917 MacDonald published "National Defence", in which he argued that open diplomacy and disarmament were necessary to prevent future wars.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: As the war dragged on, his reputation recovered but he still lost his seat in the 1918 "Coupon Election", which saw the Liberal David Lloyd George's coalition government win a large majority. The election campaign in Leicester West focused on MacDonald's opposition to the war, with MacDonald writing after his defeat: "I have become a kind of mythological demon in the minds of the people".


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald denounced the Treaty of Versailles: "We are beholding an act of madness unparalleled in history".


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald stood for Parliament in the 1921 Woolwich East by-election and lost. His opponent, Captain Robert Gee, had been awarded the Victoria Cross at Cambrai; MacDonald tried to counter this by having ex-soldiers appear on his platforms. MacDonald also promised to pressure the government into converting the Woolwich Arsenal to civilian use. Horatio Bottomley intervened in the by-election, opposing MacDonald's election because of his anti-war record. Bottomley's influence may have been decisive in MacDonald's failure to be elected as there were under 700 votes difference between Gee and MacDonald.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In 1922, MacDonald was returned to the House as MP for Aberavon in Wales, with a vote of 14,318 against 11,111 and 5,328 for his main opponents. His rehabilitation was complete; the Labour "New Leader" magazine opined that his election was, "enough in itself to transform our position in the House. We have once more a voice which must be heard".


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: By now, the party was reunited and MacDonald was re-elected as Leader. Historian Kenneth O. Morgan examines his newfound stature:


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: At the 1922 election, Labour replaced the Liberals as the main opposition party to the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin, making MacDonald Leader of the Opposition. By now, he had moved away from the Labour left and abandoned the socialism of his youth: he strongly opposed the wave of radicalism that swept through the labour movement in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and became a determined enemy of Communism. Unlike the French Section of the Workers' International and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Labour Party did not split and the Communist Party of Great Britain remained small and isolated.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In 1922, MacDonald visited Palestine. In a later account of his visit, he contrasted Zionist pioneers with 'the rich plutocratic Jew'. MacDonald believed the latter "was the true economic materialist. He is the person whose views upon life make one anti-Semitic. He has no country, no kindred. Whether as a sweater or a financier, he is an exploiter of everything he can squeeze. He is behind every evil that Governments do, and his political authority, always exercised in the dark, is greater than that of Parliamentary majorities. He is the keenest of brains and the bluntest of consciences. He detests Zionism because it revives the idealism of his race, and has political implications which threaten his economic interests"


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald became noted for "woolly" rhetoric such as the occasion at the Labour Party Conference of 1930 at Llandudno when he appeared to imply unemployment could be solved by encouraging the jobless to return to the fields "where they till and they grow and they sow and they harvest". Equally, there were times when it was unclear what his policies were. There was already some unease in the party about what he would do if Labour was able to form a government.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: At the 1923 election, the Conservatives had lost their majority, and when they lost a vote of confidence in the House in January 1924, King George V called on MacDonald to form a minority Labour government, with the tacit support of the Liberals under Asquith from the corner benches. On 22 January 1924, he took office as the first Labour Prime Minister, the first from a working-class background and one of the very few without a university education.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald had never held office but demonstrated energy, executive ability, and political astuteness. He consulted widely within his party, making the Liberal Lord Haldane the Lord Chancellor, and Philip Snowden Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took the foreign office himself. Besides himself, ten other cabinet members came from working-class origins, a dramatic breakthrough in British history. His first priority was to undo the perceived damage caused by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, by settling the reparations issue and coming to terms with Germany. King George V noted in his diary, "He wishes to do the right thing... Today, 23 years ago, dear Grandmama <nowiki>[</nowiki>Queen Victoria] died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government!"


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: While there were no major labour strikes during his term, MacDonald acted swiftly to end those that did erupt. When the Labour Party executive criticised the government, he replied that "public doles, Poplarism [local defiance of the national government], strikes for increased wages, limitation of output, not only are not Socialism, but may mislead the spirit and policy of the Socialist movement". The Government lasted only nine months and did not have a majority in either House of the Parliament, but it was still able to support the unemployed with the extension of benefits and amendments to the Insurance Acts. In a personal triumph for John Wheatley, Minister for Health, a Housing Act was passed, which greatly expanded municipal housing for low paid workers.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald had long been a leading spokesman for internationalism in the Labour movement; at first, he verged on pacifism. He founded the Union of Democratic Control in early 1914 to promote international socialist aims, but it was overwhelmed by the war. His 1917 book, "National Defence", revealed his own long-term vision for peace. Although disappointed at the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty, he supported the League of Nations – but, by 1930, he felt that the internal cohesion of the British Empire and a strong, independent British defence programme might turn out to be the wisest British government policy.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald moved in March 1924 to end construction work on the Singapore military base, despite strong opposition from the Admiralty. He believed the building of the base would endanger the disarmament conference; the First Sea Lord Lord Beatty considered the absence of such a base as dangerously imperilling British trade and territories East of Aden and could mean the security of the British Empire in the Far East being dependent on the goodwill of Japan.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In June 1924, MacDonald convened a conference in London of the wartime Allies and achieved an agreement on a new plan for settling the reparations issue and French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr. German delegates joined the meeting, and the London Settlement was signed. It was followed by an Anglo-German commercial treaty. Another major triumph for MacDonald was the conference held in London in July and August 1924 to deal with the implementation of the Dawes Plan. MacDonald, who accepted the popular view of the economist John Maynard Keynes of German reparations as impossible to pay, pressured French Premier Édouard Herriot until many concessions were made to Germany, including the evacuation of the Ruhr.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: A British onlooker commented, "The London Conference was for the French 'man in the street' one long Calvary ... as he saw M. Herriot abandoning one by one the cherished possessions of French preponderance on the Reparations Commission, the right of sanctions in the event of German default, the economic occupation of the Ruhr, the French-Belgian railroad Régie, and finally, the military occupation of the Ruhr within a year." MacDonald was proud of what had been achieved, which was the pinnacle of his short-lived administration's achievements. In September, he made a speech to the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva, the main thrust of which was for general European disarmament, which was received with great acclaim.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald recognised the Soviet Union and MacDonald informed Parliament in February 1924 that negotiations would begin to negotiate a treaty with the Soviet Union. The treaty was to cover Anglo-Soviet trade and the repayment of the British bondholders, who had lent billions to the pre-revolutionary Russian government and been rejected by the Bolsheviks. There were, in fact, two proposed treaties: one would cover commercial matters, and the other would cover a fairly vague future discussion on the problem of the bondholders. If the treaties were signed, the British government would conclude a further treaty and guarantee a loan to the Bolsheviks. The treaties were popular neither with the Conservatives nor with the Liberals, who, in September, criticised the loan so vehemently that negotiation with them seemed impossible.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: However, the government's fate was determined by the "Campbell Case", the abrogation of prosecuting the left-wing newspaper the "Workers' Weekly" for inciting servicemen to mutiny. The Conservatives put down a censure motion, to which the Liberals added an amendment. MacDonald's Cabinet resolved to treat both motions as matters of confidence. The Liberal amendment was carried, and the King granted MacDonald a dissolution of Parliament the following day. The issues that dominated the election campaign were the Campbell Case and the Russian treaties, which soon combined into the single issue of the Bolshevik threat.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: On 25 October 1924, just four days before the election, the "Daily Mail" reported that a letter had come into its possession which purported to be a letter sent from Grigory Zinoviev, the President of the Communist International, to the British representative on the Comintern Executive. The letter was dated 15 September and so before the dissolution of parliament: it stated that it was imperative for the agreed treaties between Britain and the Bolsheviks to be ratified urgently. The letter said that those Labour members who could apply pressure on the government should do so. It went on to say that a resolution of the relationship between the two countries would "assist in the revolutionising of the international and British proletariat ... make it possible for us to extend and develop the ideas of Leninism in England and the Colonies".


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: The government had received the letter before its publication in the newspapers. It had protested to the Bolsheviks' London chargé d'affaires and had already decided to make public the contents of the letter with details of the official protest but it had not been swift-footed enough. Historians mostly agree the Zinoviev letter was a forgery, but it closely reflected attitudes current in the Comintern.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: On 29 October 1924, the 1924 United Kingdom general election was held and the Conservative Party under Stanley Baldwin won a landslide victory. In the event the Zinoviev letter had little effect, as the Labour vote actually increased. It was the collapse of the Liberal Party that led to the Conservative landslide. However, many Labourites for years blamed their defeat on the Letter by misunderstanding the political forces at work.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: Despite all that had gone on, the result of the election was not disastrous for Labour. The Conservatives were returned decisively, gaining 155 seats for a total of 413 members of parliament. Labour lost 40 seats, but held on to 151. The Liberals lost 118 seats (leaving them with only 40) and their vote fell by over a million. The real significance of the election was that the Liberal Party, which Labour had displaced as the second-largest political party in 1922, was now clearly the third party.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: The strong majority held by the Conservatives gave Baldwin a full term during which the government had to deal with the 1926 General Strike. Unemployment remained high but relatively stable at just over 10% and, apart from 1926, strikes were at a low level. At the May 1929 election, Labour won 288 seats to the Conservatives' 260, with 59 Liberals under Lloyd George holding the balance of power. MacDonald was increasingly out of touch with his supposedly safe Welsh seat at Aberavon; he largely ignored the district, and had little time or energy to help with its increasingly difficult problems regarding coal disputes, strikes, unemployment and poverty. The miners expected a wealthy man who would fund party operations, but he had no money. He disagreed with the increasingly radical activism of party leaders in the district, as well as the permanent agent, and the South Wales Mineworkers' Federation. He moved to Seaham Harbour in County Durham, a safer seat, to avoid a highly embarrassing defeat.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: Baldwin resigned and MacDonald again formed a minority government, with intermittent Liberal support. This time, MacDonald knew he had to concentrate on domestic matters. Arthur Henderson became Foreign Secretary, with Snowden again at the Exchequer. JH Thomas became Lord Privy Seal with a mandate to tackle unemployment, assisted by the young radical Oswald Mosley. Margaret Bondfield was appointed as Minister of Labour, becoming the first-ever woman cabinet minister.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald's second government was in a stronger parliamentary position than his first, and in 1930 he was able to raise unemployment pay, pass an act to improve wages and conditions in the coal industry (i.e. the issues behind the General Strike) and pass the Housing Act 1930 which focused on slum clearances. However, an attempt by the Education Minister Charles Trevelyan to introduce an act to raise the school-leaving age to 15 was defeated by opposition from Roman Catholic Labour MPs, who feared that the costs would lead to increasing local authority control over faith schools.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In international affairs, he also convened the Round Table conferences in London with the political leaders of India, at which he offered them responsible government, but not independence or even Dominion status. In April 1930 he negotiated the London Naval Treaty, limiting naval armaments, with France, Italy, Japan, and the United States.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald's government had no effective response to the economic crisis which followed the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Philip Snowden was a rigid exponent of orthodox finance and would not permit any deficit spending to stimulate the economy, despite the urgings of Oswald Mosley, David Lloyd George and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Mosley put forward a memorandum in January 1930, calling for the public control of imports and banking as well as an increase in pensions to boost spending power. When this was repeatedly turned down, Mosley resigned from the government in February 1931 and formed the New Party. He later converted to Fascism.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: By the end of 1930, unemployment had doubled to over two and a half million. The government struggled to cope with the crisis and found itself attempting to reconcile two contradictory aims: achieving a balanced budget to maintain sterling on the gold standard, and maintaining assistance to the poor and unemployed, at a time when tax revenues were falling. During 1931, the economic situation deteriorated, and pressure from orthodox economists for sharp cuts in government spending increased. Under pressure from its Liberal allies, as well as the Conservative opposition who feared that the budget was unbalanced, Snowden appointed a committee headed by Sir George May to review the state of public finances. The May Report of July 1931, urged large public-sector wage cuts and large cuts in public spending, notably in payments to the unemployed, to avoid a budget deficit.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: Although there was a narrow majority in the Cabinet for drastic reductions in spending, the minority included senior ministers such as Arthur Henderson who made it clear they would resign rather than acquiesce in the cuts. With this unworkable split, on 24 August 1931, MacDonald submitted his resignation and then agreed, on the urging of King George V, to form a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals. With Henderson taking the lead, MacDonald, Snowden, and Thomas were quickly expelled from the Labour Party. They responded by forming a new National Labour Organisation, which provided a nominal party base for the expelled MPs, but received little support in the country or the unions. Great anger in the labour movement greeted MacDonald's move. Riots took place in protest in Glasgow and Manchester. Many in the Labour Party viewed this as a cynical move by MacDonald to rescue his career, and accused him of 'betrayal'. MacDonald, however, argued that the sacrifice was for the common good.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In the 1931 general election, the National Government won 554 seats, comprising 473 Conservatives, 13 National Labour, 68 Liberals (Liberal National and Liberal) and various others, while Labour, now led by Arthur Henderson won only 52 and the Lloyd George Liberals four. Henderson and his deputy J. R. Clynes both lost their seats in Labour's worst-ever rout. Labour's disastrous performance at the 1931 election greatly increased the bitterness felt by MacDonald's former colleagues towards him. MacDonald was genuinely upset to see the Labour Party so badly defeated at the election. He had regarded the National Government as a temporary measure, and had hoped to return to the Labour Party.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: The National Government's huge majority left MacDonald with the largest mandate ever won by a British Prime Minister at a democratic election, but MacDonald had only a small following of National Labour men in Parliament. He was ageing rapidly, and was increasingly a figurehead. In control of domestic policy were Conservatives Stanley Baldwin as Lord President and Neville Chamberlain the chancellor of the exchequer, together with National Liberal Walter Runciman at the Board of Trade. MacDonald, Chamberlain and Runciman devised a compromise tariff policy, which stopped short of protectionism while ending free trade and, at the 1932 Ottawa Conference, cementing commercial relations within the Commonwealth.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: Besides his preference for a cohesive British Empire and a protective tariff, he felt an independent British defence programme would be the wisest policy. However, budget pressures and a strong popular pacifist sentiment, forced a reduction in the military and naval budgets. MacDonald involved himself heavily in foreign policy. Assisted by the National Liberal leader and Foreign Secretary John Simon, he continued to lead British delegations to international conferences, including the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the Lausanne Conference in 1932, and the Stresa Conference in 1935. He went to Rome in March 1933 to facilitate Nazi Germany's return to the concert of European powers and to continue the policy of appeasement. On 16 August 1932 he granted the Communal Award upon India, partitioning it into separate electorates for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Untouchables. Most important of all, he presided at the world economic conference in London in June 1933. Nearly every nation was represented, but no agreement was possible. The American president torpedoed the conference with a bombshell message that the US would not stabilise the depreciating dollar. The failure marked the end of international economic co-operation for another decade.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald was deeply affected by the anger and bitterness caused by the fall of the Labour government. He continued to regard himself as a true Labour man, but the rupturing of virtually all his old friendships left him an isolated figure. One of the only other leading Labour figures to join the government, Philip Snowden, was a firm believer in free trade and resigned from the government in 1932 following the introduction of tariffs after the Ottawa agreement.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: By 1933 MacDonald's health was so poor that his doctor had to personally supervise his trip to Geneva. By 1934 MacDonald's mental and physical health declined further, and he became an increasingly ineffective leader as the international situation grew more threatening. His speeches in Commons and at international meetings became incoherent. One observer noted how "Things ... got to the stage where nobody knew what the Prime Minister was going to say in the House of Commons, and, when he did say it, nobody understood it". Newspapers did not report MacDonald denying to reporters that he was seriously ill because he only had "loss of memory". His pacifism, which had been widely admired in the 1920s, led Winston Churchill and others to accuse him of failure to stand up to the threat of Adolf Hitler. His government began the negotiations for the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In these years he was irritated by the attacks of Lucy, Lady Houston, the strongly nationalistic proprietor of the "Saturday Review". Lady Houston believed that MacDonald was under the control of the Soviets and amused the nation by giving MacDonald such epithets as the 'Spider of Lossiemouth,' and hanging a large sign in electric lights from the rigging of her luxury yacht, the . According to some versions, it read 'Down with Ramsay MacDonald,' and to others 'To Hell with Ramsay MacDonald.' Lady Houston also sent agents to disrupt his election campaigns. In 2020 new research revealed how she purchased three letters, supposedly written by Ramsay MacDonald to Soviet officials but actually the work of an American forger. In 1935 Lady Houston stated that she intended to publish them but eventually handed them over to Special Branch, and MacDonald's solicitors entered a legal battle with her.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald was aware of his fading powers, and in 1935 he agreed to a timetable with Baldwin to stand down as Prime Minister after King George V's Silver Jubilee celebrations in May 1935. He resigned on 7 June in favour of Baldwin, and remained in the cabinet, taking the largely honorary post of Lord President vacated by Baldwin.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: At the November 1935 election MacDonald was defeated at Seaham by Emanuel Shinwell, but he was re-elected to Parliament at a by-election in January 1936 for the Combined Scottish Universities seat. After Hitler's re-militarisation of the Rhineland in 1936, MacDonald declared that he was "pleased" that the Treaty of Versailles was "vanishing", expressing his hope that the French had been taught a "severe lesson". MacDonald was one of the signatories to the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: However, his health was failing. King George V died a week before voting began in the Scottish by-election, and MacDonald deeply mourned his death, paying tribute to him in his diary as "a gracious and kingly friend whom I have served with all my heart". There had been genuine affection between the two and the King is said to have regarded MacDonald as his favourite prime minister. Following the King's death MacDonald's physical and mental health collapsed.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: A sea voyage (with his youngest daughter Sheila) was recommended to restore MacDonald's health, but he died on board the liner , which operated between Liverpool and Valparaíso, Chile, via the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, the West Indies and the Panama Canal, on 9 November 1937, aged 71.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald's body was transferred to the Royal Navy at Bermuda for return to Plymouth. All of the Bermuda-based cruisers of the America and West Indies Station were away from Bermuda at that time except for HMS Orion and HMS Apollo. As "Apollo" was undergoing a refit at the dockyard, it would have fallen to "Orion" to deliver MacDonald's body, but as she had been temporary flagship since HMS York had departed on 27th of October for Trinidad (due to civil unrest there) she could not leave the station and "Apollo" was consequently hurried through her refit instead. "Orion" was tasked with the memorial service for MacDonald, whose body was taken aboard the Royal Navy tug "Sandboy" once the "Reina del Pacifico" was in Bermudian waters and landed on Front Street in the City of Hamilton along with the Royal Naval Dockyard Chaplain, the Orion's Chaplain, an Honour Guard, sentries and coffin bearers. MacDonald's coffin was borne on a gun carriage to the Church of England's Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, in a procession that included the ship's company of "Orion" and a detachment of the Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment), serving in the Bermuda Garrison and based at Prospect Camp Scotland. At the cathedral, Arthur Browne, the Bishop of Bermuda, conducted the memorial service, which was followed by a lying in state. Thousands visited to pay their respects. MacDonald's body and his daughter departed Bermuda the following day aboard "Apollo", arriving at Plymouth on the 25th of November. His funeral was in Westminster Abbey on 26 November, followed by a private cremation service at Golder's Green. After cremation, his ashes were taken to Lossiemouth, where a service commenced in his house, ""The Hillocks"" followed by a procession to Holy Trinity Church, Spynie where they were buried alongside his wife Margaret and their son David at in his native Morayshire.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: For half a century, MacDonald was demonised by the Labour Party as a turncoat who consorted with the enemy and drove the Labour Party to its nadir. Later, however, scholarly opinion raised his status as an important founder and leader of the Labour Party, and a man who held Britain together during its darkest economic times.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald's expulsion from Labour along with his National Labour Party's coalition with the Conservatives, combined with the decline in his physical and mental powers after 1931, left him a discredited figure. The downfall of the Labour government in 1931, his National coalition with the Conservatives and the electoral defeat were blamed on him, and few spoke on his behalf. MacNeill Weir, MacDonald's former parliamentary private secretary, published the first major biography "The Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald" in 1938. Weir demonised MacDonald for obnoxious careerism, class betrayal and treachery. Clement Attlee in his autobiography "As it Happened" (1954) called MacDonald's decision to abandon the Labour government in 1931 "the greatest betrayal in the political history of the country". The coming of war in 1939 led to a search for the politicians who had appeased Hitler and failed to prepare Britain; MacDonald was grouped among the "Guilty Men".


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: By the 1960s, while union activists maintained their hostile attitude, scholars wrote with more appreciation of his challenges and successes. Finally in 1977 he received a long scholarly biography that historians have judged to be "definitive". Labour MP David Marquand, a trained historian, wrote "Ramsay MacDonald" with the stated intention of giving MacDonald his due for his work in founding and building the Labour Party, and in trying to preserve peace in the years between the two world wars. He argued also to place MacDonald's fateful decision in 1931 in the context of the crisis of the times and the limited choices open to him. Marquand praised the prime minister's decision to place national interests before that of party in 1931. He also emphasised MacDonald's lasting intellectual contribution to socialism and his pivotal role in transforming Labour from an outside protest group to an inside party of government.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: Scholarly analysis about the economic decisions taken in the inter-war period such as the return to the Gold Standard in 1925, and MacDonald's desperate efforts to defend it in 1931, has changed. Robert Skidelsky, in his classic account of the 1929–31 government, "Politicians and the Slump" (1967), compared the orthodox policies advocated by leading politicians of both parties unfavourably with the more radical, proto-Keynesian measures proposed by David Lloyd George and Oswald Mosley. However, in the preface to the 1994 edition Skidelsky argued that recent experience of currency crises and capital flight made it hard to be critical of politicians who wanted to achieve stability by cutting so-called "labour costs" and defending the value of the currency. In 2004 Marquand advanced a similar argument:


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In the harsher world of the 1980s and 1990s it was no longer obvious that Keynes was right in 1931 and the bankers wrong. Pre-Keynesian orthodoxy had come in from the cold. Politicians and publics had learned anew that confidence crises feed on themselves; that currencies can collapse; that the public credit can be exhausted; that a plummeting currency can be even more painful than deflationary expenditure cuts; and that governments which try to defy the foreign exchange markets are apt to get their—and their countries'—fingers burnt. Against that background MacDonald's response to the 1931 crisis increasingly seemed not just honourable and consistent, but right ... he was the unacknowledged precursor of the Blairs, the Schröders, and the Clintons of the 1990s and 2000s.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: Ramsay MacDonald married Margaret Ethel Gladstone (no relation to Prime Minister William Gladstone) in 1896. The marriage was a very happy one, and they had six children, including Malcolm MacDonald (1901–81), who had a distinguished career as a politician, colonial governor and diplomat, and Ishbel MacDonald (1903–82), who was very close to her father. Another son, Alister Gladstone MacDonald (1898–1993) was a conscientious objector in the First World War, serving in the Friends' Ambulance Unit; he became a prominent architect who worked on promoting the planning policies of his father's government, and specialised in cinema design.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald was devastated by Margaret's death from blood poisoning in 1911, and had few significant personal relationships after that time, apart from with Ishbel, who acted as his consort while he was Prime Minister and cared for him for the rest of his life. Following his wife's death, MacDonald commenced a relationship with Lady Margaret Sackville.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In the 1920s and 1930s he was frequently entertained by the society hostess Lady Londonderry, which was much disapproved of in the Labour Party since her husband was a Conservative cabinet minister.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald's religious life was varied, starting as a devout Christian and incrementally moving across his life into organised humanism, particularly the British Ethical movement. MacDonald's father held firm Calvinist beliefs, but as an adult Ramsay would join the Church of Scotland. Subsequently, he became interested in the Unitarian movement during his time in London, and led Unitarian worship sessions. His interest in Unitarianism led him to discover the Ethical Church, an early humanist association affiliated with the Union of Ethical Societies (today known as Humanists UK), which he joined as a member. He regularly attended services at the South Place Ethical Society (now Conway Hall), and became intensely involved in Union of Ethical Societies, and friends with its founder, Stanton Coit. Ramsay would write regularly in Stanton Coit's "Ethical World", a humanist publication.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: On more than one occasion, he had been elected chair of the Union at its annual meeting, evidencing the significance of his commitment to organised humanism. He was Chair/President of the organisation from 1900–1901 and again in 1903.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: MacDonald's unpopularity in the country following his stance against Britain's involvement in the First World War spilled over into his private life. In 1916, he was expelled from Moray Golf Club in Lossiemouth for being deemed to bring the club into disrepute because of his pacifist views. The manner of his expulsion was regretted by some members but an attempt to re-instate him by a vote in 1924 failed. However, a Special General Meeting held in 1929 finally voted for his reinstatement. By this time, MacDonald was Prime Minister for the second time. He felt the initial expulsion very deeply and refused to take up the final offer of membership, which he had framed and mounted.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: In 1930, MacDonald was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) under Statute 12. He was awarded honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) degrees by the universities of Wales, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Oxford and McGill and George Washington University.


title: Ramsay MacDonald

text: The novel "Fame is the Spur" (1940) by Howard Spring is thought to be based on the life of MacDonald.


title: Max Payne

text: Max Payne is a neo-noir third-person shooter video game series developed by Remedy Entertainment ("Max Payne" and "Max Payne 2") and Rockstar Studios ("Max Payne 3"). The series is named after its protagonist, Max Payne, a New York City police detective turned vigilante after his family was murdered by drug addicts. The series' first and second installments were written by Sam Lake, while "Max Payne 3" was primarily written by Rockstar Games' Dan Houser.


title: Max Payne

text: The first game of the series, "Max Payne", was released in 2001 for Microsoft Windows and in 2002 for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Apple Macintosh; a different version of the game was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2003. A sequel entitled "" was released in 2003 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows. In 2008, a movie adaption, loosely based on the original game, entitled "Max Payne", was released, starring Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis in the roles of Max Payne and Mona Sax, respectively. "Max Payne 3" was developed by Rockstar Studios and released on May 15, 2012 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and on June 1, 2012 for Microsoft Windows.


title: Max Payne

text: On November 15, 2021, Microsoft announced that in celebration of 20 years of Xbox, they would be adding over 70 more games to their backwards compatibility program. Headlining these games was the "Max Payne" trilogy, making the games available to play on Microsoft's Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles.


title: Max Payne

text: The franchise is notable for its use of "bullet time" in action sequences, as well as being positively received by critics, although ""s sales were considered underwhelming. , the "Max Payne" franchise has sold over 7.5 million copies. The film rendition received negative reviews but was commercially successful.


title: Max Payne

text: On April 6, 2022, Remedy announced that a remake of "Max Payne" and "Max Payne 2" is in development, in a development agreement with Rockstar Games. The two games will be released as a single title.


title: Max Payne

text: Renegade DEA agent and former NYPD officer Max Payne attempts to hunt down the ones responsible for murdering his wife and child, as well as framing him for the murder of his NYPD partner, Alex Balder. As the story unfolds, he gains a number of "allies", including Vladimir Lem (a suave, old-fashioned Russian mobster) and Mona Sax (a vigilante who is out to avenge the death of her twin sister) and uncovers a major conspiracy involving the trafficking of a narcotic called "V", or Valkyr—after the mythological figures in Norse mythology—which is somehow connected to the death of Max's family.


title: Max Payne

text: Two years after the first game, Max Payne has rejoined the NYPD and has been cleared of the charges for his killing spree thanks to his connection to Senator Alfred Woden, the leader of a secret society called the Inner Circle. During a routine murder investigation, Max finds himself face-to-face with the fugitive Mona Sax, who reluctantly joins him in his investigation. As the two work together to uncover the truth, they begin to develop feelings for each other, and come across another major conspiracy, which this time involves Vladmir Lem, the Italian Mob, and the Inner Circle.


title: Max Payne

text: Nine years after the second game, Max Payne has left New York and is working on a private security detail in São Paulo, Brazil. When the wife of his employer is kidnapped by a local street gang, Max and his old friend Raul Passos join forces in an attempt to rescue her, igniting a war that will lead them to confront a larger conspiracy.


title: Max Payne

text: Remedy, with funding from Rockstar who holds the rights to the series, announced plans to remake "Max Payne" and "Max Payne 2" for personal computers, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and Series S in April 2022. At the time of the announcement, the remakes were at an early development state, and no planned release date was announced. It was confirmed that the two games will be released as a single title.


title: Max Payne

text: Early in 2003, it was confirmed that 20th Century Fox had bought the rights to adapt the game to film. The "Max Payne" movie went into production in 2008 and was directed by John Moore. The movie was produced by Collision Entertainment and Firm Films in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis play the roles of Max Payne and Mona Sax respectively. Beau Bridges, Chris O'Donnell, Nelly Furtado and Ludacris have roles as B.B. Hensley, Jason Colvin, Christa Balder and Jim Bravura respectively. On July 10, 2008, a teaser trailer was released, featuring an instrumental version of the Marilyn Manson song, "If I Was Your Vampire". The film was released to theaters in the U.S. on October 17, 2008 with a PG-13 rating. While it was ranked first on its opening weekend, grossing US$18 million at the box office, the film received mainly negative reviews, having a 16% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 129 reviews. In June 2022, 20th Century Studios announced that a Max Payne reboot movie is in development.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: Siddharth Roy Kapur (born 2 August 1974) is an Indian film producer and the founder and managing director of Roy Kapur Films. He is the former managing director of The Walt Disney Company India and the former president of the Producers Guild of India in a tenure lasting an unprecedented six consecutive terms (2016–22).


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: Roy Kapur's prolific filmography as a producer has received both commercial success and critical acclaim. He has featured for five consecutive years (2017–2021) on "Variety"’s annual list of the Top 500 Most Influential People in Global Entertainment, has been part of "The Economic Times" Top 40 Indian Business Leaders Under 40 and "The Hollywood Reporter" Next Generation Asia Inaugural Class of Young Leaders along with numerous other awards in the media and entertainment industry. He is also a managing trustee of the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) and co-chairman of the CII Media & Entertainment Committee.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: Siddharth Roy Kapur was born in Bombay (present-day Mumbai) on 2 August 1974 to father Kumud Roy Kapur, and mother, Salome Roy Kapur who is a former Miss India and renowned dance choreographer. She is the daughter of Sam and Ruby Aaron, who were pioneering teachers of ballroom and Latin American dance forms in India. Roy Kapur is the eldest of three brothers; his younger brothers are the well known actors Kunaal Roy Kapur and Aditya Roy Kapur.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: Roy Kapur did his schooling at G.D. Somani Memorial School where he was Head Boy, and went on to study commerce at Sydenham College, where he headed the Dramatics Society and edited the annual college magazine. After completing his bachelor's degree in Commerce, he obtained a master's degree in Management Studies from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS).


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: After P&G, he moved to Star TV in the strategic planning division. Following a brief stint in Hong Kong as part of the News Corp Executive Development Program, he moved back to Mumbai to work on the launch marketing of the first season of the landmark TV show "Kaun Banega Crorepati" on StarPlus. In recognition for the groundbreaking marketing efforts behind the success of the show, he was nominated for the Team News Corp Global Excellence Awards. He then moved to Star TV's Middle East operations, based in Dubai, where he was Regional Marketing Manager for the network. In 2002, Roy Kapur joined the Star headquarters in Hong Kong, as Director (Marketing) and later was promoted to vice president, leading the Central Marketing & Creative Services team across all Asian markets for the Star TV network.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: Roy Kapur joined UTV Motion Pictures in Mumbai in 2005, as Senior Vice President, Marketing & Communications. He led the marketing efforts responsible for taking Hungama TV to a leadership position in the competitive kids broadcasting space. He then went on to lead the marketing efforts behind multiple pathbreaking films, including the cult BAFTA-nominated blockbuster "Rang De Basanti" and the sleeper hit "Khosla Ka Ghosla", both of which released in 2006 and started a new trend in the way movies were marketed in India.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: In January 2008, Roy Kapur took over as CEO of UTV Motion Pictures and after the integration of UTV with The Walt Disney Company India in 2012, he became the managing director of Studios. He led the studio to commercial success and critical acclaim, producing and releasing some of the most important and successful films of the decade, such as "Taare Zameen Par", "Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na", "Jodhaa Akbar", "Fashion", "Aamir", "A Wednesday!", "Dev.D", "Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!", "Kaminey", "Wake Up Sid", "Raajneeti", "Udaan", "Peepli Live", "Welcome to Sajjanpur", "No One Killed Jessica", "Delhi Belly", "Paan Singh Tomar", "Shahid", "Rowdy Rathore", "Barfi!", "", "Kai Po Che!", "Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani", "The Lunchbox" and "Chennai Express". The films produced under Roy Kapur's leadership won numerous awards including National Awards and Filmfare Awards, establishing UTV Motion Pictures as one of India's most admired and successful studios. Five of the movies that were selected to represent India at the Academy Awards during Roy Kapur's leadership were either produced or released by UTV Motion Pictures.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: In January 2014, Roy Kapur was promoted to managing director of Disney India, with the responsibility for driving the strategy and growth for the company across broadcasting, movies, consumer products, digital experiences and live entertainment, represented through multiple brands like Disney, UTV, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, ABC, bindass, Indiagames and Hungama TV.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: Under Roy Kapur's leadership over three years from 2014 to 2016, Disney emerged as one of India's leading media and entertainment companies, producing and releasing India's highest and second highest-grossing Hindi movies of all time ("Dangal" in 2016 and "PK" in 2014) as well as India's then highest grossing English movie of all time ("The Jungle Book" in 2016), as well as a host of other successful movies like "Kick", "2 States", "ABCD 2", "Haider", "Heropanti", "Highway", "Khoobsurat" and "Filmistaan".


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: Roy Kapur also pioneered a new format of entertainment in the country, producing the first-ever Broadway-scale theatrical show to be mounted in India with a completely local cast and crew, "Beauty and the Beast", which opened to huge commercial and critical success in Mumbai and Delhi in 2015.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: In 2017, Roy Kapur moved on from Disney to set up his own production house, Roy Kapur Films (RKF). RKF's first feature film production, "The Sky Is Pink", starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas, had its Gala Premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. In 2020, the Netflix original film "Yeh Ballet", produced by RKF, released to great acclaim.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: RFK's first streaming series, the crime thriller "Aranyak", streamed in 2021 and broke into the Global Top 10 list of non-English Series on Netflix in its first week of launch. 2022's "Rocket Boys", a SonyLIV original series about the establishment of India's space and atomic programmes, also attained huge success.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: RKF’s most recent production, the Gujarati film "Last Film Show (Chhello Show)", was picked as India's official selection for Best International Feature Film at the 2023 Academy Awards.


title: Siddharth Roy Kapur

text: Upcoming projects from Roy Kapur Films include the war drama "Pippa", comedies "Woh Ladki Hai Kahan?" and "Bas Karo Aunty!", as well as the official series adaptation of William Dalrymple's 2019 bestseller "The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company".


title: Mysterio

text: Mysterio (Quentin Beck) is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. He is primarily depicted as an enemy of the superheroes Spider-Man and Daredevil. While Mysterio does not possess any superhuman abilities, he is a former special effects artist, illusionist and actor who uses his talents to commit crimes. He is a founding member of the supervillain team the Sinister Six.


title: Mysterio

text: The character has appeared in numerous media adaptations, including feature films, television series and video games. Jake Gyllenhaal portrayed Mysterio in the live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe film "" (2019), reappearing in archive footage in "The Daily Bugle" (2019, 2021) and "" (2021).


title: Mysterio

text: Mysterio was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and first appears in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #13 (June 1964). It was later retconned that the aliens seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #2 had been Mysterio and his men in disguise; it was revealed that he had been hired by the Tinkerer to disguise himself as an extraterrestrial and uncover military and industrial secrets. Like Kingpin, he has crossed over and been a major villain of Daredevil. In the storyline "Guardian Devil", he crossed into Daredevil's territory almost pushing Daredevil to the edge.


title: Mysterio

text: Quentin Beck is a special effects wizard and stunt man working for a major Hollywood studio with dreams of making a name for himself in the film industry. However, he came to see his career in special effects as a dead-end job. His attempts to become an actor were poorly received, but he realized that his expertise in illusions could make him an effective criminal. In his first battle with Spider-Man, after he frames Spider-Man for robbing the Midtown Museum, Mysterio obstructs the hero's spider-sense with gas and dissolves Spider-Man's webbing with a chemical abrasive. However Spider-Man tricks Mysterio into revealing he robbed the museum, then Spider-Man revealed he had captured it on tape. Mysterio was then jailed, blaming Spider-Man for his ruined career.


title: Mysterio

text: Mysterio later joins the Sinister Six in an attempt at revenge on Spider-Man. In an elaborate scheme, Doctor Octopus gives each member of the Sinister Six a card with the location of the next battle written on it. Each location was carefully selected to best suit that member's particular talents and Spider-Man will have to fight them one after the other. Only once Spider-Man has defeated each opponent, will he be able to obtain the card that will identify the next location. Doctor Octopus believed that with this plan, each of the Sinister Six would weaken Spider-Man a little bit more so that his chances would grow slimmer after each battle. When Spider-Man reaches Mysterio, his third opponent, he is immediately attacked by a group of highly developed robot replicas of the X-Men controlled by Mysterio. After successfully defeating the robots and Mysterio, Spider-Man gets the next card that enables him to go on to battle the Sandman.


title: Mysterio

text: Mysterio later creates the alias of world-renowned psychiatrist Dr. Ludwig Rinehart, using technology and hypnosis in an attempt to make Spider-Man lose his mind, and nearly convincing him to unmask himself, though ironically Spider-Man was helped by J. Jonah Jameson suddenly bursting into the house. Spider-Man then unmasked Mysterio. Mysterio then establishes a brief partnership with the Wizard in a plot to kill Spider-Man and the Human Torch on a Hollywood movie set by pretending to enroll them in a film. However they were both defeated and arrested. He threatens to destroy the city while on TV, and goes on to convince Spider-Man he is tall using a post-hypnotic suggestion and a miniature funfair, but Spider-Man sees through the illusion and captures Mysterio yet again.


title: Mysterio

text: While Beck is incarcerated, his cellmate Daniel Berkhart briefly becomes Mysterio on the original's behalf. Out of prison, Beck resumes his Ludwig Rinehart identity to manipulate Spider-Man's Aunt May into revealing the whereabouts of a lost fortune hidden in her house. Beck used bogus alien disguises to frighten May Parker into revealing the location of the fortune, but then learned that the money had long ago been eaten by silverfish. In his next appearance, Mysterio tricks Spider-Man into believing that he had caused the death of a bystander. Mysterio then attempts to scare the tenants from an apartment complex in a real estate scam thwarted by the preteen superhero team, Power Pack, much to his later humiliation. He is recruited by Doctor Octopus to form the second Sinister Six, and battles Spider-Man. In other encounters, Mysterio has faked the death of Spider-Man's Aunt May, and made deals with demons from Limbo. Despite this, however, Mysterio was constantly beaten by Spider-Man and usually arrested. He joined Doctor Octopus' Sinister Six on several occasions, but this never gave him the edge against his foe that he desired. Eventually, he began to lose credibility as a supervillain, with his defeat at the hands of Power Pack being a particularly humiliating moment.


title: Mysterio

text: After his final imprisonment during the "Guardian Devil" storyline, Mysterio was given an early release, as he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and lung cancer, both caused by the chemicals and radiation from his equipment. He was given one year to live, but this imminent death caused prison psychiatrists to grant him an early release. Obsessed with exacting his final revenge on Spider-Man, he was disappointed when he deduced from newspaper articles that the current Spider-Man was just a clone and saw no dignity in overpowering a 'copy' of the real thing (even though by then, the clone had been killed and the current Spider-Man was indeed the original). Mysterio decided to change his plan and focus on Daredevil, whom he had encountered recently during an insurance scam that the hero had thwarted; Mysterio believed that he had found a 'kindred spirit' in Daredevil, in the sense that both were second stringers with little reputation outside their homes.


title: Mysterio

text: After the Kingpin gave Mysterio all the information he possessed about Daredevil's past, Mysterio developed an elaborate plot to drive Daredevil insane using a special designed drug to influence Daredevil's mood, presenting him with a baby girl and conflicting reports that she was the second coming of Christ or the Antichrist, with the drug rendering Daredevil violent if anyone suggested that the child was innocent. In the course of the scheme, Karen Page was killed by Bullseye after Mysterio had convinced her that she was suffering from HIV due to her time as a porn star, Matt Murdock's partner Foggy Nelson was framed for murder after cheating on his current lover, and Daredevil nearly lost his mind as he appeared to be tormented by the forces of Hell.


title: Mysterio

text: However, Daredevil's will proved stronger than Mysterio expected, and once Doctor Strange discovers and magically removed the drug from Daredevil's bloodstream, Daredevil unmasked Mysterio as the mastermind, shattering the villain's helmet in fury and revealing his now languishing appearance. Beck had thought Daredevil would kill him upon discovery, which in his eyes, was a "grand way to end his final show". Daredevil denied him this and instead dismissed Mysterio's scheme as a basic 'B-movie' plot and calling Mysterio a 'human Xerox', incapable of having an original thought in his life; if nothing else, the Kingpin had already attempted to drive Daredevil insane and he had used the 'supernatural intruding on our world' idea in a previous attack on J. Jonah Jameson. Broken in every sense of the word, Mysterio, saying he was stealing an idea from Kraven the Hunter, pulled out a gun and shot himself dead. While Mysterio has faked his own death several times in the past, this act was apparently legitimate, as Mysterio literally had nothing left to live for.


title: Mysterio

text: Sometime later, Quentin Beck suddenly appears in the Midtown High School auditorium in a dark red version of his costume during the three-way battle between Spider-Man and the two successor Mysterios. He confronts Francis Klum before leaving him for Berkhart to deal with. Quentin Beck then confronts Miss Arrow, revealing that half his head is missing from the gunshot wound and explains that, having gone to Hell for suicide, his "superiors" in the afterlife sent him back to Earth to maintain a cosmic balance. His superiors want Spider-Man to continue working at the school and Beck knows Miss Arrow has a similar role for the "other side". Berkhart and Klum briefly battle one another before Spider-Man captures Berkhart. While trying to escape, Klum runs into Arrow and tries to take her as a hostage, only to be stabbed by one of her stingers. He then teleports away, badly bleeding. Neither Berkhart nor Klum have been seen since. Though Berkhart was incarcerated, Klum's status is uncertain. In "The Amazing Spider-Man" #581, a flashback shows that, prior to his suicide, Beck had been hired by Norman Osborn to fake his son Harry's death.


title: Mysterio

text: Mysterio reappears during "The Gauntlet" storyline, which re-introduces several past Spider-Man villains with new twists. This Mysterio claims to be a returned Quentin Beck who had faked his death, though it's unclear how this fits in with his aforementioned appearance. He is under the employ of Maggia crime member Carmine, creating androids of various deceased Maggia (including their dead leader Silvermane) to give them a credibility boost in their gang war with Mister Negative. Beck controls the Silvermane robot himself and plants seeds of rebellion in Hammerhead, who had left the Maggia under the belief that Silvermane was deceased. He also tries to drive Spider-Man mad by making him think he's accidentally killed several gang members, while trying to convince him that a returned Captain George Stacy, who claims to have always been the gangster known as the Big Man, also faked his death years earlier. This turn makes Spider-Man realize that Mysterio must be behind the recent mysterious return of so many deceased individuals, and he vows to have Mysterio pay for making it personal. Shortly after, Mysterio uses the Silvermane robot to murder Carmine in an attempt to secretly seize control of the Maggia and its fortune. Spider-Man eventually exposes and confronts Mysterio, who flees. He later runs into Chameleon, who tells him that he has some friends who are "dying" to meet him. The "friends" Chameleon was talking about happens to be the Kravinoffs. He was present at the ritual where Spider-Man is seemingly sacrificed in order to revive Kraven the Hunter.


title: Mysterio

text: During the "Origin of the Species" storyline, Mysterio is among the supervillains invited by Doctor Octopus to join his villains' team where he is promised that he will receive a reward. Mysterio went after Spider-Man for Menace's infant. He manages to trick Spider-Man into giving him the child by projecting an image of Avengers Mansion and uses his illusions to try to frighten Spider-Man. Ultimately, Spider-Man recovers the baby from Mysterio after figuring out the villain's involvement. Mysterio is next seen as part of the new Sinister Six organized by Doctor Octopus. He first works with Chameleon to distract Spider-Man and the Future Foundation, faking an attack in the Caribbean by zombie pirates while the rest of the Six steal something from the Fantastic Four's headquarters. He also participates in an attack by the Six on the Avengers Academy. When the Sinister Six launch an attack on the Intelligencia and their new doomsday weapon, Mysterio is responsible for taking down the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes.


title: Mysterio

text: Doctor Octopus and Mysterio later coordinate the Octobots that have infiltrated the Apogee 1 Space Station. When Mysterio notices that some of the Octobots were disabled, Doctor Octopus orders the Octobots to finish their mission and then destroy the space station. Spider-Man, Human Torch and John Jameson later discover that some of the space station's crew members have been taken over by the Octobots making them Octobot-controlled zombies that obey Doctor Octopus' commands. While in their undersea base, Doctor Octopus and Mysterio discover that their Octobot-controlled zombies have passed out. After Apogee 1 Space Station is destroyed and the crew is evacuated by Spider-Man, Human Torch and John Jameson, Doctor Octopus tells the rest of the Sinister Six that his master plan is about to begin.


title: Mysterio

text: Although Mysterio aids Doctor Octopus in his attack against the Avengers and his plan to 'heal' the world during the "Ends of the Earth" storyline, he agrees to help Spider-Man, Silver Sable and Black Widow defeat Doctor Octopus's plans after Spider-Man convinces him that Doctor Octopus will not honor any deal he has made with the Six as he will almost certainly scorch Earth if his plan succeeds. Mysterio leads Spider-Man and his allies to a Mayan temple where Doctor Octopus's base is located (claiming that he was responsible for the choice of location due to the supposed Mayan prophecies of the world ending in 2012), leaving them to face the mind-controlled Avengers. After disabling the Octobots that were controlling the Avengers, Mysterio lends Spider-Man and Silver Sable his vehicle and provides them with the location of Dr. Octopus' base. He then disappears in a cloud of smoke and leaves the heroes to deal with Octavius.


title: Mysterio

text: During the "Spider-Men" storyline, Mysterio has crossed over to the Ultimate Marvel Universe multiple times only to encounter the mainstream Spider-Man after his last travel. In the struggle, Spider-Man is transported to the Ultimate Universe, where Mysterio reveals that his Ultimate counterpart is simply a robotic avatar controlled remotely. Refusing to allow Spider-Man to escape, Mysterio sends a robot avatar after Peter and the new Spider-Man. Despite using chemical weapons to create the hallucination that both Spider-Men are fighting an army of their greatest foes, Peter's greater experience allows him to focus through Mysterio's illusions and destroy the avatar. Mysterio subsequently departs, reflecting that it is more appropriate to leave Spider-Man trapped in a world where he is dead, leaving Iron Man to examine his discarded technology. Mysterio is preparing to cement his victory by destroying the portal and trapping Spider-Man in the Ultimate universe forever. But unable to resist the temptation to see how his enemy is faring, he keeps the portal open long enough for Peter and the Ultimates to capture him. Despite his best efforts to throw them off with their worst fears, Mysterio is quickly defeated. Fury decides to keep him prisoner in the Ultimate universe due to his knowledge of Peter's secret identity. He is later questioned by the Ultimates when Galactus is accidentally transferred into the Ultimate universe after they determine that Galactus originates from Mysterio's world. Beck reveals that Galactus's past assaults had been defeated by his world's Reed Richards, allowing the Ultimates to send their Reed to Earth-616 to hack his counterpart's files on Galactus.


title: Mysterio

text: Eight months after the events of "Secret Wars", Mysterio attacks Parker Industries with the intention of using the company's Webware technology to cause mass hysteria by beaming imagery directly into the minds of the product's users. The plot is thwarted by Deadpool, who runs Mysterio over with his "Dead-Buggy". While recovering in the hospital, Beck is visited by an unknown figure, who leaves a Mysterio bust on the supervillain's bedside table while declaring that he is "not out of the game yet". After Deadpool is manipulated into killing Spider-Man, Mysterio tortures the hero's Limbo-bound soul by projecting his own spirit into the realm using power provided by a mysterious benefactor. Deadpool is able to enter Limbo and help Spider-Man overpower Mysterio, who is afterward shown to have disappeared from his hospital bed.


title: Mysterio

text: After being beaten by the likes of Deadpool and other superheroes, Quentin Beck left the supervillain business and relocated to Las Vegas. His daughter Misty Beck shows up in order to persuade him to become Mysterio again. Dusk shows some awareness of this, as she warns the Scarlet Spider about Mysterio, but when Reilly visits the villain, he accepts Beck's explanation that he has decided to retire. Misty later involves her father in a ritual that would grant her great power if she sacrificed something she truly loved in exchange. But when she attempted to kill Beck, Reilly's intervention distracted her long enough for Beck to accidentally stab her resulting in him gaining the power himself as he places his left hand on the altar while shedding Misty's blood. Now possessing power drawn from Cyttorak, Beck recreates his Mysterio costume and attacks the Scarlet Spider. Scarlet Spider defeats his foe by cutting off the hand that touched the altar, taking away Beck's power.


title: Mysterio

text: Mysterio later created the illusion of an alien invasion that lured every superhero team to fight them. Spider-Man discovered Mysterio's plot and defeated him. Mysterio stated that he wanted to become more than a lesser criminal as Spider-Man webbed him up for the police. When in court, Janice Lincoln appeared as Mysterio's lawyer as the vision of an unidentified entity with centipedes on him appeared in the courthouse claiming to be the one who revived Mysterio.


title: Mysterio

text: In the pages of "Dead Man Logan," Miss Sinister coaxes Quentin Beck into becoming Mysterio again in exchange for keeping him safe from Old Man Logan. Miss Sinister informed him that his counterpart tricked Wolverine into killing the X-Men. In order to take over the world, Miss Sinister and Mysterio side with Neo-Hydra. Mysterio would later find out that Miss Sinister and Neo-Hydra would dispose of him once he has served his purpose. This led to Mysterio taking Old Man Logan to Neo-Hydra's base. During the battle between Old Man Logan and Neo-Hydra, Mysterio used an illusion to make Old Man Logan think that he killed him. Quentin then makes his way back to Bedford Hills Psychiatric Hospital while tossing out his Mysterio costume.


title: Mysterio

text: Mysterio is later shown attending a meeting with psychiatrist Dr. Winhorst, where he affirms his old story that he was sent to Hell after his suicide and was released by some demonic entity whose name he fears to say. Dr. Winhorst attempts to convince Beck that he actually faked his suicide and his belief in the demon is just his former illness causing him to hallucinate. But when the demon that brought Beck back to life appears in the psychiatrist's office, it affirms that the "demon" is real. When Dr. Winhorst flees, Mysterio begs forgiveness from the entity. Although initially prepared to spare Mysterio, the entity realizes that Peter is somehow witnessing these events in a dream. The entity adopts the temporary alias of Kindred and kills Beck again so that he cannot reveal his identity to Spider-Man before Kindred is ready. However, it is soon established that the 'Mysterio' who died was actually Dr. Winhorst, who was brainwashed by Mysterio to believe that he was the supervillain to give Mysterio a chance to escape from Bedford Hills Psychiatric Hospital. Although Kindred is angered that Mysterio shared his real name with Winhorst to increase the reality of the delusion, he notes that Mysterio keeps running from his purpose and gives him a script to stick to.


title: Mysterio

text: More recently, Mysterio had begun production on a film with Mary Jane Watson on a remote set he used to torment Spider-Man, to make a play for a girl he wronged while under the alias of Cage McKnight. After being discovered by Mary Jane, they cooperated in the project, but the filming was turned tumultuous by the Savage Six when the Vulture felt insulted by the "unauthorized use" of his person in the film's plot. Nevertheless, thanks to an authentic recording of their attack, the movie became a rousing success.


title: Mysterio

text: In a prelude to the "Sinister War" storyline, Mysterio is still in Kindred's servitude as he places Mysterio in Doctor Octopus' latest incarnation of the Sinister Six. Peter and Mary Jane Watson are attending the premiere of MJ's new movie which she worked on with Mysterio under the alias of Cage McKnight. Peter is planning to propose to Mary Jane when the movie is over in front of the press and public, but the Savage Six take the opportunity to attack. Mysterio comes to Mary Jane's rescue, exposing his identity to Peter and the Savage Six. Doctor Octopus then attacks the theater with Electro, Kraven the Hunter, Lizard, and Sandman as Doctor Octopus states to Vulture that they need Mysterio. Mary Jane confesses to a concerned Peter that she knew who Mysterio was all along and vouches for him. Mysterio tries to tell Peter that he and Mary Jane's deal with Mephisto is to blame for everything that is presently happening, but Peter is far too distracted by the warring factions. Doctor Octopus offers Mysterio the opportunity to join the Sinister Six as long as he helps them capture Mary Jane. Mysterio complies and teleports away taking MJ with him while promising her that the "devil will get his due".


title: Mysterio

text: Mary Jane is transported to Mysterio's old studios where Beck reveals what happened to him after his suicide, transported to hell, and tortured there until Harry Osborn made him a deal. Taking it, Beck was revived around the time Peter's identity was public knowledge, his adventures in the Spider-Men crossover are referenced, and over time Harry stopped communicating with him until recently. Mysterio also reveals to Mary Jane that he was the therapist who helped her come to terms with Harry's death, but Mary Jane barely remembers this. Mary Jane pleas with Beck, reminding him he's changed, but Mysterio remains loyal to the deal he struck and tells Mary Jane that he knows what fate awaits him. Mysterio rejoins the teams of villains while leaving Mary Jane to the mercy of Kindred. It is later revealed that Mysterio used his time as Mary Jane's therapist to implant false memories of Gwen Stacy confessing to a brief affair with Norman Osborn, thus justifying the existence of Gwen's adult children, Gabriel and Sarah (actually clones created by Harry).


title: Mysterio

text: Quentin Beck does not possess superhuman abilities, but he is an expert designer of special effects devices and stage illusions, a master hypnotist and magician and an amateur chemist and roboticist. He has extensive knowledge of hand-to-hand combat techniques learned as a stuntman, allowing him to engage in combat with Spider-Man despite his foe's superior physical abilities and using his skills at misdirection as a further method of self-defense.


title: Mysterio

text: Mysterio's suit includes many devices to aid him. His helmet is made of one-way plexiglass, meaning he can see out but no one can see in. The helmet also includes an air supply to protect him from his own gases, sonar to navigate within his mist cloak and a holographic projector to create 3D illusions. His boots contain magnetic coil springs which allow him impressive leaps as well as the ability to cling to surfaces. Mysterio's costume contains nozzles in the boots and wrists that can release a constant stream of smoke that shields his movements. He can mix other chemicals into this smokescreen for various effects, including a gas that dulls and inhibits Spider-Man's spider-sense, a gas that causes paralysis for 30 minutes, an abrasive that eats away Spider-Man's webbing, hypnogens that make those around him more susceptible to his will and hallucinogens to cause vivid hallucinations. A combination of the hypnogens and hallucinogens, along with his holographic projectors, are how Mysterio achieves most of his illusions. The costume sometimes also includes offensive weaponry, such as lasers or knockout gas nozzles in the eye emblems on his shoulders, or electric coils within his cape to electrocute those who touch it.


title: Mysterio

text: After Quentin Beck, there have been several other characters who became his successors after taking his mantle as Mysterio. The second Mysterio (Daniel Berkhart) was created by Gerry Conway and Ross Andru and first appeared in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #141 (February 1975). The third Mysterio (Francis Klum) was created by Kevin Smith and Terry Dodson, and he first appeared in "" #1 (August 2002), and became Mysterio in the final issue of the miniseries. The fourth Mysterio (an unknown man called "Mysterion") was created by Christopher Yost and David Lopez and first appeared in "Avenging Spider-Man" #22 (June 2013).


title: Mysterio

text: After the original Mysterio seemingly dies in prison during an escape attempt, J. Jonah Jameson hires Daniel Berkhart, a stuntman who had previously worked with Beck, to torment Spider-Man while claiming to be Mysterio's ghost. After he is defeated by Spider-Man, Berkhart explains that Beck had bequeathed some of his equipment to him after his "death", and he felt he owed it to Beck to get revenge. The story leaves it ambiguous whether there is any truth to Berkhart's story or if he was simply covering up Jameson's role in the affair. Berkhart is arrested, despite there being no witnesses to his harassing Spider-Man. He tries to force Jameson to get a lawyer for him by threatening to reveal his involvement to the police, a plot thread which is never resolved.


title: Mysterio

text: Later, after Beck's suicide, someone claiming to be Mysterio appears with the revised Sinister Six, making references to his "death", stating how after fighting Daredevil he had exited in a "most spectacular fashion". There was some confusion to this Mysterio's identity until "Spider-Man: The Mysterio Manifesto" hinted that it was again Daniel Berkhart. This issue was not addressed again until a Mysterio briefly fought Spider-Man and was captured. Berkhart was later confirmed to be this second Mysterio by Quentin Beck. This Mysterio appeared during stories published between the original's death and subsequent return.


title: Mysterio

text: The Jack O'Lantern fought by Agent Venom claims to have killed off all of the surviving previous Jack O'Lanterns, leaving Berkhart's status uncertain.


title: Mysterio

text: Francis Klum, a mutant with the ability to teleport, was sexually abused by his older brother Garrison (Mr. Brownstone) and forced to use his powers to assist Garrison's illegal activity as a heroin dealer. When Garrison dosed the Black Cat with heroin and attempted to rape her, Francis decided to stop his brother's cruelty for good, teleporting within and blowing up Garrison's body.


title: Mysterio

text: Eventually learning the details of Francis' abusive relationship with Garrison and his role in his brother's death, Felicia nearly convinced Francis to turn himself into the authorities; but Spider-Man, believing that Francis was trying to throw Black Cat from the bridge on which they were talking, brutally attacked Klum. Believing that Felicia set him up, he fell from the bridge, teleported in mid-fall and sustained severe physical injuries, losing his left leg below the knee.


title: Mysterio

text: Hungry for revenge against Spider-Man, he contacted the Kingpin and purchased the paraphernalia of the currently-deceased Mysterio (Quentin Beck). He reasoned that by using an old enemy's costume, he could put Spider-Man off-guard; Spider-Man would assume he knew who he was dealing with until Klum demonstrated his powers and it was too late for the wall-crawler to do anything about it.


title: Mysterio

text: However, Klum's plans to kill Spider-Man at Midtown High were interrupted when he was stabbed in the chest by school nurse Miss Arrow's stingers after an altercation with the other two Mysterios (Quentin Beck having returned from the dead). Klum teleported to safety, although Arrow (who was later revealed to be Ero, a being composed of hundreds of spiders) would later state that her stingers were fatal to anyone except Spider-Man.


title: Mysterio

text: Klum later died from his wounds, but was resurrected as a clone by Miles Warren alongside other deceased Spider-Man villains. This clone of Klum in turn died soon after.


title: Mysterio

text: An unknown African-American individual purchases the suit of Mysterio from Roderick Kingsley and calls himself Mysterion. He fights the Superior Spider-Man (Doctor Octopus' mind in Spider-Man's body) and Punisher. While keeping Punisher from killing Mysterion, Superior Spider-Man captures Mysterion and places him in containment with Sandman, Electro and Chameleon in his hidden underwater lab. He is later forcibly put under mind control by the Superior Spider-Man and forced to join his Superior Six superhero team. Mysterion escapes with the other members after being freed from Superior Spider-Man's influence.


title: Mysterio

text: Mysterion later attacks Liberty Island with an army of robot dinosaurs, which are defeated by Squirrel Girl and other superheroes.


title: Mysterio

text: During the "Secret Wars" storyline in the pages of "", Mysterio appears as a member of Regent's Sinister Six where they are tasked to hunt down Spider-Man.


title: Mysterio

text: In "Marvel 1602", this dimension's Mysterio, known as Magus, is a member of the Sinister Sextet, the dimension's Sinister Six. The Web Warriors (alternate versions of Spider-Man) visited the 1602 Universe to deal with the Sinister Sextet and apprehended the villain.


title: Mysterio

text: In the "Marvel Noir" universe, Mysterio is a stage magician who operated under the title of "The Magnificent Mysterio". He debuted during the "Spider-Verse" storyline where he and his assistant Ella collaborated with Wilson Fisk to obtain the blood of The Spider-Man after interrogating The Ox.


title: Mysterio

text: In "Marvel Zombies", a Zombie Mysterio appears with five other Spider-Man villains attempting to eat civilians, but all six are repelled by Magneto and Wolverine. It is revealed that he was somehow infected by the Zombie Spider-Man of this reality.


title: Mysterio

text: A past version of Mysterio from Spider-Man's college days appears in "Marvel Zombies Return", as a member of the Sinister Six and battles the reality hopping Zombie Spider-Man. Like his fellow Sinister Six members, he was horrified by the undead Spider-Man's actions. The Zombie Spider-Man pulls parts of this Mysterio's brain out of his dome and head, which infects Mysterio with the zombie virus, causing him to participate with other zombie members in eating Spider-Man's friends. Angered, the Zombie Spider-Man kills him.


title: Mysterio

text: In an alternate future of the Marvel Universe, Mysterio casts an illusion which makes Wolverine believe that the X-Men are various deadly villains of the Marvel Universe while matching their scents. Wolverine slaughters them all, only discovering the trick after he killed the last "villain" (Jubilee who appeared as Bullseye) and the illusion cleared up. Without the X-Men, the Red Skull's alliance of villains manages to conquer America and kill most of the heroes.


title: Mysterio

text: In the "" alternate reality, an older Mysterio works with the 'Sinner Six' to stop Spider-Man's rebellious assault. Mysterio's fear-inducing powers fail to work, for Spider-Man had already confronted and become bored by his personal demons.


title: Mysterio

text: The Ultimate Marvel version of Mysterio was introduced in "Ultimate Spider-Man Annual" #3. His appearance is drastically changed from his 616 counterpart. He wears all black with a green neck brace that produces blue smoke that envelopes his face. In his first appearance, he had a police technician set up surveillance equipment to the police department. However, after NYPD's police captain Frank Quaid asked Spider-Man to aid them to find the crook who was somehow able to stay ahead of his unit. Mary Jane Watson, Spider-Man's love interest, figured out how the criminal does it after the hero informed her of the situation. After the police arrested his accomplice, the villain vowed to get even with Spider-Man and then escapes.


title: Mysterio

text: Mysterio appears again in "" #1, blasting Kingpin out the window of a skyscraper following the "Ultimatum". He publicly confesses to Wilson Fisk's murder and threatens the city, stating that he is now in charge. He releases a fear hallucinogen across Manhattan in order to rob the Federal Bank. Spider-Man stops him and Mysterio's personal hatred for the web slinger increases. Creating an illusion of the Hulk to lure Spider-Man to him, Mysterio ambushes and severely wounds the hero. Before Mysterio can unmask and kill Spider-Man, a mysterious vigilante rescues him and together they defeat Mysterio, revealing his true face. Mysterio finds Spidey's blood on his broken armor and designs a Spider-Slayer that personally targets Peter. Spider-Man defeats it. Before Mysterio can do anything else, the police rush to his hideout which they found by tracking a piece of Mysterio's tech. Mysterio curses and proceeds to blow up his hideout.


title: Mysterio

text: It was revealed in "Spider-Men" that this reality's Mysterio is a simple android, remotely controlled in real time by an "avatar" program that was created and sent forth by the Earth-616 Mysterio in order to conquer the Earth of the Ultimate Marvel universe.


title: Mysterio

text: On Earth-65, Quentin Beck used to run a theme park named "The Cursed Carnival of Mysterio" in the state of New Jersey, where he created illusions based upon people's fears; however, due to the rise of modern technology and media, people became less scared of his park, the attendance dropped, and Mysterio went bankrupt. When the park fell into disrepair, Mysterio continued to reside in it, using his illusions to scare the outsiders away from the area.


title: Mysterio

text: Storyboard artist Jeffrey Henderson, who worked on the cancelled "Spider-Man 4", stated in 2016 that Bruce Campbell (who had made cameo appearances throughout Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" film series) was planned to appear as Mysterio in the film's opening montage of Spider-Man defeating several C- and D-list villains. In a 2022 interview, Raimi confirmed that cameo "was one of the possibilities" for the movie.


title: Mysterio

text: Quentin Beck / Mysterio appears in media set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal.


title: Asimina triloba

text: Asimina triloba, the American papaw, pawpaw, paw paw, or paw-paw, among many regional names, is a small deciduous tree native to the eastern United States and Canada, producing a large, yellowish-green to brown fruit. "Asimina" is the only temperate genus in the tropical and subtropical flowering plant family Annonaceae, and "Asimina triloba" has the most northern range of all. Well-known tropical fruits of different genera in family Annonaceae include the custard-apple, cherimoya, sweetsop, ylang-ylang, and soursop.


title: Asimina triloba

text: The pawpaw is a patch-forming (clonal) understory tree of hardwood forests, which is found in well-drained, deep, fertile bottomland and also hilly upland habitat. It has large, simple leaves with drip tips, more characteristic of plants in tropical rainforests than within this species' temperate range. Pawpaw fruits are the largest edible fruit indigenous to the United States (not counting gourds, which are typically considered vegetables rather than fruit for culinary purposes, although in botany they are classified as fruit).


title: Asimina triloba

text: Pawpaw fruits are sweet, with a custard-like texture, and a flavor somewhat similar to banana, mango, and pineapple. They are commonly eaten raw, but are also used to make ice cream and baked desserts. The bark, leaves, and seeds contain the insecticidal neurotoxin annonacin.


title: Asimina triloba

text: This plant's scientific name is "Asimina triloba." The genus name "Asimina" is adapted from the Native American (probably Miami-Illinois) name or through the French colonial . The specific epithet "triloba" in the species' scientific name refers to the flowers' three-lobed calyx (green in photo at right) and doubly three-lobed corollas, the shape not unlike a tricorne hat.


title: Asimina triloba

text: The common name of this species is variously spelled pawpaw, paw paw, paw-paw, and papaw. It probably derives from the Spanish "papaya", an American tropical and subtropical fruit ("Carica papaya") sometimes also called "papaw", perhaps because of the superficial similarity of their fruits and the fact that both have very large leaves. The name pawpaw or papaw, first recorded in print in English in 1598, originally meant the giant herb "Carica papaya" or its fruit (as it still commonly does in many English-speaking communities, including Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa). Daniel F. Austin's "Florida Ethnobotany" states that:


title: Asimina triloba

text: The original "papaw" ... is "Carica papaya". By 1598, English-speaking people in the Caribbean were calling these plants "pawpaws" or "papaws" ... [yet later, when English-speakers settled in] the temperate Americas, they found another tree with a similarly aromatic, sweet fruit. It reminded them of the "papaya", which had already become "papaw", so that is what they called these different plants ... By 1760, the names "papaw" and "pawpaw" were being applied to "A. triloba".


title: Asimina triloba

text: Yet "A. triloba" has had numerous local common names, many of which compare it to a banana rather than to "Carica papaya". These include: wild banana, prairie banana, Indiana banana, Hoosier banana, West Virginia banana, Kansas banana, Kentucky banana, Michigan banana, Missouri banana, Appalachian banana, Ozark banana, Indian banana, banango, and the poor man's banana, as well as American custard apple, "asimoya", Quaker delight, and hillbilly mango.


title: Asimina triloba

text: Due to increased interest in the foraging and locavore food movement during the late 2010s and the COVID-19 pandemic, the pawpaw has been referred to tongue-in-cheek as the "hipster banana".


title: Asimina triloba

text: Several tribes of Native Americans have terms for the pawpaw such as (Pawnee), (Kansa), and (Choctaw).


title: Asimina triloba

text: "A. triloba" is a large shrub or small tree growing to a height of , rarely as tall as , with trunks or more in diameter. The large leaves of pawpaw trees are clustered symmetrically at the ends of the branches, giving a distinctive imbricated appearance to the tree's foliage.


title: Asimina triloba

text: The leaves of the species are simple, alternate and spirally arranged, entire, deciduous, obovate-lanceolate, long, broad, and wedge-shaped at the base, with an acute apex and an entire margin, with the midrib and primary veins prominent. The petioles are short and stout, with a prominent adaxial groove. Stipules are lacking. The expanding leaves are conduplicate, green, covered with rusty tomentum beneath, and hairy above; when fully grown they are smooth, dark green above, and paler beneath. When bruised, the leaves have a disagreeable odor similar to a green bell pepper. In autumn, the leaves are a rusty yellow, allowing pawpaw groves to be spotted from a long distance.


title: Asimina triloba

text: Pawpaw flowers are perfect, about across, rich red-purple or maroon when mature, with three sepals and six petals. They are borne singly on stout, hairy, axillary peduncles. The flowers are produced in early spring at the same time as or slightly before the new leaves appear, and have a faint fetid or yeasty smell.


title: Asimina triloba

text: The fruit of the pawpaw is a large, yellowish-green to brown berry, long and broad, weighing from , containing several brown or black seeds in diameter embedded in the soft, edible fruit pulp. The conspicuous fruits begin developing after the plants flower; they are initially green, maturing by September or October to yellow or brown. When mature, the heavy fruits bend the weak branches down.


title: Asimina triloba

text: The pawpaw is native to the Eastern, Southern, and Midwestern United States and adjacent Ontario, Canada, from New York west to southeastern Nebraska, and south to northern Florida and eastern Texas.


title: Asimina triloba

text: The tree is commonly found in the wild within floodplains and shady, rich bottomlands, but it requires somewhat elevated slopes because it has a deep-reaching taproot. Owing to its shallow, horizontally spreading stems (rhizomes), the species tends to become a clonal patch of small, leaning trees through time. (See photos at right.)


title: Asimina triloba

text: Pawpaws are not the first to colonize a disturbed site, but because they are capable of growing in deep shade, they can establish from seed beneath mature hardwood trees and then spread into a subcanopy patch. They may even become dominant through time by depriving native canopy trees from re-establishing via seed after tree-fall, owing to the dense shade within a pawpaw patch. Under such circumstances, the pawpaw subcanopy becomes the forest canopy. Accessing full sunlight, the patch is then capable of producing more fruit.


title: Asimina triloba

text: The fruits of the pawpaw are eaten by a variety of mammals, including raccoons, gray foxes, opossums, squirrels, and black bears.


title: Asimina triloba

text: The strong-smelling leaves, twigs, and bark of pawpaws contain natural insecticides known as acetogenins. Pawpaw leaves and twigs are seldom consumed by rabbits, deer, or goats, or by many insects. However, mules have been seen eating pawpaw leaves in Maryland.


title: Asimina triloba

text: Larvae of the zebra swallowtail ("Protographium marcellus"), a butterfly, feed exclusively on young leaves of "A. triloba" and various other pawpaw ("Asimina") species, but never occur in great numbers on the plants. Chemicals in the pawpaw leaves confer protection from predation throughout the butterflies' lives, as trace amounts of acetogenins remain present, making them unpalatable to birds and other predators.


title: Asimina triloba

text: Other insects which have evolved the ability to consume pawpaws include "Talponia plummeriana", the pawpaw peduncle borer, whose larvae can be found in flowers, and "Omphalocera munroei", the asimina webworm, whose larvae mostly feed upon leaves.


title: Asimina triloba

text: The floral scent of "Asimina triloba" has been described as "yeasty," which is one of several features that signify a "beetle pollination syndrome." Other floral features of pawpaw indicative of beetle pollination include petals that curve over the downward-pointing flower center, along with food-rich fleshy bases of the inner whorl of petals. A "pollination chamber" is thereby created at a depth that only small beetles can access during the initial female-receptive stage of floral bloom. As with other well-studied species of Annonaceae, the delay in the shift from female to male floral stage offers beetles a secure, and possibly thermogenic, residence in which not only to feed but also to mate. Receptive stigmas at their arrival, followed by pollen-shedding stamens during pollinator departure is regarded as an early form of mutualism (biology) evolved between plants and insects that is still dominant in the most ancient lineages of flowering plants, including the Magnoliids (of which Annonaceae is the most species-rich taxonomic family).


title: Asimina triloba

text: Beetles are the dominant form of pollinator ascribed for genera and species within Family Annonaceae. However, two species of genus "Asimina" ("Asimina triloba" and "Asimina parviflora") bear a floral character that has given rise to an alternative hypothesis that carrion or dung flies are their effective pollinators. That floral characteristic is the dark maroon color of the petals. Hence, while no scholarly papers have documented carrion or dung flies as effective pollinators in field observations, the strength of this hypothesis has led to placement of carrion during the bloom time in pawpaw orchards by some horticultural growers.


title: Asimina triloba

text: Professional papers on genus "Asimina" and its species have warned of the difficulties in discerning whether insects observed on or collected from flowers are effective pollinators or merely casual and thus opportunistic visitors.