It's On Like Doctor Bong

You must have a lot of guts to make your helmet a bell. You must have even more guts to go around referring to yourself as "Doctor Bong". Needless to say I'd hate to meet this guy on a college campus. Today's Z-Lister is the scariest bell since The Death Toll, this is Marvel's Doctor Bong.

This character was created by Steve Gerber and Marie Severin in 1977's "Howard The Duck #15". Yeah, this guy is so obscure he's a Howard The Duck villain. Doctor Bong-or Lester Verde, as he was once known-was loosely based on a journalist named Bob Greene who spent twenty four years writing for the "Chicago Tribune" and published a bestselling book on basketball player Michael Jordon. Lester is another villain who's roots stem from bullying, he would sling such creative insults regarding his bullies so often his mother suggested a career in writing. When he got to college Lester took a journalism class where his methods of slander weren't appreciated by his professor. In retort towards the professor Lester learned his teacher had begun taking energy pills to stay away at night and grade papers, but Lester published an article accusing him of being a drug trafficker. Because of these claims the professor was fired and even divorced. In college Lester met a woman named Beverly Switzler and became obsessed with her, going so far as to abandon his journalistic dreams and join a rock band. He joined as a prop handler-often using bells and dressing up as The Easter Bunny or some symbol of innocents for his band mates to humiliate. However, while using a prop guillotine at a performance Lester's hand was severed.
Some years later Lester returned with a orb on his left stump and a bell on his head, calling himself Doctor Bong. He had amassed intelligence and built technology to help aid him in his quest for world domination, to rule over those who ignored his creativity and teased him for his work. He locates Beverly once again and finds she's been associating herself with Howard The Duck. He uses Howard as leverage to force Bev into marrying him. Bong and Bev live in a castle with Howard locked up as prisoner. Howard escapes, but is no match for Doctor Bong. Luckily, Bev uses a cloning machine to trick Doctor Bong into believing Bev gave birth to five infants-despite Bong never consummating the marriage-and threatened to reveal to the world that Bong is negligent father. As demanded, Bong lets Bev and Howard go.
Later on Doctor Bong would create Fifi The Duck by using an evolution device on a common duck and transforming it into a woman-shaped duck. He did this in an attempt to force Howard into mating with Fifi and create his own duckling army. Another scheme involved tricking Bev into working at his mock-up company, this resulted in Howard The Duck turning into a human, turning into a rat, and finally turning into a sword-wielding transvestite rat. Yeah, "Howard The Duck MAX" wasn't for kids. Using a magical sword Howard scared Doctor Bong into never bothering them again. Due to the ridiculousness of the character, he's also clashed with She-Hulk, Deadpool, and Spider-Man. All of whom point out how lame of a villain he is.
From a design standpoint I like Doctor Bong. I think the whole trope of bells has gone untapped by comic book super-villains and I was kind of hoping to see more of the trope in Doctor Bong's backstory. Obviously his character is pretty silly, throwing together bizarre experiments and having an unhealthy obsession with one woman. Really robs the character of any amount of worth. With a character as weird as this one I'm hoping to see him return to Chip Zdarsky's "Howard The Duck" series. I'm sure that will invoke some classic Howard The Duck antics.
Thanks for reading.