The dungeon AI in Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl might be the best X-Villain Marvel never created. With an awful sense of humor and enough power to possibly wipe out the entire galaxy, the rogue AI is practically a god. It’s also growing more unstable, which is very unfortunate for anyone still caught in its dungeon. It shares a lot of DNA with two classic X-Men villains. And combining them could create something far more intriguing for the MCU than just another superpowered threat.
In the book Dungeon Crawler Carl, aliens have taken over Earth and transformed it into an eighteen-level dungeon for an intergalactic reality TV competition, controlled by a macro AI, a powerful artificial intelligence built into Earth’s Primal Engine. The main character, Carl, finds himself battling monsters with Princess Donut, his ex-girlfriend’s newly talking cat. The Borant Corporation may officially run the competition, but the AI enforces the rules as it sees fit. This AI already had problems, though. It had run a very dark amusement park before Borant bought it used. That detail makes the fact that it looks a lot like a certain Marvel villain even funnier.
Arcade is an assassin who prefers to spend a fortune building elaborate deathtraps rather than just shoot somebody. He was created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne in 1978’s Marvel Team-Up #65. Murderworld is essentially a deadly amusement park, where victims are unwilling participants in his personal midway games of death. The X-Men incurred his wrath when he designed traps to exploit the team’s weaknesses. Storm was trapped in a flooding chamber, activating her claustrophobia. Wolverine fought off robotic duplicates. Meanwhile, Colossus was brainwashed to be a Soviet superhero named the Proletarian. Arcade enjoyed watching the mutants exercise challenges designed to exploit their weaknesses.
Dinniman’s AI exhibits similar theatrical cruelty, but Arcade lacks an important element: an audience. That’s where Mojo comes in. The grotesque alien television executive was first introduced in 1985’s Longshot #3. Long before reality TV dominated our screens, he built his entire broadcast empire around turning violence and suffering into entertainment. The X-Men have frequently appeared in his productions, whether they wanted to or not. We’re not saying Dinniman lifted the AI from Mojo, but it wouldn’t surprise us to hear he’s a fan.
The more famous examples of these two characters may actually come from video games. Arcade’s Revenge saw Spider-Man and the X-Men transform Murderworld into personalized levels for individual mutants, while Marvel: Ultimate Alliance returned to the amusement park with giant pinball machines and deadly carnival attractions. Mojo first appeared in 1993’s X-Men for Sega Genesis, a game that famously required players to press the console’s actual reset button to proceed after defeating him. X-Men ’97 made a direct reference to that game in “Motendo,” which featured a Genesis-inspired console before trapping Jubilee and Sunspot in a video game based on the X-Men’s adventures. The pieces have sat there for decades. Dungeon Crawler Carl demonstrates what happens when they finally come together.
The MCU should combine Arcade and Mojo into a single villain. Arcade could act as a human-like avatar for the grotesque alien Mojo. With Murderworld as a potential intergalactic game show, he could force mutants through elaborate deathtraps for the views. Like the AI in Dungeon Crawler Carl, Mojo would take the contestants’ victories personally as they learn to exploit his rules. You know, just like Mojo and Arcade. And there’s one team that has gotten under both of their skins. In 1994’s X-Force #40, Cable and Domino moved X-Force to Arcade’s abandoned Murderworld, turning the complex into their base of operations and their own Danger Room. Eventually Arcade came back and blew up the joint. That history provides a natural basis for an X-movie centered on Murderworld.
Dungeon Crawler Carl has shown how a deadly game can become something much more personal, especially when the intelligence running it starts fighting with the contestants. Marvel could push that idea even further. Once the X-Men take down Murderworld and its sadistic master, they could repurpose the facility for their training. And just like that, the X-Men have a Danger Room.
