Background

William Turner was born a mutant with an oversized forehead. His mental powers manifested in early infancy and he inadvertently killed his parents by feeding off them. Sent to an orphanage, he was often teased and beat up because of his appearance, until he learned to use his powers to control the minds of his tormentors. Nonetheless, he took up building up his physical might, exercising until he was almost superhumanly strong.

Moving himself into an abandoned shack in Queens, William began to feed off the emotions of the residents of the nearby apartment building, including Flash Thompson. When Peter Paker briefly moved in with Flash, his unique mental presence alarmed Mindworm, who that night called on all the sleeping residents of the building to come to him. Spider-Man, able to resist, fought the Mindworm, and boxed him in the ears, damaging his hearing enough so that he could no longer "hear" the emotions of others and control them. In torment over the loss his powers, he was taken to a psychiatric hospital.

Some time later at the hospital, Mindworm turned his power in on himself and used his own mind to fix itself. Revitalized, he planned to take revenge against Spider-Man. Before he could, however he had a dream where he fought Spider-Man and was forced to realize that his guilt over his parents death was the real cause of emotional pain. The dream was intense enough that it was shared by Peter Parker who, upon awaking, confronted the Mindworm as Spider-Man. The Mindworm assured Spider-Man that he was through with his evil ways, that indeed - he had learned that with great power comes great responsibility.

However, years later, Mindworm had still not been able to get his life on track, and existed as a vagrant whose powers were subconciously negatively affecting the area around him. Spider-Man found him in this state, and mused for a week on what to do about Mindworm. When Spider-Man returned to take him to a doctor, however, the former villain was apparently killed by street thugs.

Thanks To:

The assistance of the Marvel Chronology Project is gratefully acknowledged.

Some of the above information is extracted from the various versions of the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe and the more recent Marvel Encyclopaedias.