Was He Always The Villain, Or Did He Grow Into It?

I was thinking about Dr. Knox, who is either the Inventor, or the Inventor II, recently defeated once again by Ms. Marvel. He was extremely indignant at the suggestion the clone of Thomas Edison crossed with a cockatiel was actually the Inventor, and he was just a lackey.

Well sure, nobody likes being dismissed as a lackey (unless being a lackey means they don't think you're worth killing). I'm trying to figure out if it was always his plan to "save the world", and he used the Edi-bird as a cover, or if the bird came up with the plan, and the Inventor is taking the ball and running with it. I can't help noticing that he's wearing an exo-skeleton that resembles the bird, though.

Which you could read a couple of ways. Creating a clone of Edison in the form of a bird was a way of creating an alter-ego (like the Ventriloquist and Scarface in the Batman comics). Knox is still leaning on it, but now he's actually front and center. Forms a parallel to Kamala. When she first got her powers, she could alter her appearance. Initially, she kept trying to look like Carol Danvers, like what she thought a hero was supposed to be. Eventually she had a costume that was based on some of Danvers', but with her own approach as she became her own hero.

Is Knox doing the same thing as a villain? To be taken seriously, he thought you needed to be more imposing, so he trotted out a clone of Edison crossed with a bird, and crazy. Knox appeared to be a supporting character, a scientist who had been surpassed and dominated by his assistant. The big final battle of the first year of Kamala's book was against the bird-man. Knox was an afterthought, squashed alongside the leader of the Inventor's goon squad by Lockjaw sitting on them. But he still went to jail, and maybe the bird was too crazy for his plans to work. So he takes charge, but he still likes "bird-person" as a visual. So he makes his own take on it. He's more comfortable being front and center, making the threats, challenging the heroes.

Or he really did just try to clone Thomas Edison, and things went awry. He couldn't get out, was overwhelmed by a more forceful personality, and wound up being imprisoned for a plan that was never his. So he decided to carry on his creation's work, but took his own approach. Rather than targeting teens, he went after the elderly. Rather than building robots, he went with merging the mechanical with the biological. The robots had a bit of that, since they were powered by humans, but the animals are more active participants now. Also, he's not using people, who are more likely to defy him or have opinions of their own, but animals, which can probably be reconfigured more easily.

It's interesting that the first time we saw Knox was when Kamala (and Logan) stumbled across a test area with crocodiles that were having their personalities and instincts forcibly overwritten. The Inventor took credit, and Knox appeared to be a subservient guy being bossed around by his experiment. And maybe he was, or maybe it was a smokescreen. If they were working on making creatures go against their instincts, maybe Knox had already done that with the Inventor, but was letting the bird think it was its idea?

I tend to lean towards Knox having decided on this course after how things went the first go-round. Much of his motivation seems to be resentment, people not recognizing his genius, or being angry he was incarcerated. He created a clone of Edison, crossed with a bird (accidentally, but still). And all he hears is that the bird was the genius, the one behind everything. Dr. Knox is just a footnote. So he's going to prove them wrong, and take a jab at the bird while doing it by not only co-opting its look, but by carrying out its plan and doing it better!