| abstract | - Dr. Angst was first observed when he was hired by unknown parties to assassinate the then presidential candidate for the All Night Party, Howard the Duck. He chose a group of mediocre would-be villains and organized them as the Band of the Bland to assist him. He duped the Band into believing that they were in it solely to rise above their current levels and to achieve fame. Angst also tricked them into believing he had enhanced their powers by ingesting the metal Promethium, which amounts to a mystic palcebo. Their plot was foiled by Howard and the Defenders. Angst was imprisoned in Wormwall prison, and the Band disbanded, pursuing their own mundane lives. Angst spent the first 4 years of his time in prison meditating on the chipped paint in his cell walls until his revenge took form. He summoned the Plunger of Patooti to reverse the suction of a distant singularity. This created the Cosmic Blowhole, from which spewed, among other things, a number of Compaction Receptacles. These Receptacles were created by unknown means and unknown beings. How they came to be inside the singularity is similarly unrevealed, but each served to contain an Encroachiverse. These were failed dimensions, such as the Baloney-verse or the Dimension of Suicide, which were compacted to prevent them from interacting with viable realities. A short time ago the Receptacle containing the Baloney-verse landed on Earth, in Mount Pookie, Vermont (later known as Mount Pressure). A native escaped to empower the Reverend Wildmoon, but both were eventually destroyed in battle with the She-Hulk. Handling of the Receptacle (or the Anomaly, as it was referred to in Mt. Pressure), caused the Baloney-verse to begin to expand and Encroach on the space of the Earth dimension. Around the same time that a large number of Receptacles were heading to Earth, Angst made his escape from prison, conjuring a six story high power drill and the Inflatable Orbs of Igg. He went on to relocate and reorganize the Band of the Bland to assist him. As per his plans, humans were poking and prodding the Receptacles, causing each of the pocket universes to begin to enlarge. With the large number of universes expanding and trying to occupy the same space at the same time, all of the Encroachiverses and the rest of Earth's dimension would destroy each other. Angst referred to this as the Cosmic Squish Principle. Angst then set up five locus points, which would be the only five places in the universe exempted from the Squish. He chose points that were, in his mind, the dullest places in current existence: a square block in manhattan including Rad Ronin's Fujiyama Funhouse; Henderson, Nevada; El Segundo, California; most of New Jersey; and the planet Sqazzl. Around these five locus points, Angst sought to form a new universe, the Insipiverse, the quintessential distillation of cosmic tedium. A member of the race of Critics had observed the creation of the Blowhole, and sought to prevent the Cosmic Squish. To this end, he summoned Howard the Duck, and the formerly inactive hero, the Terror, to assist She-Hulk and her friends, Louise Mason and Brent Wilcox. Angst saw these six (that would be including the Critic) as the only threat to the success of his plans, and brought the Band to wipe them out. However, the heroes held their own against the Band, and Wilcox came upon the idea to force the Black Hole to contain all the Receptacles within his gravity well. The Critic summoned all of the Receptacles and their associated leaking Encroachiverses, which were sucked into the gravity well, preventing their expansion. The Critic brought Black Hole with him to prevent him from releasing his contents, and then wiped the memory of the events from the minds of those involved.
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