Arnim Zola

Revision as of 17:06, 30 August 2017

Arnim Zola the Bio-Fanatic in Captain America v7 #24.

Arnim Zola is a male supervillain that features in Marvel Comics.

Biography

Zola commands Primus in Captain America v1 #209.

Around the early 20th century, the Austrian was a student under the great Polish geneticist Wladyslav Shinsky. In 1928, he and his mentor attended a genetics conference with he among the attendees being Jonathan Drew, Herbert Edgar Wyndham and Noah Black. (X-Factor Annual v1 #3)

Within Dimension Z, he was approached by Madame Hydra Sinclair where he incapacitated her bodyguards Black Ant and Taskmaster. She offered Zola the chance to re-write reality and ensure his own long life in exchange for him joining the new High Council of Hydra. (Captain America: Steve Rogers v1 #14) He later accompanied a group of Hydra soldiers to a base of Doctor Octopus who defeated the troopers with this being a test by Zola to determine his worthiness to become part of the upcoming Secret Empire. (Amazing Spider-Man v4 #25)

Overview

Personality and attributes

Powers and abilities

Notes

• Arnim Zola was created by Jack Kirby where he made his first appearance in Captain America v1 #208 (April 1977).

In other media

Television

• In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Arnim Zola appeared as an antagonist in the animated series voiced by actor Grant Moninger. He made a brief appearance as an in-mate at the Big House as shown in episode "The Man in the Ant-Hill" with him breaking out of prison in "Outbreak". In "Some Assembly Required", it was shown that he had helped stall the effects of Virus X on Baron Zemo and aided his old ally in an attack against Captain America by sending Doughboy after the Avengers.
• In Ultimate Spider-Man, Arnim Zola appeared as an antagonist in the episode "S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy" where he was voiced by actor Mark Hamill. Zola was shown to had operated during World War II where he was a member of HYDRA and an enemy of both Captain America and the Whizzer. At some point, he was defeated and his body disassembled where it was kept in the Triskelion. This became the source of a signal that was detected by Iron Spider Amadeus Cho who accidently left the cell open allowing for Zola's body to activate. He later tricked Cho into bringing him his ESP Box allowing him to reassemble his body. After escaping, he established a laboratory on the lowest level of the Triskelion where he began breeding a Synthezoid army where he battled Spider-Man, Iron Spider, Agent Venom, Power Man and Whizzer. Whizzer told the young heroes to target the ESP Box causing Zola to lose control of his Synthezoid army and causing the laboratory to explode thus defeating the HYDRA scientist. Though defeated, Zola was not killed in the explosion but returned in "Attack of the Synthezoids" where he was shown to had built another laboratory in the Triskelion in secret. Once more, he began creating Synthezoids that he used to replace the various heroes and staff at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base.
• In Agent Carter, the Zola from the Captain America movie made an appearance as part of the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe where he was once again played by actor Toby Jones and appeared in the episode "Valediction". It was shown that in 1944 he was within an American prison cell when Leviathan agent Johann Fennhoff was left in the same cell. Zola commented that despite their imprisonment that their shared cell offered them new opportunities and gave him a paper to write on as the Scientific Strategic Reserve placed a lock around his mouth to prevent him from influencing anyone through his hypnotic suggestions.

Films

Hydra scientist Arnim Zola in Captain America: The First Avenger.

A digital Arnim Zola in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

• In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Arnim Zola made a number of appearances in the shared setting.
  • In Captain America: The First Avenger, the character appeared in a supporting role where he was played by actor Toby Jones. He was shown as a Swiss scientist during World War II where he joined HYDRA and served as Johann Schmidt chief science officer. In 1942, the Red Skull managed to uncover the Tesseract with Zola studying its power to create weapons after HYDRA split from Nazi Germany. On November 1943, he would escape HYDRA's base in Austria when Dr. Abraham Erskine's super-soldier Captain America assaulted the facility. Afterwards, he was present on a train convoy that was attacked by the Allied forces where he was captured and taken by the Strategic Scientific Reserve where he offered to reveal many of his technological secrets to them.
  • In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the character makes a minor appearance during the movie. Its stated that he was one of many Nazi HYDRA scientists who defected to S.H.I.E.L.D. This proved to be a long term strategy by these agents where they sought to corrupt the nascent agency into serving them with a secretive HYDRA cabal stirring conflicts with the ultimate goal of world domination. In that time, Zola was diagnosed with a terminal disease and as a result he used his advanced intellect to turn his mind into an artificial intelligence. It was through Arnim Zola's genius that he created the Zola Algorithm that became the basis for intelligence gathering using digital records. With this code, S.H.I.E.L.D. and thus the HYDRA cabal were able to determine the action's of people through their past digital records such as bank statements as well as other such records. His artificial intelligence survived within the databanks of a secret early S.H.I.E.L.D. installation located beneath Camp Lehigh. By the modern age, the Zola intelligence was present on a flash drive that came into possession of Nick Fury and eventually Steve Rogers. Unaware of what was on the drive, Rogers traced the clues to the Camp where Natasha Romanov attached it into a port activating the ancient databanks where Arnim Zola revealed the events following his capture. He also explained that he was simply distracting Rogers in order to allow the HYDRA cabal to destroy Captain America and Black Widow when a missile was launched at the underground bunker thus destroying it. Alexander Pierce commented that this incident cost him Zola as the artificial intelligence was destroyed with the secret installation.

Video games

• In Captain America: Super Soldier, Arnim Zola appeared as an antagonist in the video game where he was voiced by actor André Sogliuzzo.
• In Marvel: Avengers Alliance, Arnim Zola appeared in the story setting in the Facebook video game.
• In Marvel: War of Heroes, Arnim Zola appeared on a playable card named Bio-Fanatic Zola in the video game.

Appearances

• Captain America v1 #208: (1977)

External Links

• Marvel Database Entry
• Marvel Universe Entry
• Comicvine Entry
• Wikipedia Entry

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