The Titans have faced many classic enemies throughout the DC Universe from Deathstroke the Terminator to the powerful Doctor Light. Among the antagonistic ensembles to plague the team of young superheroes is the Fearsome Five and its strongest member Mammoth. The villain has gone on to operate alone or work with other nefarious organizations, including the Injustice League and Secret Society of Super Villains but will be forever associated with the Titans.
Now, CBR is taking a look back at this hulking juggernaut of a villain, from his comic book history to his appearances on the animated series Teen Titans and Young Justice.
WHO IS MAMMOTH?
Created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez in 1981's New Teen Titans #3, Baran Flinders became the supervillain Mammoth and co-founded the Fearsome Five along with his similarly twisted sister Selinda, the supervillain Shimmer. Fiercely protective and loyal to his sister, Mammoth battled the Teen Titans with the rest of his team on several occasions before retiring to a Tibetan monastery in an attempt to live a quiet life of peace. This proved disastrously short-lived when their former teammate Psimon used his immense mental abilities to transform Shimmer into glass and shatter her in revenge, driving Mammoth to villainy once again.
After serving alongside different incarnations of the Fearsome Five, Injustice League and Secret Society of Super Villains, Mammoth is reunited with his resurrected sister though continues with his wicked ways rather than give redemption and isolation another chance. After the changes to continuity with the New 52 and subsequent DC Rebirth publishing initiatives, Mammoth is still depicted relatively traditionally as a founding member of the Fearsome Five menacing the Titans and wider DC Universe.
HOW STRONG IS MAMMOTH?
Mammoth is the most physically powerful among his most frequent teammates, serving as the muscle for the Fearsome Five. As such, Mammoth possesses incredible amounts of superhuman strength and endurance to the extent that he has a degree of invulnerability against certain types of energy attacks.
However, Mammoth's augmented strength comes at the significant expense of his mental capacity, making him illiterate and largely manipulated by Psimon to carry out the team's various villainous tasks. His underdeveloped emotional intelligence has him overly rely on his sister, and he is initially unable to comprehend her death for an extended period. Despite his immense strength, Mammoth is not a particularly skilled fighter, likely due to his inability to train in martial arts due to his mental capacity and has been bested by physically weaker opponents in combat because of this.
Mammoth in Titans and Young Justice
Mammoth appears in both Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go!, voiced in both animated series by Kevin Michael Richardson. Both incarnations has Mammoth as a student at the sinister H.I.V.E. Academy and something of a class bully with visibly limited intelligence. Similarly, the team name the Fearsome Five has been changed to reflect Mammoth's history with H.I.V.E. as the H.I.V.E. Five, facing against the Teen Titans in battle and dance competitions.
A reimagined version of Mammoth and Shimmer appear in Young Justice, as enforcers for the Kobra criminal organization, with Mammoth initially depicted as a scrawny young man. After being injected by a combination of Bane's Venom serum and the formula used to empower Blockbuster, Mammoth is transformed into his traditional superhuman self and capable of standing toe-to-toe against Superboy in combat. Mammoth has recurring appearances throughout the first two seasons of Young Justice in his transformed state, working with other villains including Icicle, facing off against the superhero team once again.