Mr. Mental

"Don't mess with me, you fool! I'm cooking with gas!"

- Mr Mental in The Tick vs Mr. Mental

"I don't want your crummy food or your freaky love!"

- Mr Mental in Devil In Diapers

Mr. Mental is a recurring villain in the 1994 animated rendition of The Tick. He is a power hungry mentalist who uses his powers of hypnosis and mind control to force his victims to carry out crimes for him. He has a henchwoman, his beautiful magician's assistant and lover, Mynda, though she seems to be reluctant to participate in his life of crime, and eventually leaves his employ and abandons her criminal career after he is incarcerated the first time.

Evil deeds
Mr. Mental has twice opposed the Tick and Arthur. In his first appearence, Mr. Mental annonymously invites the Tick and Arthur to watch his psychic act so that he can hypnotize and control Tick's mind. He later wakes the Tick in the middle of the night and forces him to go to Pendecker laboratory and procure a device for him called the Thinking Cap. He orders the Tick to destroy anything in his way, which leads to the Tick assaulting the Crusading Chameleon, Arthur, and other heroes. The Tick snaps to his senses temporarily, and Mr. Mental is forced to send Tick into his worst nightmare, a 9 to 5 desk job, to regain control. Mr. Mental finally obtains the Thinking Cap, which grants him godly powers. Mr. Mental is nearly invulnerable in this form, however the Thinking Cap is gas powered, and has a choke chord which Arthur pulls to flood the engine and cause Mr. Mental to suffer a psychic overload, incapacitating the villain and allowing him to be detained.

Mr. Mental is imprisoned by the victim of his theft, Dr. Julius Pendecker, who uses him and his unique abilities as a guinea pig to create a new, more powerful mentally controled device which allows its user to animate their thoughts with a substance called mental-plasm. Mr. Mental manages to escape and steal the device, but loses it in a taxi cab, and has to go into hiding. Mr. Mental hypnotizes the Tick and Arthur into thinking that he is a baby so that they will protect him while he waits for the device to be brought back to him. He calls Mynda while Tick and Arthur are not looking, and convinces her to bring him the machine, even though she has given up her life of crime.

Meanwhile, Dr. Pendecker realizes that he has been robbed by Mr. Mental, and discovers that Mr Mental has been dmasquerading as a baby to gain the Tick's protection. He creates holographic belts to conceal the identity of his associates and himself, in order to take back his device. First he sends one of his underlings disguised as a dingo to capture the baby, but Tick defeats him, causing Pendecker to take matters into his own hands. Pendecker disguises himself as another baby, and attempts to take the device back from Mr. Mental, but by now, Mr. Mental has it assembled and is ready to use it. He uses the device on the Tick's apartment rooftop, finally bringing Tick to the realization that he is not a baby. Mr. Mental tries to escape with the device in use, but arthur severs the link between his mind and the device (which resembles an umbilicle chord) breaking Mr. Mental's power and allowing him to be captured by the Tick. The Tick expresses that his greatest grievance with Mr. Mental was for playing with his and Arthur's emotions and breaking their hearts as "parents".