DOCTOR YES
Real Name: Dr. Sergei Yesenofsky
Identity/Class: Human technology user (Russian citizen)
Occupation: Terrorist, scientist-for-hire;
formerly head of biological weapons for the
government of the USSR
Group Membership: None
Affiliations: Red Flag, androids (Robot Geisha, Big Bertha, many others)
Enemies: Squirrel Girl (Doreen Green), Tippy-Toe, Venom (Eddie Brock)
Known Relatives: Kostya Yesenofsky (Red Flag, son, deceased), unidentified wife (see comments)
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Unrevealed;
formerly New
Odessa;
formerly a secret lab in the USSR
First Appearance: Venom: License to Kill#1 (June, 1997)
Powers/Abilities: Dr. Yes is a genius in the fields of robotics, cybernetics, and biology, and is capable of creating sophisticated killer robots, suits of powered armor, and deadly plague toxins. While wearing Kostya's battlesuit, Dr. Yes possesses enhanced strength, resistance to weapons fire, flight via a back-mounted jetpack, an on-board air supply and built-in spotlight. The suit is also watertight, and can withstand the intense pressures of the ocean depths.
History:
(Venom: License to Kill#1 (fb)/Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Teams 2005 ) - One of Russia's top scientists, Dr. Yes was head of biological weapons development for the Soviet Union, and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle.
(Venom: License to Kill#2 (fb) ) - Yesenofsky's son Kostya was accidentally infected by his father's plague toxin. Dr. Yes built him a containment suit, but the fall of communism forced him to serve as a scientist-for-hire for a variety of dictators and tyrants to pay for the suit's upkeep. Relocating to an abandoned Soviet submarine base, which he dubbed "New Odessa", Yesenofsky plotted to make all of humanity pay for his son's inevitable death.
(Venom: License to Kill#1 - (fb) ) - Dr. Yes sent a plane loaded with his plague toxin to buzz a party of white-water rafters on the Colorado River, killing all 37. He demanded 20 million dollars from the US government.
(Venom: License to Kill#1) - When the scheduled money drop erupted into a gunfight between three of Yes' robots and CIA agent Edward Brock, Yes sent Kostya to resolve the situation.
(Venom: License to Kill#2) - Yes greeted Brock and his agents as they arrived in New Odessa, and explained his son's condition to the American agent. Yes resisted Brock's attempts to provoke him and unveiled his son's new Red Flag armor. Upon discovering that the money Brock had brought was not only marked, but also counterfeit, Yes left his robots to kill Brock while he prepared the toxin for release. He watched Brock (now morphed into Venom) tear apart his androids remotely via his robot geisha, and plotted to take his symbiote as a cure for Kostya.
(Venom: License to Kill#3) - Dr. Yes sent Kostya and an army of androids to capture Venom at New Odessa's airlock. Even en masse, the robots proved no match for the symbiote's fury, prompting Yes to send Red Flag to the surface to release the toxin. En route to the surface, red Flag encountered an American nuclear missile, launched by Brock's handlers. As Yes pleaded with him to let it go, Kostya instead rode it into an ocean trench, destroying himself, the nuke, and the plague toxin.
Forced to flee when Venom used a hijacked plasma cannon to crack New Odessa's dome, Yes survived in Kostya's old containment suit. Pulling himself out of the ruins of his base, Doctor Yes swore vengeance on the symbiote...
(Unbeatable Squirrel Girl II#7) - Doctor Yes developed
Deathbringer 8000, a new doomsday virus, then went to Times Square,
where he threatened to unleash it (via a pill, the only sample of it in
existence) on the world. The heroine Squirrel Girl confronted him, and
asked him whether his disease affected squirrels; when her told her it
didn't, her squirrel partner Tippy-Toe grabbed the pill and ate it.
Without his bargaining chip, Yes was arrested.
Comments: Created by Larry Hama, Derec Aucoin, Rich Faber and Ralph Cabrera.
New Odessa is kinda weirdly-lit - despite the top image,
Dr. Yes, as of his battle with Venom, has white hair, and is wearing a
green outfit. The outfit appears to be loosely based on Dr. No's
uniform in the 1962 James Bond movie of the same name. Dr. Yes, of
course, is something of a Bond villain pastiche, what with the undersea
base, gorgeous female henchmen, doomsday devices, et al.
There's a woman pictured in both of the photos of Dr. Yes and Kostya in their Soviet days, and it stands to reason that she's Yes' wife and/or Kostya's mother, but it's never explicitly spelled out. Whoever she is, she was out of the picture by the time Venom crashed their hidey-hole.
Doctor Yes' nearly-successful attempt to eliminate the human race was revealed to the public by Venom in a live interview with Trish Tilby in Venom: Finale#2. Whether anyone believed him is another story.
Although Yes' henchmen identify themselves as Class III cyborgs (correcting Venom, who called them androids), both Dr. Yes and Kostya refer to them as androids, and they don't seem to have any organic components. Since Yes built them, and should know what they are, I'm gonna say they're androids. Also, there are a few men visible working in New Odessa's labs. They may be freelancers, embittered ex-Commies like Yes, or more androids...who knows?
Given Dr. Yes' high-ranking position in the Soviet
government and his mastery of multiple disciplines, he may have been
involved in the creation of any number of Soviet supervillains.
2016 update: wow, that's some fine obscure villain usage,
Ryan North and Erica Henderson! The same issue also features Quoggoth
(spawn of Shuma-Gorath)
and Speedball villain Bonehead.
Profile by Minor Irritant.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Doctor Yes has no known connections to:
Big Bertha has no known connections to:
Dr. Yes' robot geisha has no known connections to:
Presumably built by Dr. Yes, they were all designed to resemble human women and programmed in combat techniques and Communist dogma. In addition to wielding conventional firearms, swords, and sickles, they incorporated a number of built-in weapons systems, including laser cannons, flamethrowers, extendable tentacles, jetpacks, and buzzsaws. Of the dozens that Dr. Yes housed in New Odessa, none appeared to survive the rampages of Venom and New Odessa's subsequent destruction.
Dr. Yes referred to one as "Monika" - presumably, the others had names as well.
--Venom: License to Kill#1 (Venom: License to Kill#1-3
Big Bertha was deployed as Dr. Yes' last-ditch attempt to kill Venom. Her body housed a plasma cannon, and the targeting computer in her head prevented her from using the weapon to accidentally crack New Odessa's dome. Her first blast missed the symbiote, and before she could fire a second, Venom decapitated her. He rewired her targeting system (via micro-tendrils from his costume) and used the cannon to shatter the dome of New Odessa.
--Venom: License to Kill#3
Dr. Yes employed a robot geisha as his personal aide. She allowed Yes to see Venom battling his androids from afar, and revealed the agent's symbiotic nature. Later, she conveyed Kostya's last words to his father, and was subsequently damaged by the electromagnetic pulse released by the exploding nuclear warhead. She was presumably destroyed shortly afterwards in the collapse of New Odessa.
Her face split open, revealing a screen hooked into New Odessa's security cameras.
--Venom: License to Kill#2 (Venom: License to Kill#2-3
A former secret Soviet submarine base off the Atlantic coast of Florida, New Odessa was refitted by Dr. Yes after the fall of the USSR to serve as his home base and a private treatment center for Kostya. Staffing the facility with androids, Dr. Yes operated out of New Odessa until it was destroyed by the combination of a plasma-cannon blast and the shockwave from an underwater nuclear bomb explosion.
--Venom: License to Kill#1 (Venom: License to Kill#1-3
images: (without ads)
Venom: License to Kill#1, p21, pan4 (main image)
Venom: License to Kill#1, p11, pan1 (youthful headshot)
Venom: License to Kill#1, p11, pan1 (Mrs. Yesenofsky)
Venom: License to Kill#3, p1, pan1 (android)
Venom: License to Kill#2, p20, pan1 (android, combat mode )
Venom: License to Kill#3, p11, pan1 (Big Bertha)
Venom: License to Kill#2, p11, pan1 (robot geisha)
Venom: License to Kill#2, p10, pan5 (New Odessa)
Appearances:
Venom: License to Kill#1 (June, 1997) - Larry Hama (writer), Derec
Aucoin (penciller), Rich Faber & Ralph Cabrera (inkers), Tom
Brevoort (editor)
Venom: License to Kill#2 (July, 1997) - Larry Hama (writer), Derec
Aucoin (penciller), Rich Faber (inker), Tom Brevoort (editor)
Venom: License to Kill#3 (August, 1997) - Larry Hama (writer), Derec
Aucoin & Josh Hood (pencillers), Eric Cannon & Scott Koblish
(inkers), Tom Brevoort (editor)
Unbeatable Squirrel Girl II#7 (June, 2016) - Ryan North (writer), Erica
Henderson (art), Wil Moss (editor)
Last updated: 01/11/17
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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