Able to regenerate from any and all injuries, including death, Craig Hollis is unable to die and therefore dubs himself Mister Immortal, vowing to fight crime. With the two-dimensional Flatman, they form the Great Lakes Avengers in the Wisconsin area, despite lacking official Avengers sanction.
Death Becomes Him
Born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin to Audrey and Edward Hollis, Craig enters the world as the sole member of the Homo supreme group. He is destined to be the last being alive at the end of time and thus the one individual who will make his way to the next reality, like the world-devourer Galactus. Given the boy's unique status, Oblivion sends his agent Deathurge to monitor the child, but Craig can see the embodiment of self-destruction, even as a baby. While still in the hospital, Deathurge takes his mother away because she dies during childbirth. Deathurge would return to encourage the boy towards dangerous situations with Craig referring to him as D'Urge. When D'Urge convinces the boy to play with matches, it leads to Edward's death. It was the boy's eighth birthday.
From there, Craig is placed in the home of the abusive Mr. O'Doughan. On the bright side, he falls for O’Doughan’s daughter, Terri. When they were older, the pair moved into their own place, but she commits suicide and Deathurge comes for her. Hollis becomes so distraught that he jumps off a building only to get back up. After a few other failed suicide attempts, he decides to change his tune, come up with a costume, and become a Super Hero.
Live and Let Die
As a Homo supreme, Craig Hollis has essentially evolved beyond permanent death. He can be killed and feel that pain, but after several minutes he comes back and heals. Immediately after, he flies into a rage and needs to calm down.
During his time with teammate Dinah Soar, she allows him to be the one person who could understand her, a sacred bond to her people. Mr. Immortal finds great comfort in his long-living companion who would help calm him down after his many resurrections.
A Troubled Past
Craig suffers much loss in his early years. His mother dies during childbirth and his father perishes in a fire set by the boy on his eighth birthday.
During Craig’s childhood, he thinks of Deathurge as an imaginary friend, referring to him as D'Urge. After his father's death, Craig is placed in the O'Doughan house where the father there was abusive to everyone, including his own daughter, Terri. Craig and Terri grow close, begin dating and run away together, but she commits suicide, prompting Deathurge to reappear.
Suffering through grief and attempting to end his own life a few times, he eventually decides to become a hero, MISTER Immortal, and then starts his own team, the Great Lakes Avengers. Flatman and DeMarr Davis, AKA Doorman, join the team as do Dinah Soar and Ashley Crawford, AKA Big Bertha, both of whom date Mr. Immortal at times. Doreen Green, AKA Squirrel Girl, Leather Boy, Good Boy and Deadpool are also associated with the team. For a time, Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, and Bobbi Morse, AKA Mockingbird, agree to help train the team, which goes up against such foes as Dr. Tannenbaum, Dr. Nod, and Maelstrom.
Forever and a Day
Mister Immortal quickly realized that his powers would likely work better in a team setting, so he put an ad in the paper looking for fellow powered individuals. That's how he came to meet Flatman, Dinah Soar, Big Bertha, Doorman and Leather Boy, though it turned out he had responded to the wrong ad. Hollis wanting to stick with the water boundary theme of the other two teams and decided to call them the Great Lakes Avengers. Luckily Crawford's modeling career made enough money so she could pay for the team's expenses.
At some point, Craig went to mourn Terri during Christmas. Dinah Soar followed him, which gave him the opportunity to give her a whistle as part of the team's Secret Santa celebration. Dinah's people, who lived for a very long time, could only communicate with one person for their entire lives and chose Hollis, thus beginning a deep romantic relationship. He soon discovered that she could calm him down like no other after he came back from death.
While working in Milwaukee, the team foiled a bank robbery. Mister Immortal was the first of the group to encounter the thieves and got shot. The others swooped in and handled most of the robbers, but Hollis lost his cool and had to be restrained while pummeling the man who shot him. Dinah Soar used her unique abilities to calm him down. During the ensuing news coverage, Mister Immortal addressed the cameras and revealed they had taken the name the Great Lakes Avengers. Hawkeye happened to see the report and was none too pleased.
Shortly after, Mister Immortal led the team to a call at the Germania Building. However, this was a ploy by Hawkeye and Mockingbird to meet the team who had usurped their name. When Mister I faced off against them, though, he thought they were fakes! After spending some time with Hollis and the others, Hawkeye saw the potential in the group and offered to manage them. He led them into action after only a bit of training upon intercepting a Quinjet’s distress signal. They eventually made their way to the facility holding the Assimilator. Even though it put out huge levels of radiation, Mister Immortal went in anyway, knowing that dying would not be much of a problem for him.
Hawkeye stuck around for a little while, trying to make the Great Lakes Avengers a well-oiled fighting machine. Since Mister Immortal's resurrection power was neither offensive nor defensive, they focused on his physical training. During the session, Hawkeye tried mixing it up and accidentally caused Hollis to fall into Doorman. Luckily Dinah did not hesitate to swoop in and save her teammate. Eventually Hawkeye left the team to go to the West Coast squad, though Mockingbird stayed back. Later, the team responded when Terminus appeared in St. Louis. They stalled the menace long enough for the other heroes to show up and put an end to it.
Mister Immortal received what he thought was a video call from Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, asking the team to help recover his shield from an old carnival. There, they took on the real Captain America and Jim Hammond, AKA Human Torch, before realizing they had been tricked by a kid who had stumbled upon the mystic ruby of Cyttorak. However, he only made off with a fake of Cap's iconic weapon.
The team stuck together after that, training and honing their skills in secret. That is until the Onslaught incident seemingly killed the Avengers and Fantastic Four. Taking a cue from the new Thunderbolts, Mister I and the team renamed themselves the Lightning Rods. Before making their presence felt, though, they went to the San Francisco aquarium where they ran into Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool, who shot Mister Immortal. Later, when the T-Bolts were outed as being villains, the Rods were upset and made a deal with G.W. Bridge of S.H.I.E.L.D. to take them down. Instead, the Lightning Rods were defeated and the Thunderbolts stole their costumes to escape from Bridge. However, the teams worked together to take on the recently returned Franklin Hall, AKA Graviton.
With that, the team went back to calling themselves the Great Lakes Avengers. One day, while playing cards, Ashley called the others because the Ani-Men had attacked the location of her modeling shoot. However, by the time the GLAers showed up, the main Avengers squad had already arrived. After that, Mister Immortal decided to disband the team, but before he told the others, they got word that the Avengers had disassembled in the wake of Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch's attack.
Re-inspired to make a name for themselves, the team went on patrol, they found Malestrom. When the villain attacked, Mister Immortal took the hit and felt pain like never before. While Dinah soothed him, Maelstrom hit her as well and she perished, which once again garnered Deathurge's attention. While Hollis mourned, the others brought Squirrel Girl into the fold. A disguised Leather Boy broke in and killed a drunken Mister Immortal and Squirrel Girl's partner Monkey Joe because he was jealous about not being asked to rejoin the team.
During his next encounter with Deathurge, Craig demanded to know why the embodiment of self-destruction was so interested in him. He learned that he is Homo supreme, the last line in human evolution and will live to the End of Everything. Deathurge also told Mister Immortal everything he needed to know to stop Maelstrom. While the others fought, Hollis confronted Maelstrom and managed to trick him into killing himself, so that Craig could come back to life and destroy the universe-threatening machine.
Upon realizing that most of them were mutants, the team changed its name once more, this time to the Great Lakes X-Men. That Christmas, Mister Immortal led the charge against Dr. Tannenbaum and his killer Christmas trees. During an epic poker night hosted by Ben Grimm, AKA the Thing, the team settled on a new name: the Great Lakes Champions.
During the Super Hero Civil War, Deadpool went after Mister I and the Great Lakes Champions in an effort to impress the pro-Registration government. However, the team had already registered and they did manage to catch and briefly capture the Merc with a Mouth. Having joined up, they changed their name to the Great Lakes Initiative. The GLI and Deadpool worked together again to stop an AIM weapon utilizing Dionysus' godly powers called the Inebriation Wave. After saving the day, they returned to the new GLI HQ and Mister I asked Wade if he wanted to become a member. Wade not-so-politely declined, but did agree to be a reservist.
GLI got involved in the Skrull Secret Invasion, fighting off the shapeshifters. After Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin, rose to power, before dismantling the Initiative, he sent Greg Willis, AKA Gravity, to the GLI. Later, when the fear wave swept the Earth, the people of Milwaukee wanted to oust their resident super squad. However, Craig retained hope and bolstered his teammates. From there they encountered Professor Orson Kasloff, AKA Asbestos Man, who they talked into surrendering, not wanting to get too close to him.
At some point, Mister Immortal and Big Bertha began dating and even got engaged. However, he showed up to her place drunk the next day and said he had to focus on himself. Shortly after, the team broke up. Thanks to some legal loopholes, Flatman wound up with ownership of the Avengers trademark and worked out a deal for his team to be made official, permanent Avengers members. Flatman texted Hollis about being reassigned to Detroit, but he did not respond because he did not have his phone. In fact, to sober up, Craig decided to bury himself in coffin for a year and asked his friend Mike to deliver food and water. After about six weeks, Doorman found his old pal and got him out of the coffin.
Craig returned to the team and met new member Good Boy, a werewolf, as well as Pansy, a kind of intern who had come across Hollis' phone after he went into the grave. Though the reunion was rocky, the team came together to stop Dr. Nod, who had stolen Bertha's powers. Hollis suggested they use Maneuver 33 against the menace. Flatman launched Mister I and Doorman at Nod which allowed Craig to phase directly into the villain's body where he eventually found and attacked his heart. While they celebrated their victory, Deadpool showed up to tell them they no longer had a legal claim to the Avengers name.
Most recently, he and his team tried fending off the Badoon invasion only to be resoundingly defeated. Regardless of the threat, Mister Immortal seems poised to jump into action, so long as his head's in the right place.
