The Dark Lord, wielder of the One Ring to rule them all, and the leader of a massive orc army a.k.a. Sauron is one of the Lord of the Rings films and books' most iconic villains. Funny enough, Marvel Comics has its own version. Though, Marvel's Sauron is a little different.
J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy book trilogy has garnered a lot of attention over the years - especially because of Peter Jackson's films as well as the video games Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle Earth: Shadow of War that explore the lore of Tolkien's secondary world known as Middle Earth. Tolkien's book trilogy revolves around the main characters Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee as they journey to the land of Mordor to destroy the One Ring to rule them all and stop Sauron - the Dark Lord from enslaving all of Middle Earth. But Marvel's Sauron is quite different from Tolkien's - though he is still a force to be reckoned with as he possesses the power of life-absorption and can take mutant powers.
Although Jason Aaron, Nick Bradshaw, Walden Wong, Laura Martin, and Joe Caramagna's comic Wolverine & the X-Men #31 doesn't go into Karl Lykos a.k.a. Sauron's backstory regarding being bitten by a cave-dwelling pteranodon, being given superhuman abilities, and becoming a humanoid pteranodon after absorbing the life-energy of a mutant for the first time - it does dive into his love for science. In the comic, one of the students of Jean Grey's School for Higher Learning named Quintavius Quire a.k.a Kid Omega is brought to Hellfire Academy - a school built to create powerful evil mutants. On his first day, he meets his first-period teacher who just so happens to be X-Men's Mystique and discovers that if he doesn't watch his mouth... he's going to end up dead. Then, he attends his second-period class and meets his science teacher - Sauron. Luckily, for Kid Omega's sake, Marvel's Sauron is not nearly as powerful as Tolkien's.
During class, the self-proclaimed Sauron tells the students that by the end of the semester, they will know how to assemble and detonate gamma bombs, attack gorillas with cosmic rays, and even create their own race of mutated individuals. While informing the students on what they will be learning over the course of the rest of the semester, a mutant named Snot interrupts his lecture because he's unsure if he's in the correct class. Immediately after Snot asks if he's in the correct class, Sauron scolds him for interrupting and being tardy. Then, to show the rest of the class what happens when one interrupts his lecture, Sauron begins to drain the life-energy from Snot and tells the class to read chapter one on, "Newton's Three Laws of Mass Destruction." Thus, showing the class why he's the supreme ruler of the classroom and referencing Tolkien's Dark Lord.
Although Marvel's Sauron is not as powerful as Tolkien's, he still packs a punch. But if he was more powerful and truly shared similar attributes of Tolkien's Dark Lord, then maybe he would have become a more well-known Marvel villain.
