Mikado (comics) pattern, and the Question tracked him down. Their conversation touched Dr. Spaulding deeply, and he injected himself with a poison intended for the Question. By the time the Question had recovered from the Mikado's opiate injection, the Mikado had disappeared completely. He has not appeared since then. The Mikado's name was taken from that of the Gilbert & Sullivan opera of the same name, and his chant is a line of a song sung by The Mikado, the Emperor of Japan, in Act II. The name of his alter ego was taken from the Groucho Marx character, Captain Spaulding. Marx
The Mikado is parodied by "Sumo of the Opera", which credits Sullivan as the composer of most of its songs. The detective novel "Death at the Opera" (1934) by Gladys Mitchell is set against a background of a production of "The Mikado". In 2007, the Asian American theatre company, Lodestone Theatre Ensemble, produced "The Mikado Project", an original play by Doris Baizley and Ken Narasaki. It was a deconstruction of the opera premised on a fictional Asian American theatre company attempting to raise funds, while grappling with perceived racism in productions of "The Mikado", by producing a revisionist version of the opera.