<!doctype
html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">The Lethal Luthors:
A Deceptive Brilliance
by Dennis Power
PART ONE: LUTHOR BY NATURE BUT NOT BY NAME
Paul
Finglemore divided his time between his two families but the Luthor branch got
the short end of the stick as he lived most of his life as Dr. Thomas
Wainwright. Thomas Wainwright would leave his family to do charity work once a
quarter, traveling around
Henry King Wainwright 1892-1985
Henry was a small, sickly child who suffered from mild dwarfism and a crook back. Despite his great desire to fit in with the other children Henry could not compete on a physical level.[2] Henry was bullied and mocked. Henry spent his childhood immersed in literature and science. Although his father encouraged the boy’s scholarly pursuits, he did not spend a great deal of time with the children—like many fathers of that time. When Henry began hearing voices in his head as a small child, he soon realized that these were the thoughts of people surrounding him. His father's true disappointment of his physicality was devastating. When he was thirteen Henry became ill and nearly died. After that the learned that he could project thoughts into someone's mind. At first this was a small ability. Henry became interested in science and biology hoping to find the biological mechanism that controlled his gift.
Unlike his brother Alexander Henry remained at home until it was time for him to go to college. Once he did leave, however, his family never heard from him again. His first year at college was a horror because he became sexually mature at this same time. Like his younger brother John, whom he knew nothing about, he matured slowly, yet not quite as slowly as John did. Henry's short, twisted body was not looked upon with favor by the fairer sex, and so he remained alone. The humiliation of this might have allayed after a while if he had not also been able to feel the disgust and loathing rising from these beautiful women. During this time Henry learned that anger and sexual frustration/desire could channel his projective telepathy. As Henry studied psychology and biology, he honed his gift. He changed his name to Henry King, the later name chosen as a goal he intended to live up to; he would become a ruler of men—a ruler of the world—with his gift.
Henry King became a medical doctor and a psychiatrist, all while honing his mental gifts. He was quite tentative about actually using them. This was especially true after he heard about how the Great Powers had killed a man named John and his fellow members of a utopian colony because the colonists had had exhibited mental powers. Henry later learned that his brother Alexander had become a brilliant master criminal. Henry wondered if perhaps as a test he should try something of this nature.
Dr. Henry
King first achieved this scheme in his dreams. In 1939 Dr. King became one of
the few people to deliberately direct his subconscious to visit the Dreamlands,
descending the seven hundred steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber and setting
out through the Enchanted Wood. From there he traveled through secret passages,
and hidden trails where unearthly flora twisted into the visages of chthonic
deities which swallowed all unwary visitors. He emerged into the shared
unconsciousness of urban
Rather than expose himself to danger or possible legal repercussions he worked through a patsy, using low level telepathy and ability to create solid illusions.[4] Dr. King induced a fellow scientist, who had mocked his theories about psychic powers, into a state of madness. Directed by voices the scientist Dr. Able used the name Dr. Elba.[5] Dr. Elba created a crime wave using blackmail, with information supplied by King as one of the voices and also by using a serum that drove men insane. The serum was derived from the hormones of a rare species of African ape that underwent periodic bouts of madness.
Dr. Elba
overreached his ambition, and although he had schemes going in several
Northeastern American cities he left a trail that led back to him. His schemes
were thwarted by several of the costumed vigilantes of the day, who did not
actually work as a unit, but did end the various plots within days of one
another. When faced with capture Dr. Elba purportedly injected himself with his
own serum and jumped out of a window. Actually Henry King induced
Intrigued
by the arrival of costumed interference in
As a test
of his powers and a possible way of eliminating powerful opposition to his
future plans of criminal supremacy, King began to invade the dreams of the
mystery men and women who had opposed him. He filled their nighttime dreams
with images of wartime conflict. He replayed the dreams over several nights,
with each night the dreams becoming ever more realistic. His aim was to have
them dream themselves to death by convincing them that the events were real and
that they were powerless to prevent their violent ends at the hands of Japanese
soldiers. Dr. King had designed a machine to amplify his psionic energy and
tried to conclude this plan with one fell swoop by causing the mystery men’s
dreams to blend into one large battle of the ALSTR squadron against the forces
of
Over the
next year, Henry King created a criminal empire, that is to say as a freelance
criminal psychiatrist he met, made contact with, and began to influence
criminals in various cities on the East coast of the United States. By chance
or by design the cities in which King chose to direct crime sprees were the
home cities of various costumed vigilantes. It is likely that he chose these
cities deliberately to taunt the costumed mystery men with his cleverness.
Despite having used proxies and having mentally directed his criminal
activities from afar, he underestimated how persistent and intelligent the
mystery men were. Having defeated his proxy criminals, each of the costumed
mystery men discovered that the trail led back to the dummy bank accounts that
King had set up in his base of operations, a small city on the coast of
The four mystery men and the one mystery woman entered his domicile with the intent of capturing him. As a ruse, The Brain Wave created mental doppelgangers of the mystery men’s and mystery woman's paramours and made it appear as if he held them hostage.[7] As a bargain for his freedom he allowed the vigilantes to free their paramours and then commanded these mental creations to attack the vigilantes. He attempted to escape during the fight between the vigilantes and their imagined foes. However, King was accidentally knocked out of a window and apparently plunged to his death below. The foes of the mysterymen winked out of existence upon King's demise.
But Dr. King had not died. A tree limb caught him as he fell, momentarily stunning him. Realizing that he was too weakened to take on all of these heroes, he projected a mental illusion that hid him from their view. He spent the next two months honing and refining his mental powers, and he came up with a great plan of vengeance.
When Dr. King was ready to enact his vengeance he lured the four mystery men who had previously defeated him to his tower and then seemingly subjected them to a shrinking ray he had invented, placing them on small shelves as trophies. He then had a meeting with his four lieutenants who lived in the home cities of the captured vigilantes and described the crime wave that he wished for them to undertake.
According to the comic-book version of events, Hawkman summoned his feathered friends who flew the shrunken heroes to their home cities, where they ended the crime waves. After the crimes had been thwarted, Johnny Thunder decided to use his magic thunderbolt to restore the heroes to their original size. The restored heroes returned to The Brain Wave's hideout, but he had mined the road. The heroes noticed the mines, and Johnny Thunder's thunderbolt placed the mines underneath the tower so that when The Brain Wave pressed the detonation plunger for the explosive plunger he actually blew himself up.
Dr. King did not really invent a shrinking ray nor did he shrink the heroes to the size of eight inches. This was one of his greatest illusions; he thoroughly convinced the four mystery men that they had in fact been shrunk. He also was able to cloak them in mentally created illusions that gave them the appearance of being eight inches tall to outside observers. Although he actually imprisoned them in iron cages, he made it appear as though they were placed on a shelf. His control of their mental perception was such that they could touch and feel the iron bars of their cages and not realize it.
There was one flaw in his plan, however, and this was due to one individual. The individual in question was Johnny Thunder, a man of limited intelligence who managed to track down and tag along with various heroes in various cities. Johnny claimed to be the possessor of a magic thunderbolt that granted his wishes. While there are documented cases of beings such as the Djinn sometimes crossing over into ordinary reality and functioning to a limited degree in the WNU existence, this does not appear to be what happened in Thunder’s case. Johnny Thunder appears to have been to what used to be called an idiot savant. Along with Thunder's limited intelligence, he was also gifted with powerful psionic powers, which he used in a limited fashion and for some reason had convinced himself that a magic friend was actually carrying out the feats of wonder. The genie may have been a manifestation of the lonely boy's imaginary friend.
In his
comic book origin (Flash Comics #1, January 1940) Johnny Thunder was kidnapped
as a child from his American parents by agents of Badhnisia
(a small Asian country), because he had been born at a time of great
significance to them - the 7th hour of the 7th day of the 7th month
of 1917 - which they believed would mean that he would grow to wield great
power at his 7th birthday. In this story, Johnny was an only child - later, it
was stated that it was the fact that he was the 7th son of a 7th son that
entitled him to his power. Johnny was given a magic belt featuring the
inscription 'CEI-U' (the magic words which summon the Thunderbolt) by the Badhnisians. Unfortunately for Badhnisia,
it soon found itself at war with a neighboring country. Johnny was hidden away
in a secret place, though he didn't stay there for long. He fell into a boat
and eventually made his way back to the
Many years later while working as a window cleaner, Johnny saw a colleague fall from a window several stories high. Since he'd just spoken the words 'say you' (CEI-U), when Johnny called out to his colleague to stop falling, his magic Thunderbolt appeared and stopped the man from falling to his death.
While Johnny Thunder may indeed have been born on the 7th hour of the 7th day of the 7th month of 1917, the story of him being the seventh son of a seventh son, and the idea that he may have been raised in the mythical land of Badhesia was likely been wish fulfillment on Johnny's part. Or rather the fantasy of an autistic savant child abandoned at birth that had lived through the rigors and horrors of the orphanage system. The heroes who were "privileged" to partner up with Johnny Thunder did not know how the magic effects that often accompanied Johnny were achieved but only that on occasion he was useful.
Johnny wished for the magic Thunderbolt to restore the heroes to their original size. Actually using his formidable but unacknowledged psionic abilities Johnny was able to overpower Henry King's pervasive illusion and show the captured heroes their true situation. They freed themselves from the cages and sought out Henry King. Hawkman flew after the four criminal lieutenants who had left by car. Dr. Fate accompanied him.[8]
Johnny Thunder, Dr. Midnite and The Atom continue searching for Henry King.[9] They discovered King at the top of his lighthouse. He claimed to have mined the entire complex. Having failed at his establishing his criminal empire, Dr. King was going to commit suicide and take as many heroes as he could with him. Dr. King pushed the plunger of the dynamite and the tower exploded. Johnny's magic thunderbolt carried Johnny, Dr. Midnite and the Atom out of harms' way. They saw the tower destroyed.
The explosion was real, however the image of The Brain Wave pushing the plunger was not real; Dr. King had set dynamite charges hoping to kill the meddling costumed heroes. But he had mistimed his charges and so was caught in the explosion and hurt. He survived with a twisted leg and a shoulder injury that healed improperly giving him the appearance of a hunchback.
Prior to embarking on his career as a criminal mastermind, Dr. King had manufactured an identity for himself as Dr. Forest Malone, an expert in dream psychology. As part of the false identity, Dr. King projected a false image of himself using his projective telepathy. This identity was a legitimate cover in which King could take shelter in case his real identity was compromised. He fell in love with his office assistant a girl named Marva. She reciprocated his affections and they were married. On their wedding night he revealed his true appearance to her, that of a short man with a twisted back and an oversized head. Actually this was an illusion as well; it being the image that Dr. Henry King used to hide his real appearance as a frail, bald man with a small humpback. She fled in horror but returned shortly, discovering she loved the man inside rather than how he appeared.[10] Soon after Marva returned to him, Dr. Forest Malone discovered that he could use her as a medium with which to draw ectoplasm from the spiritual world and create solid three-dimensional thought images. With her help he created a pleasing shape made of ectoplasm that covered his own hideous seeming body. He resented Marva for accepting this more pleasing shape and also because he needed her to create his solid illusions. Dr. King was a sexual psychopath, strongly desiring women but also despising them as worthless chattel to be used and abused. He apparently did not act upon those impulses, so far as can be determined, until his rejection by Marva and his dependence upon her.[11]
However having discovered his new power Dr. Henry King embarked on a series of depredations against women which the comic's versions only hint. King hypnotized the unwilling Marva into accompanying him and using her power to draw ectoplasm. He would then gain entrance into the homes of various women by impersonating their sweethearts, husbands, or friends and subjecting them to humiliation, rape, torture, and in some cases murder. Concerned over these crimes against women, Wonder Woman became involved. King had run up against Wonder Woman twice in his previous exploits. He was in awe of and frightened of her feminine beauty; he both hated and loved her. Investigating these crimes, Wonder Woman quickly noted that a woman with an identical description was always near the scene of the crimes, something that the police apparently overlooked. Wonder Woman spotted Marva as she waited patiently outside of the house of one of the victims. Wonder Woman confronted Marva and suddenly Marva was freed of the hypnotism placed upon her. A scream inside followed. Wonder Woman apprehended a dwarfish man, who the lady of the house claimed had been her husband a moment before. Marva confessed that she had been forced to do the twisted dwarf’s bidding and vowed not to allow him to use her again. Marva only knew the dwarfish man as Dr. Psycho and could not recall much about herself. The dwarfish Dr. Psycho was arrested and jailed to stand trial for murder.[12]
A month after Dr. Psycho was jailed, Marva appeared to have had a change of heart and visited him in prison. The next morning, Dr. Psycho's sleeping body disappeared as if it were smoke. This was one of Dr. Psycho's illusions, and the bad doctor had escaped. Once again with Marva's unwilling aid, he used his ectoplasmic power for evil. Blaming Wonder Woman for Marva's betrayal and his subsequent incarceration, Psycho tried to destroy the super heroine’s reputation. Assuming the form of Wonder Woman, Dr. Psycho murdered Steve Howard's secretary in full view of the office staff. Even at this early date Wonder Woman had such a strong reputation for justice and morality that people did not believe the story, instead concluding it was in fact one of her enemies trying to discredit her or a case of mistaken identity. The real killer was unmasked once again as Marva came to her senses and dissipated the ectoplasm about Dr. Psycho. Dr. Psycho was sent to jail once more. In a few days he was free once again.
While Wonder Woman was performing at a charity carnival, Dr. Psycho appeared and challenged her to a contest of speed and strength. He was able to best her at both of these contests.[13] Even though he had beaten Wonder Woman, the crowd booed him and cheered her. When Wonder Woman tried to deflect the crowd's jeers by stating that he had won fair and square, Dr. Psycho believed that she was mocking him. He stole her magic lasso and forced her to do humiliating acts in public. Even so, Wonder Woman tried to convince him that she wanted to be his friend. She may have been sincere in this, but she could also have trying to keep Dr. Psycho on an even temper in the crowd so that he could not use his new powers to hurt people. Finally Dr. Psycho could not bring himself to believe her and made it appear as though the carnival mast had broken and that the tent was falling. As Wonder Woman tried to hold up the pole, Dr. Psycho escaped.
A few months later Dr. Psycho once again planned to destroy Wonder Woman by proxy, too afraid by now to confront her personally. He convinced Paula Dupree that she was in love with Steve Trevor and that the only way to have him was to kill Wonder Woman. Paula Dupree was a female gorilla who had been transformed by surgery and genetic therapy into a beautiful human woman but who still retained many of her bestial traits.[14]
Although
Paula initially overpowered Wonder Woman and defeated her in battle, Diana
subdued her with her magic lasso. Paula was then remanded to the custody of the
sanitarium where Dr. Psycho had found her, although the comic book version of
these events had Wonder Woman taking Paula to
Early in 1944 Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor unveiled what was supposed to be a statue of Wonder Woman built from copper pennies donated by her young fans. They were flabbergasted to see that it had been stolen and replaced by a statue of Dr. Psycho. Dr. Psycho called Diana Prince and asked her to tell Wonder Woman that he would return her statue since he felt guilty about stealing from children. He gave her a time and place to pick up the statue. This turned out to be a ruse. He knocked out Wonder Woman with a mind bolt and created two ectoplasmic Wonder Women—one which was tyrannical and the other of which was vain—and sent them out into the world.[16] The duplicates chained Wonder Woman to a whale's back. [17] Wonder Woman freed herself, and she convinced the vain Wonder Woman to attack the tyrannical one. Wonder Woman encircled both of the duplicates in her magic lasso. Dr. Psycho was hard pressed to maintain the structural integrity of his constructs; since they were physical manifestations of his mind, the lasso also affected him. During his concentration on the battle Steve Trevor knocked him unconscious. The duplicates faded into nothingness and Dr. Psycho was captured once more and escaped again.
As the war continued Dr. Malone found that his private practice became so busy that he did not have time to spend bothering Wonder Woman or other costumed vigilantes. Once the war had ended, however, he soon returned to his old tricks. There was a great upsurge in the mistreatment of women by returning soldiers and civilian personnel. Most people believed that this was because men resented women for having altered the sexual status quo during the war. Having taken over jobs that had once been the exclusive employment of men while the men were at war, many women were reluctant to give these positions up. Also many women began to assert a more equal status on the domestic front. The resultant backlash manifested in a rise of the depiction of independent women as scheming, loose connivers—depicted cinematically as the film noir femme fatale. The public propaganda against independent womanhood was unfortunately accompanied by an upsurge of crimes against women. Wonder Woman was not so certain that this wide-spread reaction was merely the result of post-war stress or if there was a deliberate force behind it. Diana discovered a pattern behind the seeming random violence and triangulated the point of origination. This led her to Dr. Psycho, who eluded her once again. Shortly after this Diana was shocked when the woman she knew as Marva was struck by an automobile before her eyes and died bleeding her life out in Diana's arms. When Marva gave up her last breath she faded away to nothingness. It appears that having failed to use his ectoplasm shaping power to destroy Wonder Woman and tired of his nagging remnant of a moral conscience, Dr. King killed off its manifestation, Marva.
The next public scheme of Dr. Psycho was a rather lame attempt to discredit Steve Trevor. Dr. King arranged for a small-time thief and murderer to be transformed into the likeness of Steve Trevor through plastic surgery. He then committed crimes. This was a bit of a test to see how far Diana's devotion to Steve Trevor went. According to the comic-book version, Diana could not bring herself to apprehend a man who looked like the man she loved, and so she retired. In actuality she had no trouble separating the identities of the two men no matter how alike they may have looked. She took the ersatz Trevor into custody with no qualms whatsoever.[18]
In 1946
as Dr. Forest Malone, an expert in dream psychology, King solicited the
In the
winter of 1947, Dr. King was contacted by a man who knew at least one of his
criminal personas, that of Dr. Psycho. This man wished for Dr. Psycho to
participate in a far-ranging plan to neutralize some of the costumed vigilantes
whose efforts against crime had put a crimp in various criminal enterprises
across the
Through the underworld the Collector let it be known that he also was seeking the services of the Brain Wave, not realizing this was another alias of the same man. Dr. Henry King contacted him in the guise of The Brain Wave and was assigned the task of stealing the Green Lantern's ring. The Collector was in truth Vandal Savage[21] who was working in concert with a man named the Thinker[22], a young man named Per Degaton[23]and a pair of lesser known criminals known only as The Gambler[24] and The Wizard[25]. The Thinker was to negate The Flash's power, Vandal Savage was to capture Hawkman's wings, Per Degaton was to take on Dr. Midnite, and the Gambler was to challenge Dr. Fate.[26] To accentuate their plans and to create a diversion, The Wizard was in charge of releasing prisoners from penitentiaries across the nation.
The criminals were initially successful in capturing their particular foes and removing their sources of power, but the whole plan collapsed because of the arrogance of The Brain Wave. Having felled the Green Lantern with a mind blast The Brain Wave saw the Lantern fall into a ravine and plummet to a certain death. The Brain Wave did not follow through to make certain that the Green Lantern had indeed died. Although his ring protected him from serious harm, the Green Lantern was injured.[27] It took him a few days to recover enough to track down the location of the captive heroes where the villains were attempting to wrest the secrets of their technology from them. The mock trial in the comic-book version was a fiction created by the comic-book writers at the vigilantes’ request not to disclose the fact that they had been tortured for information about their devices, so as not to give other villains the same idea. Green Lantern did impersonate the Thinker but did so to free the others. Once freed, the vigilantes rounded up the criminals and turned them over to the police. [28]
While he was in jail, Dr. King was approached to work for the newly created Central Intelligence Division in their Psy-Ops division. Given a free hand, Dr. King designed programs that would later be known for creating sleeper assassins who could be triggered by certain phrases. He also worked for MK-Ultra [29]and designed mental enhancement drugs that did not quite work out as well as intended[30]
In the late fifties Dr. King had the idea to test his theories on the general public and use people who would susceptible to mind-control techniques and brainwashing and—in the opinion of the Agency—who would not be missed if the experiment went awry. These were narcotic addicts. Dr. King called the program Symbion to emphasize that people were part of a greater whole, that society was a living organism, and also because of the use of symbolism in the therapy. The therapy was a combination of ego destruction of the addict by his peers directed by the Programmer. When the ego destruction was complete, the ego reconstruction would begin, using sophisticated dream therapy and symbolism. They were actually using brainwashing techniques later co-opted by several cults.
One of the first persons who entered the program was Merry Pemberton, a society debutante who had moonlighted as costumed vigilante in the forties. She had been known as Merry the Girl of a 1000 Gimmicks. When she became hooked on heroin, her family disowned her and she became a prostitute to survive and keep supplied with heroin. She took the street name Merry the Girl with a 1000 Tricks. Merry quickly fell in love with Dr. King's illusionary image of a strapping young man with a full head of red hair. She eventually became his wife and a spokeswoman for the movement. Symbion grew over the next decade and a half. The CIA disliked King's growing status and tried to have it shut down. King out-maneuvered them by having Symbion registered as a religious organization in 1972.
There were radical splinters of Symbion that King publicly disavowed, such as the Symbionese Liberation Army, but which he actually directed. Symbion began to attack its critics, including legislators and government representatives, and reporters who investigated the Church. People were beaten, rattlesnakes were put in mailboxes, and the daughter of a major newspaper publishing chain was kidnapped. Not only was she kidnapped but King successfully brainwashed her into become a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army and had her carry out robberies with them.
Captain
A few
days later Power Girl managed to free the captured heiress from her captors.
There were definite links between the Symbion
organization and this terrorist offshoot, despite claims to the otherwise. The
CIALD was given the green light to take the leaders of Symbion
into custody for stockpiling weapons and laundering money taken in bank
robberies. The CIA's domestic intelligence offices suddenly came by the information
that fingerprints proved that the leader of Symbion
was Dr. Henry King, formerly known as The Brain Wave, an ex-convict. When
Captain
Dr. Henry
King eluded capture, but his reputation was in a shambles. And he mourned
Merry, for he had truly loved her. Wishing vengeance on the world for having
destroyed all that he had created and loved, in June of 1975 he contacted his
old comrade in crime Per Degaton, who was currently using another name and no
longer looked as he had as a youth. Per Degaton had become quite wealthy through
various criminal schemes, and he agreed to help Dr. King because it would
further some of his own plans. Per Degaton allowed Dr. King the use of a
satellite and a weather-making device. With these he staged a series of
catastrophes across the globe in a bid for world domination.[31] A volcano formed in
Power Girl was once again among those who captured Dr. King, as was the person whom the comic story called Colonel Steven Trevor. This was to provide continuity to the Wonder Woman mythos and also to protect the real name of the government agent. This character was later called Steve Howard and so we will adopt that name. It was learned that the disasters had in fact not been real, as with other of Per Degaton's inventions the disaster satellite did work. Dr. King had used the satellite to augment his projective telepathy so that he created realistic illusions of the disasters, so real in fact that some people did succumb to injuries[32]. In a few days' time, Dr. Henry King was again in jail.
Dr. Henry King was not imprisoned long however and soon was free.
In
February of 1976, he teamed with the Wizard, who was not his old companion from
days gone by but another using the name. His plan to hijack the Alaskan
pipeline was defeated by Power Girl, Prince Zarkon,
and the Omega organization in
In
September of 1977 Dr. King pulled his most outrageous crime, he sent a message
to the newspapers stating that unless certain costumed vigilantes were placed
in solitary confinement and on death row in prison, he would send the home
cities of these heroes to the Phantom Zone. His list of vigilantes demonstrated
that Dr. King was losing his faculties for it included the original Flash, the
Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and a few others who were dead or retired. He also
named Power Girl and Wonder Woman[34] and asked for a million dollars per
city. The threat was ignored and
In 1979, Dr. King briefly took advantage of a situation in which several costumed vigilantes had lost their moral inhibitions from drinking contaminated water from the so-called Stream of Ruthlessness. He used his mental abilities to increase the violent tendencies of the vigilantes. Once again he was thwarted by Power Girl, among others.
After once again confronting Wonder Woman Dr. King developed an obsession for Steve Trevor that made his hatred for Wonder Woman all the more intense.[36] Viewing his attraction towards Steve Howard as something external rather than internal, Dr. King believed that the only way to eliminate it was to eliminate Wonder Woman and Steve Howard. He arranged a situation where Wonder Woman and Steve Howard were informed about the activities of some Russian spies. These Russian spies reacted with deadly force and Steve Howard was badly wounded. This took place in March of 1981.
Only when Steve Howard was nearly dead did Dr. King realize that he did not want the man to die. However, rather than admit that his motives were due to his attraction to Howard, Dr. King suddenly realized that Steve Howard could be used as a medium to pull ectoplasm from the dream dimension. Actually the thought of losing Howard was the emotional trigger that once again allowed him to use his ability to create solid thought figures. He devised a complicated stratagem to take Howard away from Wonder Woman and also destroy her, but in such a fashion that Howard would not directly blame him. [37]
One of
Dr. King's psychiatric patients in a bogus practice he had set up after
escaping from prison was a former ballerina named Helena Alexandros.
She was rather plain faced with many skin blemishes. In his sessions with her,
Dr. King discovered that she hated all men. Using his projective telepathy, Dr.
King invaded Helen Alexandros’ dreams. He appeared to
her in the form of Ares‑according to the comic books one of Wonder
Woman's greatest foes. He revealed to Helen that she was descended on her
mother’s side from Zeus, Leda, and Helen of Troy. Dr. King told her that he
could grant her beauty and power through her heritage of blood if she would
destroy Wonder Woman. Helen agreed, and was transformed into the beautiful
Silver Swan, with the powers of flight, great strength, and a "swan
song" that could wreak destruction. Dr. King told the Swan that
Wonder Woman checked up on Steve Howard at the hospital and learned from Dr. Prescott, who was in charge of him, that Steve was not endangered by his head wound, but that, somehow, his body or soul seem to be in transition. Left alone with him, Wonder Woman managed to bring Steve back to consciousness. Shortly afterwards, the Amazon came upon a gang of bank robbers, and a new arrival, a flying, costumed female who called herself the Silver Swan, helped her bring them in. The Silver Swan flew off and Wonder Woman discovered that the briefcase of secret documents she and Steve had been carrying was gone. Following the Silver Swan, Wonder Woman attempted to retrieve the briefcase, but the Silver Swan snatched it away and defeated the Amazon in battle. Unwilling to destroy Wonder Woman around witnesses, the Swan turned over the briefcase to the military and convinced General Darnell and company that she mistakenly thought Wonder Woman was stealing it. Wonder Woman herself was not convinced.
At the hospital Steve Howard found himself in the hands of a new arrival, Dr. Psycho. [38]
When Diana returned to the hospital to check on Howard, she learned that a doctor, answering the description of her old foe Dr. Psycho had transferred him to a private hospital. Psycho had strapped down Howard to a table with the aid of his henchman Melvin. Wonder Woman learned where Howard had been taken and burst into his room. Just as she burst in, Psycho summoned a mass of ectoplasm from Howard. Dr. Psycho used the ectoplasm to build a new, costumed body-shell for himself. This is new body was a duplicate of Steve Howard although in a costume resembling Wonder Woman's. This new body was as powerful as Wonder Woman and probably represented a fusion of King's desires for both Howard and Wonder Woman. In his new form King called himself Captain Wonder. Wonder Woman was hard-pressed in battling him, until she succeeded in knocking him around and broke his concentration. This caused his Captain Wonder identity to dissolve. There were probably also psychological reasons why Psycho could not maintain this form for very long. The Amazon was about to leave with Steve Howard when the Silver Swan broke in and declared she had come to kill them both. [39]
Wonder
Woman battled the Silver Swan and encircled her with the magic lasso, but the
Swan’s ectoplasmic shell gave her the ability to
stave off domination. Dr. King was able to use Steve Howard to produce enough
ectoplasm to turn himself into Captain Wonder again. As Captain Wonder he
attacked Wonder Woman, gained control of the lasso, freed the Swan, and roped
Wonder Woman. The Silver Swan fell in love with Captain Wonder at first sight.
She agreed to his plan to take the captive heroine to the White House and kill
her before the eyes of President Ronald Reagan. But Ares appeared to the Swan
and demanded that she order Captain Wonder to send Diana's invisible plane
crashing into the White House and thus murder the President and destroy Wonder
Woman and Steve Howard. The Swan and Captain Wonder loaded Howard and Wonder
Woman into the plane and took off for
Steve Howard awakened from his coma and grabbed the lasso from Captain Wonder, freeing Wonder Woman. Having no time to waste, Diana punched Captain Wonder, knocking him from the plane. Shocked by the fall, King was unable to maintain his Captain Wonder persona, but he did manage to cushion his fall with telekinesis before hitting the ground. The Silver Swan attacked Wonder Woman, but was defeated, and the Amazon managed to prevent her plane from smashing the White House and endangering President Reagan. Dr. King also lost his control over the Silver Swan ectoplasmic body and plain old Helen appeared. Of course in the comics it was Ares who withdrew her powers and returned her to the Helen Alexandros identity. When Helen saw Dr. King, she was frightened and ran away. Finally, Wonder Woman reunited with Steve.[40] Dr. King sustained a head injury causing brain damage that seemed to have eradicated his mental powers for a time.
Sometime during 1984, Dr. King escaped from jail, now known to be with the aid of the Luthor family, specifically Lex Luthor II and Alexis Luther. The Luthors had captured the villainous Mr. Hyde and subjected him to cybernetic augmentations including crystalline kryptonite bone spurs. They needed The Brain Wave to control the mind of Mr. Hyde so that he would kill ruthlessly, not allowing his inner morality to take control of him at a possible crucial moment.
The
mind-controlled Hyde successfully killed Superman (
NOTES
[1] John however was not raised by Paul Finglemore
and Margot Picardot aka
Thomas Wainwright and Margaret Wainwright but rather by Dr. Thomas Wainwright
and “Pax” Wainwright in
[2] One of the progenitors of his genius as well as his
distorted physique was his ancestor the seriously genetically twisted George
Gordon, Lord Byron, from whom Paul Finglemore could also claim descent. If all
the research about Lord Byron is correct, he was not only a Capellean-Human
hybrid and a Mover for the Tocs and Ogs, he also carried both the Highlander strain of
immortality and a form of vampirism. The latter two manifested after his
"death". Yet Paul must have also been affected by something circa
1898, for many of his children conceived after this date displayed traits that
those conceived earlier did not.
[3] More about Dr. King's career as Dr. Sivana
will be explored in the forthcoming article Lightning Dreams: The story of
Billy Batson
[4] To this day it is not truly known what exactly Henry
King's powers were. Scientists and psychic researchers are divided on this
question. Among the various theories are that he was a powerful projective
telepath who made people believe that they were seeing, hearing, feeling
three-dimensional images when in fact it all took place in their minds. Other
researchers, more cognitive of his ancestral history believed that Dr. King using
a variation of his ancestor's Mover (see the article Aliens Among Us. Toc and Ogs for more on
the Movers) power had the ability to draw energy from the Phantom Zone and give
it substance and animation through his own psyche. Others of course believe
that he actually did contact the spiritual realm and commanded the souls of the
dead to do his bidding, an ability derived from a vampiric
heritage. As The Brain Wave, King made ludicrous claims of having been
descended from George Gordon, Lord Byron and also from Dracula, King of the
Vampires. This was probably a ruse to throw researchers off of the track.
[5] Dr. Elba appears in All Star Comics 8, that he was
a tool of The Brain Wave is revealed in All Star Squadron 20
[6] According
to The Secret Wars: The Modern Age by Jess Nevins
the device that the Green Lantern used “was technologically advanced but its
use had a deleterious effect on its user, perhaps due to a radiation leak of
some kind, and it was confiscated, by the American government, following the
death of the ‘Green Lantern’." Nevins in A
Wold Newton Universe Timeline states "Alan Scott, an American engineer, discovers an alien
weapon while in
The crystal
fragment attuned to Alan Scott, but imperfectly, and this imperfect match was
like a grafted organ that eventually is recognized as a foreign object by the
body and is rejected. The use of this power unknowingly caused damage to
Scott’s brain function, lymphatic system, and immune system. In the comics Alan
Scott is shown creating visible objects of green light that are molded by his
will, and the ring also allowed him to fly and made him immune to everything
but wood. The crystal fragment did give off a light when it was used, but this
was a polychromatic light; the effects that Scott created were actually psionically created multihued force fields. The weakness to
wood was created by Scott's unconsciousness when a man wielding a wooden club
startled him and knocked him unconscious when Scott allowed his force field to
drop. From thereafter he believed that wood could hurt him, and so it could.
The ring also allowed him to fly, but only for short distances. Zipping from
coast to coast was purely fictional. Use of the ring also fatigued him to a
great degree; an hour's worth of use was the equivalent of four hours of
intense physical strain.
The
obvious question as to why Alan Scott did not end the war by himself or
combined with other "super powered" beings such as Superman, the
Flash, Wonder Woman, etc., is simply that he could not. On his own Scott would not have been
powerful enough to fly over the ocean, take on the entire German army, reach
As for Superman,
Hugo Danner had fought in WWI and wanted no part of another war such as that.
His years in the future had given him a wider perspective on historical events
and he realized that however terrible it might seem, the war had to play out.
In the comics Clark
Wonder Woman with
her invisible "plane" and enhanced strength may have been able to
make a dent had she been able. Wonder Woman and Namor
and a team of non-super powered individuals did make three or four attempts to
breach the Nazi's offenses and capture the German High Command. Each time,
however, minor and major set backs prevented them from accomplishing their
mission. Wonder Woman, and others, began to wonder if some force or power was
preventing them from ending the war, as if the war had to run its course. Some
in the Allied Command believed this as well, but others believed that the
heroes had jinxed their own mission. Another speculation was that there
was something to the Axis propaganda about the Spear of Destiny or Holy Grail
influencing people who came within its area of influence or the similar story
of Parsifal, the German hero who canceled out superpowers. Wary that there
might be some truth to such rumors, the Allied Command did not make having the
heroes penetrate Axis territory a feasible strategic option.
[7] In the
comic book Wonder Woman, believing the JSA to be in dire straits, organized a
rescue team of herself, Hawkgirl, Peachy Pet Thunder,
Inza Cramer, Doris Lee and Dian Belmont. Disguised as
their male counterparts, they assaulted the tower at
[8] Hawkman and his girlfriend—later
wife—were masked vigilantes based in the
[9] Although The Spectre and Starman were depicted as taking part in this adventure, the
Spectre was a fictional character and the Starman actually rarely left his home city of
[10] In 1979 a woman's body that had been preserved in
formaldehyde was discovered hidden in a wall of one Dr. Forest Malone's former
residences. Forensic pathology revealed that the body had been sexually
assaulted and strangled. At first forensic psychiatrists believe that Dr. King
had tried to seduce the girl and had been violently rebuffed. Enraged, he had
assaulted and killed her. Fingerprints however proved that the woman was Dr.
King's wife Marva. The killing rage and the ensuing guilt and denial had
unleashed the most powerful of his psionic gifts. King had created an on-going
illusion of his murdered wife; so great was his denial that he actually
believed that the illusion was Marva, alive and in love with him.
[11] It now in fact appears that his first wife and his first
medium, Marva was, in fact his first psychic manifestation and that he could in
fact create these solid illusions on his own. How he did it is still up for
debate. More recently researchers have suggested that he could tap into the
other dimensional realities such as the dreamlands or tooniverse
or realms of raw chaos and built bodies out of dreamstuff,
toonstuff, or raw chaos. Others still maintain that
the illusions were not solid at all, it was just Dr.
King's projective telepathy making all who saw them perceive them as real.
[12] Since Marva was in fact a solid manifestation of Dr.
King's subconscious, her unwillingness may have represented an underlying sense
of morality that his conscious mind ran roughshod over. Confronted by Wonder
Woman, his subconscious rebelled and the ectoplasmic
power was lost. Feeling guilty about his crimes, he allowed himself to be
jailed and punished. Despite his madness, King was cunning enough to use his
dwarfed, big headed Dr. Psycho guise rather than his true appearance of a
frail, bald headed man, or his guise of handsome Dr. Forest Malone.
[13] The comic book version, (Wonder Woman 160 February
1966) states that this was plot by Ares to demonstrate that the powers given to
Wonder Woman by the female deities were nothing compared to those given to her
by the male ones, Hercules and Mercury, Ares gave those powers to Dr. Psycho.
However the simpler and truer explanation is that Dr. Psycho made Wonder Woman
believed that she had lost those abilities and that he had gained them, making
everyone see and believe that he had beaten her when in fact he had not.
[14] Paula Dupree's tragic life was documented in the films, Captive
Wild Woman (Universal 1943), Jungle Woman (Universal 1944), and Jungle
Captive (Universal 1945).
[15] Depicted in Wonder Woman
163, July 1966
[16] The comics version, ("The Three Fantastic Faces of
Wonder Woman," Wonder Woman 165, October 1966), depicts Dr. Psycho
splitting Wonder Woman into two people with a ray gun of his devising.
[17] That Dr. Psycho had chosen a whale in which to chain
Wonder Woman is interesting psychologically. The whale might have represented
obsession. As Ahab was obsessed with trapping and destroying Moby Dick,
so was Dr. Psycho obsessed with trapping and killing Wonder Woman
[18] Wonder Woman 170, May 1967.
[19] All-Star Comics #30, September 1946 "The
Dreams of Madness"
[20] Wonder Woman No. 168 February
1967 Three Hands On the Magic Lasso
[21] Vandal Savage was—as has been speculated elsewhere—one of
the names used by the immortal named Kane. Among the Kane/Savage research are
the following articles , Prehistoric
Survivors in the Pacific by Mark Brown, . Fast
Living-the true story of Barry Allen, the second Flash by David Kennedy, Immortal
Befuddled-Prelude by Dennis E. Power
[22] According to his biography, The Thinker was a young
district attorney named Clifford Devoe who had failed
to convict the criminal kingpin of Keystone city, Hunk Norvock,
because his witnesses suddenly began giving favorable testimony for Norvock.
[23] The true origin of Per Degaton will also be revealed later
in this article.
[24] The Gambler was one of the first criminals to follow the
lead of the vigilantes and work in costume. His guise was of an old riverboat
gambler, but in reality he was a master of disguise. He based his costume on his
grandfather, who was a renowned river boat gambler and an acquaintance of George Devol. George Devol was the
renowned riverboat gambler who wrote the classic 40 Years A
Gambler On
[25] The Wizard, according the biography given to him by DC
Comics was a small-time crook with the name William I. Zard,
who learned magic while in prison. He eventually ended up, as did everyone it
seems in the Thirties and Forties who wanted to learn esoterica,
in
[26] The comic book version has the Gambler taking on the Atom,
but the Atom was not adventuring much after his near fatal electrocution by Gudra the Valkyrie.
[27] By this time Alan Scott was in almost constant pain from
the effects of his ring. The ring was designed to kill unauthorized users and
the ring did not wholly accept him as an authorized user, so its defense
mechanism attempted to kill him. But the ring was also designed to protect its
wearer, so it repaired the damage caused by its defense mechanism. Over time
Scott’s immune system was compromised, and he wholly depended on the ring for
his health. To remove the ring would have meant certain death. The ring kept
him alive, yet at the same time it was killing him. Over time Scott's body
could no longer tolerate the constant destruction and rebuilding of his
tissues, and he would take the ring off and succumb to sickness a few weeks
later. This happened in late 1949. Later stories about Alan Scott were based on
previously untold exploits or should be taken as tributes to a man who was a hero
despite his constant agony.
[28] All Star Comics 37, November 1947
"The Injustice Society of the World"
[30] See Nightcrawlers by
Robert M. McCammon and Jacob's Ladder
[31] For more information on “Per Degaton” please see the Lethal
Luthors: Austin and Evil article.
[32] This version diverges from the comics
version (All-Star Comics 58-59, January-February 1976- March-April 1976)
[33] All-Star Comics #66 May-June 1977 The
comic book version has the Star Spangled Kid involved in this case. This is
because Omega did not wish the publicity. Oddly enough the original Wizard was
one of the men in the Omega organization who captured Dr. King at this time.
[34] This was not the original Wonder Woman from the forties
but rather her daughter Lyta Trevor who assumed the role in 1975
[35] Showcase #99 (April 1978): "The Crater That
Was
[36] Dr. King's jealousy of Wonder Woman over Steve Howard was
misdirected. Although the comics portrayed a romantic relationship between
Wonder Woman and Steve Howard, to echo the earlier forties romance between
Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman and Howard were only good friends
and partners. Her true romantic relationship was very secret until recently.
She was currently dating another member of the intelligence community named
Arnold Munro.
[37] DC Comics Presents No. 41 January
1982 A Bold New Direction For Wonder Woman”
[38] Wonder Woman 288, February 1982 “Swan Song”
[39] Wonder Woman 289, March 1982 “His Name Is Psycho”
[40] Wonder Woman 290, April 1982. “Panic Over
[41] There is a persistent rumor that Henry King had a son by
Merry Pemberton who inherited his powers. Others have theorized that that the
red headed man who bore a striking resemblance to the illusionary form
projected by The Brain Wave in the seventies was nothing more than that, a
thought image projected from the Phantom Zone or perhaps the wily villain had
escaped.
Return to the
Lethal Luthors-wainwright page
RETURN TO THE
MAIN LETHAL LUTHORS PAGE
Return to the Table
of Contents
