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JLA Enemies
by Michael Hutchison
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Amazo Professor Ivo T.O. Morrow |
Felix Faust Starro The Conqueror The Lord of Time |
Professor
IvoProfessor Ivo grew up with a crippling fear of death. The thought of his life ending was so great that he even avoided his own mother's funeral. For Ivo, avoiding death became his life's obsession. For unknown motives, Ivo took to studying cybernetics and soon became an employee of the criminal organization Locus, where he gained new insights through the dissection of one of the Appellaxians (see feature article). He used this knowledge to build Amazo (see below) and attack the JLA, hoping to use their powers to imbue himself with immortality.
Years later, Ivo finally discovered an immortality potion and drank it…but the immortality brought with it horrible disfigurement that made his skin scaly. He irrationally blamed this on the JLA and drifted further into insanity as he attacked the Justice Leaguers on numerous occasions. Ivo built duplicates of himself to keep him company. These duplicates were repulsed by the insanity of their creator and locked him away, then carried out his dreams of revenge by attacking the new Justice Leaguers (Vibe, Gypsy, Steel and Vixen) and killing Vibe and Steel.
A year after that, Ivo built himself a private island populated by robots. There, Ivo created "Men In Black" nicknamed Amazoids who had similar powers to Amazo. The Amazoids could steal one superpower each; they succeeded in robbing the powers of Red Star, Rebis, Valor, Power Girl, Starman and Geo-Force. However, this time Ivo's goal was not revenge, but suicide. Ivo realized that the disfigurement was not the side effect; it WAS the immortality. His body was becoming more and more infected, more and more immobile, until he would be nothing but a pain-filled living statue. Fearing this even more than death, he ordered the Amazoids to turn their full power on him. It didn't work. The JLA'er Ice, sympathizing with him, unknowingly invoked the power of Guy Gardner's Green Lantern ring to cure him.
Professor Ivo's disfiguring experience was not enough to keep him from the temptation of the immortality serum…and he has once again brought about his own deformity. As both Ice and the Green Lantern rings have been destroyed, Ivo has consigned himself to his own horrible fate. The sorry, wretched creature has been imprisoned following the Tomorrow Woman debacle.
AMAZO
Amazo was an android created by Professor Ivo. Capable of
duplicating and/or stealing the powers of any superhero it meets,
Amazo has successfully replicated the powers of all members of the
original Justice League Of America, plus it has a duplicate of Green
Lantern's ring. Amazo's abilities are astounding in that it can
duplicate both metahuman powers (such as Flash's superspeed and
Elongated Man's stretching powers) and inherent powers (such as
Aquaman's ability to talk to fish or J'onn J'onzz's strength, despite
these being natural qualities for their species).
Amazo was last seen tackling the third incarnation of the Conglomerate. Amazo was reactivated and redesigned for publicity purposes, but he went on a rampage and had to be stopped. In this form, Amazo had lost all previous signs of intelligence and was nothing more than a mindless, skeleton-faced monster. His present whereabouts are unknown.
T.O. Morrow,
the Future Man
Thomas Oscar Morrow grew up, as many are wont to do in the
DC Universe, obsessed with the fact that his two first initials
and his last name spelled out "tomorrow." (In a future issue, we
will similarly discuss Roy G. Bivolo and James Jesse.) Thomas graduated
from Harvard with degrees in cybernetics and computers. After working
with the criminal group Locus, T.O. Morrow began constructing a
supercomputer which allowed him to peer precisely 100 years into
the future.
Copying future technology, he began constructing future devices in the present and eventually built the android The Red Tornado, which he sent to infiltrate the Justice Society of America. The Red Tornado rebelled against its master and joined the side of the angels…or at least, the JSA. After the Red Tornado was destroyed by the explosion of the cosmic hand, he rebuilt the Red Tornado. T.O. Morrow returned to his computer and found that, due to a cosmic imbalance, if he did not wipe out the Justice League of America, he would disappear from the universe. He sent the Red Tornado to join the Justice League as an infiltrator; however, his gambit failed and T.O. Morrow mysteriously vanished!
In limbo, T.O. Morrow was split into two people, one of whom was hyper-evolved into the big-brained mutant Tomorrow, The Future Man and confronted the Red Tornado on several occasions. The other T.O. Morrow managed to return to reality, where he once again set up his labs and began copying future technologies. He built several more Red Tornadoes, using them in attempted assassinations of the JLA.
T.O. Morrow did assist the cause of right on at least one occasion when he helped the Red Tornado to defeat the Construct, which had embarked on its most globe-threatening campaign ever.
It would appear that, shortly afterward, T.O. Morrow found a way to see more eras of the future (Turns out he had the "100 years lock" on! Just kidding.). In chronicling more and more of the future, he assembled a fat book of notes of major and minor events…even his own death. Jarred by the future he saw (either his own death or some future cataclysm; it has never been revealed what he witnessed), Thomas had a breakdown. He drifted, drinking heavily and neglecting his personal hygiene. He attempted to warn the JLA of the Overmaster's return to Earth and the subsequent death of Ice, but wasn't allowed into their HQ.
However, Thomas Oscar Morrow has since reclaimed his self-assuredness. It is possible that, due to the events of Zero Hour, the future has been significantly altered. Whatever the cause, his self-confidence has been significantly bolstered; he's even rather smug, now. He recently teamed with Professor Ivo to create Tomorrow Woman, yet another android which turned against its creators to assist the JLA. It is theorized that T.O. Morrow may have been more concerned with his ability to create a thinking, rational being than in programming her for evil.
Thomas Oscar Morrow is not an evil, mad scientist, merely an amoral man with no qualms about killing if it suits his needs. His robotics skills aside, he is able to recreate future technologies in the present and possesses a "fourth-dimensional grappler" which allows him to actually snatch objects from the future.
Starro The Conqueror
Starro is a starfish-like creature from outer space who has
made several attempts to conquer Earth. In addition to 
looking like a starfish, he shares many biological similarities
to the earth crustacean, including vulnerabilities to lime and extreme
cold and the ability to replicate himself from pieces of his body.
Starro's most recent appearance was in England, where he tricked the JLA into helping him launch his spaceship…which subsequently exploded, scattering his miniature replicants all over the island nation. This, Starro's closest attempt at world domination, was prevented when Ice was close enough to freeze the lead Starro facegrabber. This tiny Starro now rests in a freezer on the Cluster ship, as it was given to barterer Manga Khan as a conversation piece.
A creature exactly like Starro recently attacked Blue Valley; given that no connection was made to it being Starro, we can only assume that the JLA was correct in considering it a separate entity.
FELIX FAUST
Felix Faust is an ancient sorceror who visited the African
city-state of Kor in 5000 B.C. There, he tried to wrest control
of the Flame of Life, the city's magical source of power, from its
leader, Nommo (later to become Dr. Mist). The two mystically battled
for a solid week, until Nommo destroyed his entire kingdom, smashed
it around Felix Faust and hurled him into another dimension. [We
will not mention here the oddity of his having the first name "Felix"
7000 years ago, aside from the fact that we just did.]
Faust escaped the mystical dimension around the time of World War I, when a madman named Dekan Drache released him with the tune "The March of the Valkyries."
Faust's activities for most of the century are unchronicled, although it is known that he fathered a son who became Faust of the Outsiders.
Felix Faust atacked the Justice League of America on numerous occasions and was responsible for summoning the demons Abnegazzar, Rath and Ghast. Felix also knows a spell which allows him to summon likenesses of people onto his fingers, thus putting them under his control.
Felix Faust's present whereabouts are unknown.
THE LORD OF TIME
The Lord of Time (also sometimes called the Time Lord, albeit
rarely due to the similarities to a British fictional character,
Dr. Who) is a mystery. He comes from the far-off future and has
been called "Epoch", although this is probably not his real name,
either. The Lord of Time wishes to rule the planet Earth and has
attempted numerous takeovers utilizing weapons and warriors from
future times.
He recently appeared using a 41st century battlesuit, racing with the JLA through different time periods and trapping them in another dimension with the WILDC.A.T.S. With the JLA eliminated, he trapped the rest of the superheroes on the moon and proceeded to devastate the 20th century Earth with weapons from numerous future time periods. In the end, the Lord of Time fused with a device called the Omega Attractor and slipped backwards through time to burst into a "dark nova"…possibly implying that he became the Big Bang.
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This article
is © 1998 Michael Hutchison
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