Tharok
2958 - Tharok is born on Zadron.
2976 - 18-year-old Tharok attends university to become a cyber-geneticist.
2979 - 21-year-old Tharok is removed from university when his research violates intergalactic law for bio-cybornetic integration. He begins working for various crime syndicates as a cyborgeneticist, still performing his own reasearch.
2986 - 28-year-old Tharok performs a complete cyber-replacement on himself, vastly surpassing the limits imposed by galactic law. He becomes an intergalactic crimelord.
2990 - 32-year-old Tharok 's organization runs afoul of the Legion, who stop them and imprison him.
2995 - 37-year-old Tharok contacts the Legion as they attempt to stop a rogue Sun-Eater with a plan to do so with no loss of life. Rokk Krinn releases him, and allow him to create a team of other Legion enemies. They stop the Sun-eater, but are able to escape, becoming the Fatal Five.
2997 - 39-year-old Tharok & the Fatal Five attempt to assault Legion headquarters. They are defeated by Val Armorr single-handedly & imprisoned.
3003 - 45-year-old Tharok engineers the escape of the Fatal Five with the help of Sarya. They begin rebuilding their criminal empire.
3006 - 48-year-old Tharok & the Fatal Five wage all-out war with the reunited Legion, and are eventually defeated.
The world of the Legion of Superheroes has perhaps born the brunt of DC's penchant for continuity shenanigans more than any other part of it's history, so when you add to that the tendancy to completely rethink villains with most of their appearances, it actually becomes almost impossible to nail down any sense of the Fatal Five having any consistent story at all. Still, they are suprisingly prolifict concepts in DC, appearing in modern times (somehow) almost with the same regularity they appear in the 30th century.
The real fun here is that each of these five characters represents a pretty solid villain in their own right, so we're going to expand on them all just a little bit, and in doing so will get a nice spectrum of treats to throw up against our team of future teen heroes.
The real fun here is that each of these five characters represents a pretty solid villain in their own right, so we're going to expand on them all just a little bit, and in doing so will get a nice spectrum of treats to throw up against our team of future teen heroes.
Tharok's StoryTharok appeared for the first time along with the rest of the Fatal Five in issue #352 0f Adventure Comics in 1967, an invention of (notably 16-year-old) Jim Shooter. Simply presented as a half-human, half-robot inventor, Tharok clearly has the largest role to play in that story, as the criminal mastermind who's actually calling the shots as the Fatal Five and the Legion all try to stop the rogue Sun-Eater. I've never seen a reference to it anywhere, but I've always imagined that the intention here was to create a Legion-specific take on Lex Luthor; or at least, Lex Luthor as he was being written in the 60s.
Of the members of the Fatal Five, Tharok actually manages to mostly stay in the 30th century and not appear constantly in modern times, primarily because his design and utility really isn't about his look or his powers. In practice, his powers don't really have him doing anything that plenty of other villains, or even notable Teen Titans, are doing. It's much more about him being the 30th century equivilent of an arch-criminal inventor. To drive that home, we invented the idea that his particular implementation of his cybernetics is something even more extreme than is usually permitted, or even possible, even by the standards of his era. He's violated legal and ethical standards of cybornetics on himself, making him some sort of terrifyingly unthinkable hybrid of man and machine. In practice, I'd imagine this would involve some sort of shifting nanometal or ability to reshape his biology... but I do think it's worth it to keep his classic split-down-the-middle look, because it really does look cool along with the rest of the Five. |