"Baron Ether is old. He lost an eye fighting Paragon, and replaced it with a mechanical device of his own construction. Whatever gave him his original superpowers has mostly faded, except in the elongated shape of his skull, and a coal-like glow behind his remaining eye. He’s an old man, no one really knows how old, and he’s been a villain a long, long time. He started out robbing railroads. He fought Victorian adventurers and American whiz-kids, wore a moustache and carried a trick cane whose jeweled head bulged with concealed gadgetry.
I’d heard he’d fallen on hard times, but seeing him is still a shock. He hasn’t been out much lately, and rumor has it one of his last experiments went badly – a mutation ray. This is the first time I’ve seen the results. His right arm ends in an insectile claw, and the skin on the right half of his body looks puckered and angry. At the interface, you can see where his body’s metabolism is fighting the effects of a halfway transformation."
Born in the late 1800’s, Baron Ether was the greatest supervillain in the world for most of the 20th century. He fought everybody, committed every crime, perpetrated every bizarre scheme imaginable – he lived through the Golden and Silver Ages of superheroes. He retired at the end of the 1970s, at which point his schemes were starting to have a dated, Victorian feel.
Baron Ether is a living example of the toll being a supervillain takes on your body – over his lifetime he’s been thousands of superhero fights, and been hit with every kind of radiation, chemical, and biohazard imaginable. He was once very handsome, now extremely old and decrepit. But even while confined a wheelchair, his malign intelligence and will are unmistakable.
1 comments:
The scenes between Baron Ether and Dr. Impossible in the book were very entertaining, especially with the younger villain's mix of awe and pity.
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