(Flash Comics v1 004, 1940)
I have complicated feelings about the Thought Terror! He has both good and bad traits!
Off the bat, the basics. His costume choice is pretty entry level for the Golden Age, but suitable for a guy who employs eye-based super-powers (which he does) and wants to project a certain aura of fear.
His name, by contrast, is both unusual and bad, and made all the worse for the fact that it's almost good. Terror is usually a decent word to use in a name but it just doesn't have the gravitas to work with a mealy word like Thought. The Thought Tyrant, the Thought Titan, the Thinking Terror... there had to be a better name.
But maybe a poorly thought-out name is appropriate for this guy, because he's not a very good planner in general. See, he has these amazing hypnotic powers, and he uses them to convince a little cult of people that he has amazing precognitive powers. He tells fortunes at a hundred bucks a pop and then fulfils them by planting hypnotic suggestions in his subjects' minds, causing them to act out his predictions.
Ordinarily, I'd be cheering for this guy - the thing that thinking a lot about super-villains does is give you a lot of opinions about how they should all just stick to easy small-scale scores and that's what this is - but TT must be getting bored, because he's making predictions like "you're going to get drunk and wander into traffic," and if you're running a cult complete with costumed goons in New York City in a SUPER-HERO UNIVERSE the thing you absolutely do not want to do is draw attention to yourself by, for instance, killing someone.
(this does of course happen - Hawkman shows up and ruins the whole operation, including the Thought Terror's mind)
One point in the Thought Terror's favour is his use of costumed goons, in this case dressed just like him and given a dose of hypnotic mind-over-matter treatment such that they are physical powerhouses. Always a great choice, costumed goons. Plus they're called the Mesmerized Men, a great name!
Wildly, Thought Terror (without the "the", not that it improves the name) was brought back in the year of our Lord 2005 along with several other Golden and Silver Age Hawkman foes (Thought Terror specifically in Hawkman v4 039). He's just kind of a super-torturer, though, and he just kind of disappears halfway through the issue. I guess that's about as good as he could hope to get.
No comments:
Post a Comment