Prometheus

The new pics from Arrow showed one of the upcoming season’s recurring bad guys, and he’ll be quite a pain in the back if he only slightly resembles his comicbook counterpart: Prometheus, portrayed by a yet unknown actor. As usual, Arrow “steals” from Batman‘s rogue gallery and story lines, and judging by the images, while in the comics Prometheus is a twisted and dark version of the Dark Knight, he’ll be a twisted and dark version of Green Arrow instead. His presence in the show is quite promising, considering that he’s the one villain that made Green Arrow cross the line (and that he’s the one who destroyed Star City), but considering how disappointing Season 4 was, let’s wait before celebrating. We can always take a look at the original one, anyway.

Nobody knows the true name of the man who would have become Prometheus, but we know his story, how he came to become one of the most dangerous men in the world. He was the son of a couple of inveterate criminals, two anarchist hippies who traveled the country robbing, stealing and killing, with absolute no regards for law, property or whatsoever. Since he was a child, he was used to run away with his family, often chased by State police, and when he asked why those people in uniform always hunted for them, his father told him they wanted to bring them to “justice” (this way, the boy started to believe “justice” was an actual place, a sad and evil place in which nobody could do what they wanted). Eventually, police managed to corner the family, but the two criminals didn’t surrender, quite the opposite, they opened fire on the law enforcers, forcing them to gun them down… right in front of their son, who was so shocked by the event that his hair turned white. That very night, he swore that he would have dedicated his life into destroying “justice”, battling its forces, raiding its temples. Using the money his parents had hidden (and some more he obtained blackmailing a crime boss his father knew some secrets about), he traveled the world, learning a variety of skills that would have been useful in his crusade: he learnt to fight in a pit in Brazil, he was trained in military tactics as a mercenary in Africa, he even joined a terrorist group in the Middle East. After learning whatever physical skill he needed, such as a wide variety of martial arts, methods of killing and maiming, weapon mastery and so on, he focused on his mind, learning a dozen of different languages and enlisting into some of the most prestigious universities around the world. He came back to the United States just the sufficient time to locate and kill the police officers directly responsible for his parents’ death, but that was the beginning of mission, not the end: he traveled to the Himalayas, where he located the lost city of Shamballah, inhabited by monks who worshiped evil. The man fitted quite well with the monks, and he became the leader’s favorite pupil. The leader of the monks made one grave mistake: he started to trust him.

The cult leader showed his favorite pupil the community’s greatest treasure: the buried spaceship the monastery was built upon. Plus, he revealed himself as one of the aliens owners of said spaceship, and showed him the portal to the Ghost Zone, a dimension out of our reality that worked both as a “shortcut” for other places in space and a place of hiding. Knowing what he wanted to, the man killed the alien and stole his Ghost Key, gaining access to the dimension. From there, he could finally prepare and plan his strike on the ones who had become the greatest agents of the “justice” he loathed so much: the heroes from the Justice League of America. Using the alien tech to build a futuristic armor, he finally became Prometheus, the man who dared challenge the gods, and started his assault. First, he attacked the newest member of the JLA, Retro, winner of the competition “Leaguer for a Day“, and killed him, stealing his identity. Disguised as Retro, he infiltrated the Watchtower, the JLA’s base on the Moon, and started to take out the JLA members one after the other: he uploaded a virus into Steel‘s armor, then he hit Martian Manhunter with a phosphorous dart that overloaded his shapeshifting powers, turning him into a puddle of goo; he cut off the oxygen supplies on the base, then he sent the angel Zauriel to the Ghost Zone, and hypnotized Huntress rendering her unconscious. He immobilized the third Flash with (false) proximity bombs, and defeated Green Lantern Kyle Rayner by rendering his Power Ring useless with a Neural Chaff. Downloading in his brain the moves of the best martial artists in the world, he even bested Batman in hand-to-hand combat, defeating him. Using Steel, he threatened to destroy the Watchtower’s exterior wall, thus killing the many journalists present: he offered to spare their lives, only if Superman took his own life live on tv. An unforeseen hindrance appeared as Cat Grant turned out to be Catwoman in disguise: she had infiltrated the Watchtower to steal something, but she decided she didn’t want to see that many people die, and she fought Prometheus long enough to allow the JLA to recover. Now outnumbered, Prometheus retreated… but he had demonstrated nevertheless that a single man could bring the most powerful heroes on Earth on their knees.

Prometheus is an extremely intelligent man, a versatile genius who speaks a dozen languages, is an accomplished scientist and engineer, a philosopher, a theologian, a psychologist, and many other things. He runs a one-man-crusade against “justice”, which he sees as a cancer for humankind, and he pursues his mission with an unbreakable determination, and the nearly infinite resources he disposes of. Apart from being a nearly unbeatable martial artist, an infallible marksman, a superb tactician and a trained warrior in a variety of disciplines, able to kill someone with whatever object he has at hand, he disposes of alien technology that makes him even more dangerous. His body armor is extremely durable but also extremely lightweight, and it contains a “Chameleon Device” that allows him to look like any other person, fooling even the most advanced technological or even magical scans. His helmet, directly connected to his brain, increases his short-term memory (making it eidetic), releases pain killers to allow him to continue to fight beyond his physical limits, is able to induce a state of hypnosis or of simple confusion in the ones targeted (a useful tool against someone who needs concentration to use their powers, such as the Green Lantern Corps), and especially it can download directly to his brain knowledge, abilities and even other people’s movements and fighting styles, so that any time Prometheus finds a better martial artist than he is, he just downloads into his bran his or her skills. With an arsenal of futuristic weapons, free access to the Ghost Zone and overall a “holy” dedication to his lifelong mission, Prometheus is one of the most dangerous men alive, a crusader who won’t stop in front of anyone as long as his dream of annihilating justice will be fulfilled.