Sorry that I’ve been away for a
while, folks. I’ve been transitioning between jobs, working at one while doing
the training for the other, so I’ve been essentially working two jobs. Well,
one and a half, and that caused a drastic cut in my overall free time. But I’m
back now, and I’ll try to pump out a few more posts in the next couple of days. But again, no promises.
There's been some big news in Super TV, so I’m doing another slight shift to my schedule. I’ll still be doing the
Eradicator, but after these next two posts.
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| The key differance between Eobard Thawne and Hunter Zolomon is the black lenses on his costume. |
While on break, it was revealed
that The Flash team have hired horror
movie veteran and dude with really cool sounding voice Tony Todd to partially
portray Zoom, the second generation of Reverse-Flash. Apparently they’re
pulling a Darth Vader, hiring one actor to physically portray the character and
hiring another to talk for him. It’s a slight change up from Eobard
Thawne/Harrison Wells Reverse-Flash, who “vibrated” his voice to distort it,
but it’s kind of similar in that it’ll help keep the characters ID secret until
the writers reveal it. From the sound of it, this Zoom is probably not going to
be related to his comic book character, Hunter Zolomon. Despite this, it feels
like the perfect opportunity to talk about Hunter, so that’s what I’ll do.
Without further ado, Zoom the Reverse-Flash.
Hunter’s life started out
tragically. Is anyone surprised by this? No? Good, let’s continue. His parents
were very emotionally distant, rarely speaking to each other or their child.
And with that in mind, I must say I'm shocked that he turned out as close to well-adjusted
as he did. Just saying. On the day that Hunter was going to leave for college,
things kind of went down the toilet for his family. Turns out, his father was
an extremely twisted serial killer. Which may explain the emotional distance
put between the members of the Zolomon household. He’d murdered at least six
young girls. And, when his wife found out and called the police, Mr. Zolomon
murdered his wife and was then gunned down by police. So yeah, not the best day
for the Zolomons. The entire event created an obsession in Hunter, who
dedicated his life to studying criminology and psychology, in the hopes of
stopping people like his father. He excelled in school and later joined the FBI
with his girlfriend, and later wife, Ashley. He specialized in low level
costumed criminals, so not baddies on say Lex Luthor, Joker, or Mr. Freeze's level, but
guys more on the level of Calendar-Man or Firefly. In case these names mean
nothing to you, he handles the guys that are essentially just normal criminals
in weird costumes. He was good at his job, but made one major screw up. He was
profiling a costumed criminal called “The Clown,” and while he did have a decent insight into the psycho, he made a miscalculation. Well, actually, he made, in my opinion, two serious miscalculations with this one, 1. He assumed that the Clown, and
indeed most villains, aren’t inherently evil but misunderstood and mentally
unstable owing to their tragic backgrounds, and 2. That the Clown, who was very
childlike in his mindset, would be unable to use an “adult” weapon like a gun. He
told this to his boss, Ashley’s father, who believed him. Hunter was horribly,
horribly wrong, and as a result, Ashley’s father was killed and he was shot in
the leg, partially crippling him. Seems pretty evil to me, doesn't it?As a result of this blunder, Hunter lost his job, his wife left, and was
forced to walk with a cane.
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| I am just now getting that Zolomon is an anagram for Zoom and Loon. Get it? Zolomon is a crazy speedster. |
After losing his job with the FBI,
he was hired by the Keystone City police department. He was given a job in the
Department of Metahuman Hostilities. It’s the police branch that handles
superpowered baddies. The nature of his job meant that he was in near constant
contact with the Flash #3, Wally West, and the two became good friends. Hunter
helped Wally solve a number of dangerous cases, but he grew increasingly resentful
at being stuck behind a desk, and that Wally kept getting the majority of the
credit. Sometime later, Hunter was attacked by Gorilla Grodd in Iron Heights
prison, when the deranged psychic primate staged a mass breakout. Grodd
pulverized Hunter, leaving the police officer paralyzed from the waist down.
Hunter begged Wally to use the Cosmic Treadmill, an advanced bit of technology
that allows speedsters to travel back and forth in time, to go back and save
him Grodd’s fury. Wally, from his experiences with his Uncle Barry Allen (Flash
#2) and his own heroing, knew that meddling with time almost always led to more
harm than good, refused. Hunter was infuriated that Wally wasn’t willing to
take the risk to help his friend, and decided to just do it himself. He broke
into the Flash Museum and attempted to use the Treadmill. Unfortunately, the
Treadmill hadn’t aged well, and had grown unstable. Hunter’s attempt at using
the machine proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. And in this
case, when the camel’s back broke, it exploded. The explosion destroyed the
Flash Museum, and had an unusual effect on Hunter. The explosion, as described
by the original Flash, Jay Garrick, “derailed” Hunter from the timeline. This
derailment gave Hunter the use of his legs back, and the ability to alter the
speed at which he moved through time. To put it in the simplest terms, he can
put himself on fast forward. He’s no faster than he used to be, but now he can
make time around him move slower. I’ll try to explain this better in his power
section.
A combination of Hunter’s anger at
Wally, the mental damage that the Cosmic Treadmill tends to inflict on folks,
and perhaps an inherent mental instability he inherited from his father caused
Hunter to completely lose his mind. He used his skills as a profiler to come up
with a profile of Wally. He decided that the reason why Wally refused to help
him was, instead of being justifiably concerned with the effects time-travel
can have on their world, was because unlike the previous Flash (Barry) Wally
hadn’t experienced a personal tragedy and thus didn’t understand how awful it
was. I would argue the apparent death of his idol, mentor, and uncle was pretty
darn tragic, but that’s just me. Using this warped rational, he decided that he
could help the Flash become a better hero by giving him a tragedy. Crazy
people, am I right? He also took up the mantle of the Reverse-Flash to do so,
becoming Zoom the Reverse Flash. To give Wally the personal tragedy, he went
after Wally’s wife. Using his new time manipulating speed, Zoom was able to run
literal circles around the speedster. Wally was able to overcome this obstacle by
“borrowing speed” from his fellow speedsters. They were able to use their
shared connection to the Speed Force, the extra-dimensional energy Force that
gives the DC speed heroes their powers, to supercharge Wally. He was able to
stop Zoom from killing his wife. But, Zoom then showed off his most dangerous
ability. With a snap of his fingers, he can create a shockwave across space and
time. Said shockwave hit Linda West, it didn’t kill her but it caused her to
miscarry her and Wally’s twins. Wally was able to defeat Zoom by utilizing rips
in Space/Time that Zoom created by using his powers. Wally forced Zoom into one
of these rips, which “tied the knot” in Zoom’s own timeline. The temporal
reverberation knocked Zoom out and put him in a coma. He eventually reawakens to
menace Wally West again. They battle across Keystone City, the world, and across
time. Eventually, Wally’s able to undo Zoom’s attack on Linda that caused her
to miscarry. Despite undoing that particular tragedy, Zoom is still hell bent
on giving his former friend that tragedy that’ll make him a great hero. Which
is really, really messed up when you think about it.
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| This piece of exercise equipment is nothing but trouble. |
Hunter Zolomon’s powers are a
rather unique spin on time manipulating powers. He can manipulate time’s flow around
himself, allowing him to mimic super speed. Think of it this way, the average
speed that an adult human can run is 15 miles per hour. Not all that fast. But, with Hunter’s abilities, he can alter
time’s flow around himself. Essentially, he can make it so that a second for him is one millisecond for the
rest of the world. While Hunter might still only be running at 15 mph from
his perspective, to everyone else he’s running 15,000 mph. I think that
conversion is right, but even if I didn’t, I think you get the idea. He's not actually all that fast, he's just manipulating time. I say that like manipulating time is easy. Which in the material I deal with, it kind of is. The main advantage is that, because he can accelerate himself with a thought, The Flash can't keep up with Zoom on his own. The main
disadvantage of this version of Super-Speed is that he can’t vibrate his
molecules like other speedsters to become intangible. This is the one major advantage
that the other speedsters have over Zoom. He's an expert in psychology and criminology, which he now uses to give himself a psychological edge over his opponents.
Zoom to date hasn’t been used
outside the comics. The closest he’s
come was back in Justice League Unlimited
episode “Divided We Fall” back in 2005. In the episode, Lex Luthor and Brainiac
fuse together creating a being of near god-like power with a god-like ego to
boot. To keep the League distracted while he prepares his end of the world
plan, he creates robotic clones modeled after the Justice League’s counterparts
from an alternate dimension, the Justice Lords. The android version of the
Flash has the Reverse-Flash’s color scheme, and since Wally West is the DC
animated universe’s Flash, fans could connect him to Hunter Zolomon. If you
think fans are thinking too hard about this, then you haven’t met nerds. We over-analyze a lot of stuff.
An alternative version of Zoom is
set to appear as the main antagonist of the second season of The Flash. At this exact moment, all we
really know is that he’ll be portrayed by two different characters. One will be
the physical Zoom, while Tony Todd will be providing his voice. I’ve read that
while Eobard Thawne/Harrison Wells was the “Speed Warrior,” Zoom will be the “Speed
Demon.” It’s not much, but it may give us a hint as to what sort of character we’re
dealing with. Warriors can plan and think strategically, a demon will just
start ripping folks apart. At least that’s my thought. It’s been hinted at that
this version may differ from the comics, and I do have my theory on how this
will turn out. But I’ll cover that in my next post.
I only have the vaguest idea about
Hunter Zolomon’s version of Zoom, but what I do know makes him seem very
interesting. He’s a good man that was broken again and again by tragic twists
of fate. When power finally finds him, he abuses it, but his main goal is to
improve the hero that was once his friend. Kind of an unusual form of
motivation. His powers are also an interesting spin on the usual superspeed
heroes, particularly for DC who rely pretty heavily on the Speed Force to
explain how speedsters move so fast without killing themselves. I look forward
to seeing how The Flash will adapt
him for their show. Next time, new Editorial, Theory of Zoom.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/530510031076043052/
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/File:Zoom_0001.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_%28comics%29#/media/File:Flash224.jpg
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