#22 – Victor

During the years leading up to World War II, Clarence Norfolk, a teenager who had grown up on a farm in rural Alabama had gone to a travelling science fair that was visiting his local town, and in accordance with expectations, an accident while unloading two sets of equipment that modern Health and Safety Standards wouldn’t allow within fifty miles of each other, Clarence was bombarded with strange energy pulses.  Predictably these left him with incredible powers – flight, incredible strength and toughness and energy beams that he could emit from his hands.  During World War II he proved himself again and again under the code name Victor, gaining just about every medal you could conceive of.  He came back from Europe a hero. It was not to last.

A last power slowly became apparent – eternal youth.  But for a child bought up in the backwaters of rural 1930’s America, this proved as much as curse as a blessing. He found himself uncomfortable with increasing levels of acceptance to communities that in his day had been mistrusted – the Black Community, other Religions, Women’s Rights and the Gay Rights movement were all things which he found difficult to reconcile – but it was his association with the McCarthyist Communist Witch-Hunts of the 50s proved his most famous legacy as on government instruction he brutally beat down an alleged Communist Sympathizing superheroine in a pitched battle through the streets of Washington DC.

He increasingly clung to government as a form of moral guidance on subjects, but after nearly provoking Nuclear War during the later stages of the Cold War, he was locked in a specially designed prison beneath a mountain where his energy was drained to keep him safe while powering America.  However, in recent years it seems his powers have been getting more potent to compensate, and the base now requires constant upgrades to keep up within the energy he produces.

Category: 2013, Superhero