Who is Prometheus?

Prometheus is the villain of the current Justice League: Cry For Justice series and unlike the Prometheus that has been running around for the last few years, this is the deadly Justice League foe as originally conceived by Grant Morrison. The following covers Prometheus was he was going into Cry For Justice, I’ll add those events once the series has finished.

Background

Prometheus first appeared in New Years Evil: Prometheus #1 (December 1997) written by Grant Morrison with art by Arnie Jorgensen and David Meikis. It explained his origin as a sort of villain-Batman ahead of his battle with the Justice League in JLA #16-17 (March-April 1998). Morrison brought Prometheus back during his final JLA arc “World War III”. This contained the now classic scene where the Batman gives Prometheus motor-neuron disease and then punches his lights out. Prometheus appeared in several books in the run up to Infinite Crisis, but he seemed rather diminished from the character that had almost defeated the JLA.

His lameness was reversed when Prometheus starred in a one-shot called Faces of Evil: Prometheus #1 (March 2009) written by Sterling Gates with art by Federico Dallocchio. It was revealed that the Prometheus that had been appearing around the DC Universe since his last appearance in JLA was actually the sidekick of the original. Gates described the purpose of the issue:

I’m delving pretty deeply into why he went from being this powerhouse villain worthy of being on Lex Luthor’s Injustice League, to being the guy that Huntress can beat up over in Birds of Prey. [..]  The whole goal of this issue is to build him back up and make him into the villain he once was. I kind of felt like he’d become a shadow of the villain he used to be, and I want to get back in there and bring him back into the forefront. That was such a great spin for a villain, and I didn’t feel like the promise of his character has really been shown the last decade.

Sterling Gates talking to Newsarama’s Vaneta Rogers in Dec 08.

The Prometheus that returned was the manipulative and sneaky villain that we had been originally been introduced to. The reason for the one-shot was that he was going to be the lead villain in 2009′s Cry For Justice mini-series. James Robinson explained his intention when using Prometheus.

I’m excited by this character, both in terms of how his role in Cry For Justice slowly unfolds and his goal is gradually revealed, but also how his presence in the DCU will now be a long-lasting one with ideas and plans for the character now reaching far into the future in the JLA and many other books. And I’m keen to give him some grandeur again. I think that got lost somewhere along the way. After all, this was a guy who at one time, under Grant Morrison, took down the Justice League.

James Robinson, text piece in Justice League: Cry For Justice #3 (Nov 2009).

Stats

• Codename: Prometheus (II/III), Retro (alias used by II)
• Alter Ego: II: unknown, III: Chad Graham
• Occupation: II: Hero killer, super villain; III: body-guard/enforcer
• Group Affiliations: II: The Injustice Gang; III: The Society
• Known Relatives: II: unnamed parents (deceased); III: unnamed father (deceased)

Note on numbering: Prometheus I was a member of a group called the Hybrid that fought the Titans, he’s of no consequence to this story. Prometheus II is the JLA foe, the one created by Grant Morrison. Prometheus III (Chad Graham) was invented by Sterling Gates to explain why the post-Morrison Prometheus was nowhere near as competent as the original.

Biography

Secret Origin

The real name of the villain Prometheus is not recorded. However, he has related the origin of his codename,

Do you know why I wanted to be called Prometheus? I took the name because I wanted to take fire from the gods themselves. Steal their knowledge and techniques and use them against them.

Faces of Evil: Prometheus #1 (March 2009)

And he has become exactly that. He uses the same tactics, the same technology, the same mastery of skill, and the same love of places of solitude, as the superheroes. It is all woven together to create a persona dedicated to the destruction of all those who claim to uphold justice.

The origins of Prometheus’s amenity with crime fighters can be traced to his early childhood. Prometheus’s parents were a latter day Bonnie and Clyde, a husband and wife team of serial criminals, who blazed a deadly path across America for over a decade. Their child was born on the road and grew up to the sound of sirens and gun fire. He idolized them and absorbed everything his father and mother taught him right up until the day they died. When the police finally cornered the outlaws they chose to go down fighting rather than surrender. They died in a hail of bullets, but miraculously the boy survived. The shock of seeing his parent’s die, murdered from his perspective, turned his hair prematurely white (New Years Evil: Prometheus #1, December, 1997).

The unwitting police tried to treat the boy as a victim, but he bit the hand of a police officer who tried to comfort him. He escaped the police station by hiding in a group of visiting boy scouts and then vanished into anonymity. Prometheus has only ever related his origin or fragments of it to people that he has later killed so it is probably that there is nobody alive who knows his original identity (Faces of Evil: Prometheus #1, March 2009). Prometheus’s parents had been careful to set up dumps of money and information. The boy used their contacts and friends in the criminal underworld to create a new identity. The people that wouldn’t help him out of honour were blackmailed into helping.  (New Years Evil: Prometheus #1, December, 1997)

There are obvious parallels been the origin of Prometheus and that of the Batman (Bruce Wayne) or even with Wrath (another child, orphaned by a cop, who went on to become a costumed assassin). In each case the orphaned child declared vengeance on the oppressive group that had murdered his parents. When he reached adulthood Prometheus left American on a quest to learn everything, to acquire every skill necessary for his new crusade. By his own admission:

“I wanted to know everything. I wanted to be the best, so that when the time came, no one could stop me. I walked among the rich and the powerful and acquired their secrets. I fought alongside terrorist guerrillas in middle eastern war zones. I trained with silat masters in the jungles of Malaysia. I learned how to main and kill in a dozen different languages.”New Years Evil: Prometheus #1 (December, 1997)

Eventually Prometheus’s quest took him to Tibet. For a year he studied with a cult of monks who worshipped evil. Probably adherents to the Crime Bible. Eventually their Lama revealed to Prometheus the secret that he had searched for. Buried thousands of feet beneath the monastery was Shamballa, a spaceship or dimension spanning craft that had crashed there thousands of years ago. The monks above it may have been descended from whatever, whoever its crew were. Within the ship Prometheus underwent a transformational experience that even he can’t fully describe. Afterwards the Lama revealed to Prometheus a Cosmic Key, a special artefact that only he can use, that would allow him to cross back and forth into the Ghost Zone – a sterile, formless white limbo-dimension that exists between the layers of reality. (New Years Evil: Prometheus #1, December, 1997).

The Ghost Zone was to be Prometheus’s Fortress of Solitude and Batcave. He built a house there, but found that its laws of physics caused everything to warp or become crooked, but that suited his tastes fine. There he build his first armour and weapons. His obvious weapon of choice was a strength enhancing nightstick, the enemy’s weapon, that could crack anvils. However, his true weapon was a helmet that could interface directly into his brain. With it he could instantly assimilate  the entire fighting styles of the world’s ten best fighters or even the complete identity and memories of a single person (New Years Evil: Prometheus #1, December, 1997).

One of his first acts was to tracked down and killed all, but one of the policemen who had killed his parents. Upon reaching the last policeman’s house he found that he was already dead – murdered by his own son, Chad Graham. Prometheus adopted Chad as his ward, a Robin to his Batman, but Chad proved a disappointment and was excluded from Prometheus’s bigger schemes. We hadn’t seen before so Prometheus must had deliberately left him at home (Faces of Evil: Prometheus #1, March 2009).

Assault on the Watchtower

The induction of a normal man into the Justice League for 24-hours was meant to be a harmless publicity stunt. It was a reality TV moment, our one chance to look into the Justice League as they celebrate the unveiling of their new lunar Watchtower. There was a national contest. All the entrants had to do was to create an imaginary costumed identity, a Halloween superhero, who they would “play” for a day if inducted into the Justice League. The winner was Retro, a hero with the catchphrase “Today’s hero, yesterday’s attitude.” The real Retro was never to reach the JLA Watchtower, however, as he was Prometheus’s ticket past the League’s defences. Prometheus kidnapped Retro, copied his memories into his helmet computer, and then erased him from existence (New Years Evil: Prometheus #1 (December, 1997), JLA #16, March 1998).

Prometheus took Retro’s place with the international press and media. Then, with due fanfare, they were all teleported about the new Watchtower. There was even a round of laughter when the star-struck “Retro” asked to be shown the way to the bathroom. It was only away from the main throng that Prometheus showed his new colours. Within minutes he had downloaded the Watchtower’s schematics into his helmet-brain interface and had started isolating each member of the Justice League. Prometheus moved with precision through them. He downloaded a virus into Steel’s armour, reduced the Martian Manhunter to goo, teleported Zauriel into limbo, and even besting the Batman in one-on-one combat. He shot Green Lantern and kept the Flash occupied by a simple bluff.

Prometheus destroyed the Watchtower’s oxygen generators and then started a fire forcing the League to evacuate the 100-or-so visiting journalist. He was defeating the Justice League in their own headquarters, but he was deliberately leaving them alive. He wanted them to know what was happening to them before his final triumph – forcing Superman to commit suicide. However, Prometheus’s downfall was his own arrogance and presumption. Catwoman had also smuggled herself aboard the Watchtower. Her surprise attack created the opening that allow Steel to shut down Prometheus’s armour. The villain was forced to flee the Watchtower in pain and humiliation (JLA #16-17, March-April 1998).

With the Injustice Gang

During his assault on the JLA Watchtower, Prometheus downloaded a copy of its schematics and Oracle’s files on super-villain threats that the League had faced. He read about Lex Luthor’s unsuccessful attempt to co-ordinate an “Injustice Gang” and recognised the logic in pooling resources against the League. The weakness of Luthor’s first Injustice Gang was that he recruited villains who were opponents of individual Justice Leaguers. With Luthor, Prometheus formulated a second Injustice Gang recruited from enemies who had each fought the entire League. Their allies were the Queen Zee Zazzala and the General (the mind of Wade Eiling in the body of the Shaggy Man). They used a White Martian Carriership to travel through the Still Zone and create a “back door” into the League’s Watchtower. Then they watched and waited for the right moment.

Prometheus’s helmet had been seized by the League during their first encounter. Batman had taken the helmet to the Batcave for analysis and then placed it in the JLA Trophy Room. Prometheus retrieved it, but by the time Zauriel noticed it was missing the Injustice Gang’s assault was already underway. The League were distracted by preparations for the coming of the Magaddon warhead when the Injustice Gang struck. Luthor mined the Watchtower while Prometheus attacked Oracle (Barabara Gordon), their information centre. She tried to convince him that Magaddon was influencing his actions, but Prometheus was too arrogant to believe her. He even offered to heal the injury that had crippled her, but she politely declined. He then destroyed her equipment and returned to the Watchtower.

Oracle had managed to damage Prometheus’s newer helmet, so he had to replace it with the spare one he had recovered from the Trophy Room. By the time he arrived back on the Watchtower the League were in disarray. Prometheus had only just knocked the Huntress unconscious when he found himself facing the Batman. Prometheus had humbled the Dark Knight in their first encounter, but Batman was prepared for the rematch. He recognised that Prometheus had swapped his Helmets and activated an electronic switch which over rode the computer in the original Helmet’s computers. Batman erased the skills Prometheus had downloaded and replaced them with a program that imprinted Prometheus’s muscles and nervous system with the physical characterises of a person with motor neuron disease.

With a single action Batman rendered Prometheus virtually immobile and defenceless, but the villain still had the strength to activate his Cosmic Key and escape into the Ghost Zone with the unconscious Huntress. Batman followed them in the White Martian Carriership and found the Huntress on the verge of killing Prometheus. He dismissed her from the League and brought Prometheus into custody (JLA #36-41, Jan-May 2000). The League were now faced with the dilemma of what to do with Prometheus. Twice he had managed to penetrate their defences and twice they were saved by lucky breaks (the Catwoman and the damaged Helmet). The Martian Manhunter constructed a telepathic prison in Prometheus’s mind which kept him a vegetative idiot. They left him to rot in Gotham’s Blackgate Prison where he was abused and ridiculed by the guards (Faces of Evil: Prometheus #1 (March 2009), Final Crisis #1 (July 2008)).

Prometheus III – Quest for the Cosmic Key

Chad Graham’s father had been a police officer. He was one of the officers present when a pair of Bonnie-and-Clyde like serial criminals were cornered in a fatal shoot out. Their orphaned son grew up to become the super villain Prometheus. He hunted down and killed the officers involved in the shoot out, the last one being Graham’s father. When Prometheus arrived at the Graham house he found that the pre-teen Chad had already killed his father over an argument about computer games. Prometheus thought that Chad had the potential to become his sidekick, an anti-Robin to his anti-Batman, but it never really worked out that way.  Chad acquired Prometheus’s technology including the computerised-helmet, the discs containing all of Prometheus’s assimilated skills and files, and the Cosmic Key after the JLA imprisoned Prometheus (Faces of Evil: Prometheus #1, March 2009).

The Cosmic Key that had allowed Prometheus to travel to and from the Ghost Zone was not an unknown artefact to those who dealt in arcane lore. The Wizard of the Injustice Society recalled that it “has killed — legend says with exquisite pain — everyone of this Earth who has attempted to use it save one.” That one was the real Prometheus, which meant that it was fatally useless to Chad Graham. More over, powerful groups including the Society wanted to posses it so Graham hid it in the displays in Justice Society’s Trophy Room. At the time it was never really explained why Prometheus divested himself of the key, but it would make sense if Graham couldn’t use it. To have retained possession of it, but to never have used it, would have created too many questions (JSA Classified #5-7, Jan-March 2006).

Thomas Elliot was a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne who, unlike Wayne or Prometheus, actually desired wanted to be an orphan. He tried to kill his parents, but Wayne’s father – a medical doctor – was able to save Elliot’s mother. Elliot hated Bruce because his father interfered and that that hated eventually led him to became the supervillain Hush. Batman believed that Hush had died during their first encounter, but he survived and went underground. Hush decided that he needed more muscle after a close encounter with the Joker. Prometheus was recommended to him by an associate. Hush found Chad posing as Prometheus in a roof-top stand off with Green Arrow in Star City. He had taken an arrow to the shoulder and was in danger of dying from blood loss. Hush saved his life and Graham became Hush’s bodyguard/enforcer (“Pushback”, Gotham Knights #50-55 April-Sept 2004).

Despite their successful partnership, Graham began to question Hush’s rationality for approaching Poison Ivy and he objected when Hush tried to save Ivy’s life. That infuriated Hush and he threw Prometheus out of his operation. Kobra troopers working for Talia Al Ghu and the Society (Alexander Luthor’s reinvented Secret Society of Super-Villains) had been tracking Graham. She wanted the Cosmic Key and intended to take it from “Prometheus” by force. She captured Graham once Hush dissolved their partnership, but he collapsed also immediately, the victim of a toxin injected into him by an enemy of Ivy and Hush. Talia then had Hush captured and forced him to save Chad/Prometheus’s life a second time. Despite surviving the surgery Graham was still too weak to tell Talia where he had hidden Prometheus’s Cosmic Key (Gotham Knights #66, August 2005).

It took the Justice Society quite some time to realise that they had the real Cosmic Key in their possession, but by then the Wizard and the Injustice Society were also after it. They wanted it so they could release their leader Johnny Sorrow from his extra-dimensional exile. They broke into the Justice Society’s Headquarters, but where ambushed by Talia and Society soldiers. Sorrow was released when the Key consumed Rag Doll’s soul. It then allowed the Wizard to control it and the Injustice Society escaped into Prometheus’s Crooked House (JSA Classified #5-7, Jan-March 2006). The Injustice Society seemed intent on setting up base permanently in Prometheus’s Crooked House, but they had vacated it and the Key had been recovered by Chad/Prometheus by the time that the real Prometheus escaped from prison.

Chad/Prometheus now owed the Society his life and enthusiastically agreed to join them (Villains United #1, July 2005). He was with them during the Battle For Metropolis and was seen killing the hero Peacemaker (Infinite Crisis #7, June 2006). He was still working for the Society when the Crime Doctor tried to defect with the help of Lady Shiva and Oracle’s Birds of Prey. Prometheus was sent to punish the Crime Doctor by making him watch the slow murder to his daughter. Incredibly Shiva, one of the top-three martial artists in the world, was defeated by Chad using the same files that had allowed the real Prometheus to originally defeat the Batman. The Crime Doctor committed suicide to remove Prometheus’s reason for killing his daughter. Graham then considered his business with the Birds of Prey finished and left without further incident (Birds of Prey #93-95, June-August 2006).

The original Prometheus had twice almost defeated the Justice League and was counted by them as a credible foe. However, Graham’s Prometheus had degenerated into a minor mercenary and thug. The real Prometheus was released from his telepathic prison when the Martian Manhuunter was killed by Libra. Shortly afterwards, Graham killed the hero Hook, a member of the Bloodpack, whilst escaping a bank job in Seattle. The media coverage alerted the real Prometheus to Chad’s subterfuge. He found Chad being hunted by the rest of Bloodpack. Prometheus cut off Gunfire’s hands to make a point and then used the Cosmic Key to transport Graham and himself to the Crooked House, cutting the heroine Anima in half as they teleported out. Prometheus then immolated Graham, killing him for his betrayal (Faces of Evil: Prometheus #1, March 2009).

Prometheus has now turned his sights on the Justice League once more (as seen in Justice League: Cry For Justice). I’ll add details once the series finishes.

Abilities and Equipment

Like the Batman, Prometheus is a skilled combatant and has trained with a wide array of masters and experts. However, he augments his training with a computerised-helmet that allows him to download new skills, memories, and information directly into his brain. This system gives him an edge over most opponents by delivering exactly the right skills or pre-defined analysis that he needs to defeat an identified opponent. Its weakness, as demonstrated by the Catwoman, is that it can leave Prometheus blind to eventualities that he has not prepared for.

Prometheus’s costume is padded and reinforced against most superhuman attacks. His normal weapon of choice is an electronic nightstick – the enemy’s weapon – that can shatter anvils or fire electrical charges.

Prometheus is the custodian of the Cosmic Key – a soul-drinking artefact of extra-dimensional origin that allows him to travel between dimensions and places at will. This is usually limited to transference back and forth to his Crooked House within the Ghost Zone.