Black Talon

Black Talon is often dismissed out of hand due to the silly-looking costume he wore during the 1970s and 1980s. As it happened, he’s actually a complex and interesting characters. He certainly has a place in many stories.

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Background

Powers & Abilities

Black Talon is no Sorcerer Supreme material. But he’s a capable occultist  and can conjure varied thaumaturgical manifestations.

Like most low-order magic users in the Marvel Universe, he cannot really generate sufficient magic energy from his person, but can entreat otherdimensional entities to bestow him power to cast spell.

Loa enforcer

His usual patron is named Damballah, an evil serpent god (spelled “Damaballa” or “Damballa” in his original appearance). The relationship between this Damballah and the real-world vaudou loa of the same name is unclear.

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Given precedents in the Marvel Universe it is likely that the Damballah with whom Black Talon deals is some sort of demon, using the name of the vaudou loa to ride its coattails and leech prestige and power from rituals addressed to the actual Damballah. None of the symbols of the actual Damballah Weddo, such as his vévé, were ever used by Black Talon.

Marvel sources later described this Damballah as a spawn of the Elder God Set. Set has been known to derive magical energy from confusion with the Ancient Egyptian god Seth.

Barone can be called a bokor since this often means a mercenary magic man capable of performing evil spells — but the meaning of the word changes depending on local vaudou customs. In 2009 Barone stated that he knew magic using both the left and right hand (i.e., evil and good). One of his spells seemed associated with Papa Guédé, who is a more or less benign death loa.

See the game stats section for more about the spells and creatures used by the Black Talon.

Other assets

Barone seems to be a large and strong man, though it’s never clearly demonstrated (the official data seem smudged between Barone and his predecessor, Drew).

He also sounds very well-educated, but if he has an academic background it hasn’t been mentioned. Barone seems to be a good negotiator, and knows his way around the underworld, both literal and figurative.

In the 2010s Black Talon has been shown armed with a short sword, but this seems based on the OHOTMU picture – which depicts Drew, not Barone.

Barone has also used “devil’s dreamweed” (presumably datura ) to knock out and suppress the will of his victims. Datura, under the local name concombre zombi, is a traditional component of Haitian concoctions supposed to deprive people of their willpower and make them unto zombies – in the sense of a living person whose mind has been anaesthetised.

This doesn’t seem to be a regular part of his M.O., presumably because it is not as useful as actual necromantic powers.

Nekra stated that the Black Talon had been the one who located a corpse strongly resembling whom Simon Williams had been in life. This might be possible through some sort of specialised scrying, or perhaps Barone has a network of cultists working in morgues and who can steal cadavers of special interest.

The walking dead, part 1

The main service that Black Talon sells is zombies. Barone is an expert reanimator, quite possibly one of the best in North America. He knows a lot of ways to bring back bodies, spirits, souls, consciousnesses, etc. back from the dead.

His zombies range from nearly mindless animated corpses to the computer-processed soul of the person re-anchored to a magically restored body. He also deployed various in-between solutions such as animating the still-decomposed corpse with something that seems to be a small sliver of the deceased’s life force.

Generally, if you need to magically restore somebody to a simulacra of life, the Black Talon is an excellent contractor.

Barone once stated that his power over zombies came with assuming the Black Talon garb and name, though no further details were provided. He also apparently can enforce his will by threatening to use a zombie-destroying magic fire, and later on started wearing a genuine Damballah gris-gris.

Generally he seems to lord over his zombies through fear, intimidation, coercion and force.

The walking dead, part 2

The zombie of Changeling (Kevin Sidney) stated that it was harder for Barone to maintain his hold on the four X-Humed at once, allowing the X-Humed a tiny measure of free will. Since the Black Talon has been seen dominating many more zombies, one assumes that this is because the spirit of the X-Humed, who were all superhuman adventurers, was stronger than most.

A basic, run-of-the-mill zombie is fairly robust. Ordinary people will have difficulties taking them out without large melee weapons or military firearms. Even if taken down, they might simply rise and attack anew – this wasn’t clearly witnessed, but captions described the zombies as keeping on coming against all attacks.

As the Vision discovered, trying to phase through these zombies exposes a person to raw necromantic energy, which nearly crippled the red-skinned synthezoid . However this is also very painful for the zombies, who are not used to physical suffering.

The walking dead, part 3

Even a basic zombie possesses what is at least a shred of the reanimated person’s soul. They have some very crude memories, and though it is difficult they can be communicated with to a small extent. Generally these zombies are not mindless, ravenous anthropophages but very diminished persons trapped in a corpse and obeying some basic reflexes.

Black Talon knows how to condition them to follow orders and carry out specific actions – but this is closer to imposing his will, since originally he cannot otherwise communicate with his zombies much better than anyone else.

Later on, Barone developed a magical technique to have zombies speak to him in the voice of Papa Guédé as if they were fully alive and intelligent. He also started having the lips of his zombies sewed shut – probably for technical reasons, but perhaps because the Vision once found Barone’s hideout by interrogating a zombie.

The walking dead, part 4

The ceremony to animate a dozen basic zombies lasts maybe an hour or two. It can be held in most cemeteries without further preparation as the corpses will somehow be able to emerge from the ground unaided. One instance involved magic bonfires, drum-playing and a ritual dance by Nekra, who back then was just an initiate.

These zombies were just intended as relatively short-“lived” security, though — animating longer-term servants may take more time, preparation and components. Another instance — to raise the X-Humed — ended with jamba sticks (whatever that is) stuck in the earth above the tombs under the full moon.

Of particular note is the Kent Brady zombie, thought it is unclear whether the Black Talon or Nekra was responsible for its exceptional characteristics. Brady looked fully alive and had all the skills and mental acumen he had in life, through clouded by a constant state of rage. This included being a firearms expert and apparently an experienced soldier.

The Brady zombie was also capable of taking several punches from Wonder Man without going down.

A streetcar named death

During the 1990s Black Talon operated from his New Orleans mansion on St. Charles – presumably in the Uptown part. Based on this subtle hint, one assumes that he is wealthy from his cult and mercenary activities, and he knew how to use this wealth for graft.

This mansion had many similar characteristics to Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. It is manifestly larger on the inside than on the outside, and features infinite corridors (yay !) with endless doors that all lead to whichever room the master of the house wishes. It presumably has various magical defenses, anti-scrying measures, etc. One of the cars in the garage was, of course, a hearse.

In this mansion, Black Talon was assisted by a servant/bodyguard named Garth, whom we theorise was a mutant with a superhuman physique and strength brainwashed using concombre zombi datura mixtures.

Later on Black Talon ran a huge cocaine plantation on a Caribbean island, crewed by a large number of zombies. Taino seems to be a large island, with Barone’s vast property only covering part of it. There were ordinary tourists vacationing on the beaches, and impoverished locals to run the services for said tourists.

Night of the zuvembie

In the original Black Talon stories, the undead are named “zuvembies”. This is an artefact from the Comic Code Authority  censorship of the 1950s, which barred a number of themes and words in comic books to kill the lurid, horror themed 1950s comics industries. One of the banned concepts was “zombie”.

The Authority’s authority gradually crumbled. By the early 1970s there was a revival of horror comics to surf on the wave of successful horror movies, such as The Exorcist (1973). Marvel went in strong with “occultsploitation” books such as Ghost Rider and Son of Satan, and occasionally used horror themes in its main super-hero books to reinforce sales.

However, some lip service was paid the Comic Code Authority, including some time-honoured hypocrisy leading to such argumentation as “but they’re not zombies ! They’re zuvembies ! That’s totally different and we just made that up !”.

Non super-heroes titles, which could be argued to be aimed at older readers, were freer of these limitations. For instance the previous Black Talon (Desmond Drew) appears in the comic book Tales of the Zombie.

History

Samuel D. Barone was first seen in the mid-1970s. By this point, he already seemed well established as a priest of evil serpent spirits and had about 30 cultists serving him. One gathers that he always lived in the bayou, since he considered going to New Jersey a major expedition.

The name and garb of the Black Talon had previously been used by a man named Desmond Drew. Barone swiftly claimed this identity after Drew was killed by his irate followers in 1974.

The Black Talon costume is, to the amusement of many outsiders, themed after a fowl. Chickens are considered good sacrifices in some vaudou traditions, and the costume and name are thus presumably potent symbolism. The Black Talon name and costume also are tied to the position of “zombie-lord”. What this means was never explained.

Nightmare in New Orleans !

In 1976, the Living Laser (Arthur Parks, then under the control of the Serpent Crown), anonymously hired Black Talon to handle the zombie Wonder Man (Simon Williams). Barone did not bring Wonder Man back by himself, and it would seem that he was primarily hired as someone used to handling and commanding various sorts of zombies.

Barone prepped and gave his orders to the shambling Wonder Man, and had it shipped to New York City as per instructions. He knew nothing else of the plan.

(In the original story, it is implicitly the Serpent Crown that reanimated Williams. In later flashbacks and sourcebooks, this is retconned  — probably accidentally — as Black Talon having reanimated Williams as a zuvembie.)

The Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff) and the Avengers, investigating the zuvembie, magically tracked down the Black Talon all the way to the bayou. Maximoff, then a sorcery novice, narrowly defeated Barone. However, the priest knew essentially nothing, and the Avengers returned to New York City with the Wonder Man zombie.

Nightmare in New Jersey ! (part 1)

In 1985, the Black Talon was hired by the Grim Reaper (Eric Williams) for another plot involving Wonder Man. The crazed Reaper wanted to bring back his brother Simon, and the Black Talon’s talents would be instrumental for that. Though she despised Barone, the Reaper’s companion Nekra (Nekra Sinclair) studied under the Black Talon, and proved a capable study.

The heart of the Reaper’s plan was to have the Black Talon build a replica of Simon Williams’ body as it was before he received super-powers. He would use the corpse of the hitman Brady Kent as a basis.

This inert body, made human-looking through reparative surgery (presumably performed by hired doctors), would then serve as a vessel for Simon Williams’ thought patterns as cleaned up by Ultron’s mind-scanning computers. This would recreate the Grim Reaper’s brother as he was before he became Wonder Man.

The Black Talon was also in charge of casting the computer-processed spirit into the rebuilt body.

Nightmare in New Jersey ! (part 2)

The Black Talon was further tasked by the Reaper with capturing the Vision, whose synthetic mind had been based on Simon Williams’ thought patterns. The Vision was then on a leave with his wife the Scarlet Witch. The Black Talon found them as they were visiting houses to buy in Leonia, New Jersey – not far from New York City.

Barone’s zombie attackers were partially successful. The Vision was incapacitated when he phased through a zombie, and the Scarlet Witch was then clubbed unconscious from behind. The zombies could only bring the Witch back, though.

The Vision eventually recovered and came to confront the Grim Reaper, Nekra and the Black Talon just as the Scarlet Witch was freeing herself from her bonds. The couple escaped after stalemating their opponents.

The plans of the Lethal Legion (Grim Reaper, Nekra, Ultron, Man-Ape, Black Talon, Goliath) were going well. They captured Wonder Man to prepare a copy of his mind that Barone could use to animate the Kent corpse. However, the Reaper kept behaving in an insulting and racist way, and the Man-Ape (M‘Baku) and Black Talon soon became fed up with it.

Though the Black Talon was well-compensated and very interested in the project from a technical standpoint, Eric Williams’ bigotry was too much. Barone and M‘Baku left in anger, precipitating the fall of the Lethal Legion during a clash with the Avengers.

Nightmare in New Orleans ! (again)

In 1991, the Black Talon schemed to procure the corpses of four superhuman mutants – the Living Diamond (Jack Winter), the Black Bishop (Harry Leland), Scaleface of the Morlocks, and Changeling (Kevin Sidney).

After an encounter with one of Barone’s zombies, She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters) and Louise Mason (formerly the Blonde Phantom) came to consult with him in New Orleans, not realising that they had been magically influenced into so doing.

Seizing the opportunity, the Black Talon enthralled She-Hulk with a chicken bone necklace. He then used her strength to bring his plan with the mutant corpses to its conclusion. When She-Hulk broke free of the necklace, Black Talon was ready to raise his zombies, which he called the “X-Humed”.

She-Hulk vanquished the zombies and put them back into the grave with their mouth packed with salt and their lips sewn shut. Black Talon was arrested by the NOPD, and his microcephalic henchman Garth accompanied Walters and Mason back to NYC.

Wealth and taste and discontinuity

The Black Talon was seen again in 1993, but the events that took place are now known to have been an illusion engineered by Mephisto to manipulate Wonder Man (Simon Williams). Some parts were presumably true, but it is impossible to tell which. Some points of note, which may or may not be true on the actual Earth-616 , are :

• Barone had a connection with Lotus (Lotus Newmark). From dialogue it seems that they were sex buddies.
• He was assisted by four fire dancers, who all had inhuman red skin and hair, whom he called his “daughters”. The nature of these naked women is unknown.
• The Black Talon had developed a connection with Mephisto as well with Damballah. Rituals powered by Mephisto included animating rocks into giant snakes that could delay Wonder Man, and teleportation to and from Mephisto’s Hell. During the story he was called to personally assist Mephisto.
• He had spells to telepathically contact people he knew over vast distances, and temporarily multiply their physical strength.
• The costume’s gloves were shown to be beclawed.
• The Black Talon could more easily affect Wonder Man with his magic as he had once handled his soul.

As it turns out, the next appearance of the Black Talon is also of unclear continuity status as it took place in a Deadpool book. Barone took an interest in the resurrected Mercedes Wilson and he and a zombie horde invaded Casa Deadpool to capture her. Black Talon failed and was grievously wounded by Deadpool. During this appearance, he seemed to speak French or Haitian French Creole.

Magic powder

Black Talon then established himself on an island called Taino, in the Caribbean. There he ran a large cocaine plantation crewed by zombies and monitored by cultists, as his clashes with the Avengers had encouraged him to operate away from super-heroes.

By his account, he greatly enjoyed the tranquillity and wealth that this arrangement brought him. Black Talon’s operation was described as being the biggest coke production center in the Caribbean.

In 2009, the Zombie (Simon Garth) came to Taino, since its amulet of Damballah was attracted toward the similar gris-gris worn by Black Talon. By this point the Zombie was carrying the head of a version of Deadpool from another dimension, which was a carrier for the dreaded otherdimensional zombie virus first encountered by the Ultimate Fantastic Four.

The Zombie and Deadpool had just escaped from A.R.M.O.R., thus posing a major threat of contamination of Earth-616 by the zombie virus.

Zombie apocalypse risk: high

The Black Talon debriefed the Zombie, and learned the background of the virus. Though tempted to use it himself, he wisely assumed that it would result in a clash with super-heroes and decided to sell it instead. He contacted the Hood (Parker Robbins), who had become his main cocaine buyer in the US. The Hood’s master, the dread Dormammu, had the Hood agree to the deal.

However, when the Hood came for the transaction, an A.R.M.O.R. team called the Midnight Sons (Michael Morbius, Jack Russell (aka Werewolf by Night), Daimon Hellstrom, and Jennifer Kale plus Man-Thing) reached Taino. The situation quickly degenerated, and the otherdimensional zombie virus was unexpectedly released as an horrific sentient cloud.

The A.R.M.O.R. operatives, in an impromptu alliance with the Hood, easily took out Black Talon and his worker zombies  Barone was unexpectedly knocked out by the Hood before he could summon wards. The Black Talon was later revived to help Jennifer Kale cast a spell, and their combined Atlantean and vaudou magics successfully drew the cloud into the Zombie for containment.

A large part of Taino had been ravaged, though.

Nightmare in New York !

His plantation wrecked, his zombies destroyed and his operation exposed to the authorities, the Black Talon apparently had to return to the US. It is possible that he had to associate with the Hood as a common operative, given the level of control that Robbins held on the East Coast underworld back then.

In unknown circumstances he and a zombie horde clashed with Wolverine, the Punisher and Ghost Rider some months after the Taino events. He later strangely showed up in New York City to start a zombie plague right in Manhattan. The Punisher intervened and gunned down the zombies and Barone.

Given the Black Talon’s rantings, the overt nature of the plan and the fact that he was floating with his eyes glowing, one supposes that he was being ridden by some sort of evil death spirit, perhaps after an occult mishap. It seems entirely possible that such as possession would have allowed him to survive being shot.

Description

The height and weight in this writeup have been adjusted as the official values are presumably for Drew, not Barone.

Personality

Among his flock, the Black Talon has an authoritarian, macho, tyrannical demeanour and does the usual Dark Lord of the Sith impression. Generally his behaviour is theatrical and on the grandiose side, and he likes to talk like a book that is on the pulpish side. He likes to look confident and in control even when things are getting iffy.

He generally seems to be a smart and reasonable guy, and he’s well-aware that he doesn’t have the magic ooomph to face superhumans. He thus prefers to be a behind-the-scenes guy, leveraging his zombies in lucrative criminal enterprises or selling his expertise.

If he has to launch and lead a plan himself (rather than sell resources to others), he’ll arrange to have particularly tough zombies like the X-Humed (and might go for superhuman zombies again, given the number of M-Day and Decimation victims).

Barone might return to growing drugs, as it is a very lucrative use of his peculiar workforce. He has mellowed since his younger days, and lost much his taste for bigger-than-life schemes. He seemed content to sit in his private island and build up his wealth, away from super-heroes.

Quotes

“My ally needs [your husband] for a terrible purpose that some might call mad — though to me it’s the validation of all I hold dear.”

(To the Wonder Man zuvembie) “Do you dare disobey my commands ? I who have assumed the name… BLACK TALON ! Prepare for destruction, fool ! Those who fail must be punished – by the fire which consumes all !”

“Mine is the might of Damaballa — and the dark god cannot be defeated, least of all by you !”

“The ground around New Orleans is so naturally swampy that normal interment is impossible. Mausoleums are built above ground, frequently in several tiers. Our interest today is in a single tomb, however.”

“Yes ! Yes ! Fight, my zombies ! Strain against your earthen prison ! You must need to live ! Crave to be free ! Only then does the spell work !”

DCU History

Just bring him in along. One possibility would be for him to get hold of the Suicide Squad morgue (probably making him a former member of LOA, the voodoo syndicate that was blasted to pieces by Waller and her men), thus allowing you to use lotsa dead villains such as Slipknot and the rest.

But this idea probably worked before the whole Black Lantern thing and would now be a rehash.

Nowadays he might have connections with Nekron.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Marvel Universe.

Helper(s): Chris Cottingham, Darci, Capita_Senyera.

Writeup completed on the 15^th of August, 2013.