Man Who Quit The Human Race

Background

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Powers & Abilities

As a mutant, Warner is a superhuman giant whose body is reinforced by a sort of flesh-coloured carapace. It might be subdermal organic plating made of bone, chitin or another substance. He is superhumanly strong and durable.

He displayed a number of mental, perhaps psionic  powers :

• “Telepathing his thoughts” (as the story put it) and discreet mind-reading.
• Creating swarms of flat, pale blue circles of energy used to push opponents away as a sort of hovering wall.
• Relatively short-range teleportation (perhaps 150 metres), though he can chain-teleport and thus move at about the same speed as a car. Chain-teleporting doesn’t seem particularly tiring.
• Growing at an even larger size when needed – large enough to grab Batman and Robin with but one hand.
• The mutated Warner was curiously stealthy and once surprised the Dynamic Duo by hiding in the shadows. Our game stats go long on that aspect and assume he can mentally suppress the noise he makes (footsteps, breathing, etc.).
• Walls of force that are impassable to flesh – and briefly turn skin to a golden hue if it is pressed against the “wall”. However, a person completely covered in robust fabric or other unliving material can cross the “wall”, which apparently needs to “sense” naked flesh to block it.

It is possible that Warner was a “endless arsenal of powers” character, but it seems more likely that this is the bulk of his tricks.

If exposed to enough gamma radiation, Warner will allegedly mutate further and become so powerful as to be unstoppable. On the other hand, certain forms of light will shut him down – Batman achieved this by creating green light by shining a searchlight through a thin gold leaf.

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History

Andrew Warner was a governor, apparently of the state Gotham City is in.

In 1964 he started experiencing terrible, alien nightmares – and his face would occasionally briefly warp itself.

Doctors eventually established that he was a mutant, an isolated case of what mankind would become in its next evolutionary leap. A gland near the pituitary was the seat of the mutation. It could either be removed to stop the process — or excited via special light to trigger the full transformation.

Warner always had an interest in science. In college, he ran experiments along with his fellow student Bruce Wayne. The governor decided to have the gland activated so scientists could study him. He quit his position, then prepared to quit the human race.

A glimpse of man’s future

However, the treatment mutated him very quickly and he fell prey to alien emotions urging him to take over the Earth as he now hated humans.

Batman and Robin were present as security – back in this continuity, officials such as Warner often had the Dynamic Duo help them out. As he felt his human mind slipping, Warner told them to stop him. He then beelined for a nuclear power plant to expose himself to gamma radiation that would make him powerful enough to take over the Earth.

Warner telepathically realized that Batman was Bruce Wayne. Underneath the mutant consciousness, Warner’s human self left behind tenuous clues about an experiment he and Wayne had run in their youth. Deducing the message, Batman shone a searchlight through a thin gold leaf at the mutant, and the green light made Warner collapse.

The unconscious Warner was loaded into a rocket to orbit the sun in suspended animation until mankind would catch up with him and free him to be among his own kind.

Description

See illustrations.

Personality

The mutant is a cocky, alien being filled with strange emotions, including contempt for inferior humanity and a desire to domination since he’s the higher lifeform.

However, shreds of Warner’s human consciousness are working against it as exceedingly subtle sabotage.

Quotes

“I possess strange and awesome powers ! And — I find myself filled with sheer contempt for — mere men ! Yes — it is as I feared ! I feel an urge in me to — subjugate you inferior beings !”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Batman vol. 1 #165.

Writeup completed on the 18^th of October, 2015.