Alias: The Alchemist
Real Name: Reynolds Lawson
Genre: Supervillain
Powers/Special Skills: Can turn any substance into gold with a touch; metal seems to conduct this power, thus touching an object or person with a piece of metal can also turn it to gold
Special Weapons/Tools/Armor: none
Affiliations: The Network, The Sinister Society
Past Aliases: Midas
Status: at large
Bio:
Reynolds didn’t come to discover his power until his mid-thirties, in the golden age, married and a father of two young children. It happened late one night after he had spent a little too much time at a bar on his way home from work. He came home late, an act he had done repeatedly within that year. His wife finally said she’d had it with his drinking and being away from home. She started packing, and Reynolds grabbed her. In his heightened emotional state and inebriation, his powers suddenly activated and when he pulled his hand away his wife was a statue of gold. He screamed in terror, trying to take back what he had done, and awakened his children. They came running in and, to comfort them, he kneeled down and hugged them in his arms. He had already forgotten his curse. The Reynolds children were turned into gold as well and Reynolds, in a fit on insanity, ran from his house, never to return.
The grief over his family drove him to psychosis, darkened his mind, and turned him to the world of evil. He became the villain Midas, terrorizing the streets of the city. A dark group known as the Network recruited him and he worked with them on occasion until he was confronted by the hero Mr. Ultimate. After a great battle, Midas was captured and given a serum to suppress his mutant power.
He lay in a coma for 35 years, and, unbeknownst to the staff at the Superhuman Containment Facility, the extended sleep was only charging Midas’s power higher and higher. Three years ago, he escaped in an amazing feat in which he turned the entire building into an edifice of gold, including all of the equipment and employees. The act depleted him of his excess power and he is now back to where he was 35 years ago. Now an old man, he has changed his style and name, now going by the Alchemist. He sought revenge on Mr. Ultimate only to find that the hero had died. But he had left his powers to his only son, and to the Alchemist, one is as good as the other. He has joined forces with the Sinister Society in order to find this man and to aid them in world domination.
Those who have never met the Alchemist or don’t know his story often wonder why he does not simply turn enough things into gold to make himself rich and live out the rest of his life in ease and comfort. But the Alchemist cares nothing for monetary gain. He lives for revenge and guilt, the only two emotions he’s felt in almost 40 years.
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