Fearzum the Nightmare Master (A to Z, F)

Starting the new week with more supporting cast!  About a quart of the way through for the A to Z Challenge.

Potentially getting ready for some more Silver Age superheroics this week, so I thought I needed some more villains.

Fearzum the Nightmare Master

Quote: You think you are brave but you have not faced the terror of Fearzum!

The seeds of fear are already growing within your soul!  Soon, they will consume your every thought!

Description: As Fearzum, he wears a black body with the outline of a skeleton stitched in black upon it, a belf made of a noose, a white skull mask and dark red cloak completes the ensemble.  He is slender but athletic and has various tools and weapons hidden on the back of his belt.  His voice is echoy and distorted.

But, in his civilian identity as Dr. Gerald Toomes, he is a famous psychologist, lecturer, and bestselling suspense author.  He wears tailored tweed suits, has a bit of a belly (all padding under his clothes), and wears seemingly thick glasses that obscure his brown eyes.  His brown hair is going white at the temples.  He has a New England accent and cannot resist using ten-dollar words.

Background: Gerald Toomes was always fascinated by what made people afraid, a quest that lead him into the study of psychology.  He became well known for his treatment of people suffering from irrational fears.  Gerald turned his hand to writing suspense novels, plucking certain situations and characters from what he had learned from his clients.  When one tried to blackmail him, Gerald used his knowledge of the man’s fears to drive him to throw himself to his death.  That was the event that led to the emergence of Fearzum.

Fearzum is now known as a supervillain who steals rare items related to death and horror, using his superpowers to cause fear and confusion.

Presenting this Character: Toomes is well known as an expert on the causes and treatment of irrational fear and as a best-selling author of suspense novels.  He is often interviewed on radio and TV, as well as for newspapers, where he comes across as rather pompous but he knows his facts.  Toomes is happy to help the police and superheroes where he can.

Fearzum is arrogant but a careful planner.  He does not have any significant superpowers, relying on chemistry and technological trickery to inspire fear.  He manipulates events to make everything in the area more frightening, subsonic, sound effects, mild does of drugs in aerisols (so it appears as fog or mist).

What can he do?: Toomes is a masterful psychologist, able to read and manipulate people without their knowledge.  He has become very well-read on superheroes and villains and has extensive files on those who work on the East Coast.  While in his late forties, his is remarkable fit, partly due to exercise and diet, and partly due to a regime of mild supersoldier drugs which put him at Olympic athlete level of physical capability.

Fearzum has access for a variety of fear-inducing devices, subsonic projectors, drugs that can be deployed through gasses or darts, and such.  He knows that even with his heightened physical abilities and gimmicks, that he is no match for most superheroes and so sets up distractions and threats to civilians to cover his escapes.

Who might know him and why: Toomes has helped out several police investigations and even a few ones by superheroes.  His media interviews make him well-known as an expert on the subject of fear.

He does not take many new patients, and those he does are well-paying or high profile (usually both) but he would be willing to take a superhero who needed help as a new patient.

Plot Hooks: At a TV studio, the characters run across Toomes giving an interview.  Perhaps they have questions for such an expert?

Toomes, correctly, thinks that one of his patients is a supervillain and he needs the heroes help to catch in the act (yes, a violation of his oath but supervillain!).  Of course, Fearzum will use the opportunity of the heroes being distracted to pull off a high-profile crime.

Notes: I love the Silver Age, where you can have wonderfully bizarre characters like this and they just work.

Image from PublicDomainPictures.net and is, naturally, in the Public Domain.