Psimon
38 years ago - Simon Jones is born.
20 years ago - 18-year-old Simon attends University.
16 years ago - 22-year-old Simon earns his Bachelor's degree.
13 years ago - 25-year-old Simon earns his Master's degree.
11 years ago - 27-year-old Simon Jones earns his Doctorate.
10 years ago - 28-year-old Simon Jones's experiments in extra-dimensional communication allow Trigon to contact him from within his prison. He is demonically empowered and joins Doctor Light's Fearsome Five.
9 years ago - 29-year-old Simon Jones reforms the Fearsome Five, freeing it's members from prison, usurping control from Doctor Light. They free JInx from Star Labs, and battle Superman & the Teen Titans.
8 years ago - 30-year-old Simon Jones is banished into Trigon's extradimensional prison upon his return. a higher plane.
3 years ago - 30-year-old Simon Jones escapes his imprisonment when Trigon's power is usurped by Etrigan. He reforms the Fearsome FIve with the help of Dr. Sivana. They are defeated by the Outsiders.
This is such a comic book character. You'd just never see something this pulpy and weird anywhere else. Psimon really benefits from his role as a bit of a side-character, just a part of a group as opposed to someone who has to carry the story on his own. He gets such a completely out-there design, and gets to have such completely unwaveringly evil motivations, because his complexity comes from being put alongside others. The idea of villians that are just villians for villiany's sake is 100% valid in the right kind of story, and this is totally the way you go about building them.
Psimon's Comic HistoryPsimon appeared for the first time, along with the rest of the Fearsome Five, in 1981's New Teen Titans #3 by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. The team of original characters (and Dr. Light) were being built to challenge the new team, and as such were a reasonably capable threat, even if individually there wasn't a LOT going on.
Psimon's design is probably the weirdest of all of them. That is absolutely his brain there, under that transparent dome. That actually strikes me as more of a handicap than anything else, but when you have insane psychic powers, who really knows what's what anymore? His origins would later go on to be explained as being related to seminal series-villain Trigon, which at least goes on to explain why he looks like some sort of horrible monster. Psimon and the Fearsome Five made their appearances in the original series, when he would actually become the new team leader after they ousted the perpetually ridiculous Dr. Light from the team, and would essentially just be as evil as you can possibly imagine. He's not a character that made a ton of solo appearances, as he doesn't really make a lot of sense away from his team, but he does make for a great background character. He featured VERY heavily in the animated Young Justice cartoon, where his cast psychic powers made him a great foil for Miss Martian. |
Our Psimon StorySo we don't actually have to do much with Psimon to make him work in our timeline. Obviously we want him in the first place, because the Fearsome Five are great enemies for the Teen Titans (and later for the Outsiders), and he works very well within the framework of that team, we just need to do a few minor things with him so his basic character functions. Just like every character we include that has some sort of science background we actually created a timeline of his academic career. Also, since he's actually empowered by Trigon, we got to mess with his roll for quite a bit since Trigon's power levels actually fluctuate quite a bit in our timeline as he moves from a lord of hell, to being imprisoned, and eventually destroyed thanks to the Titans and the denizens of Azarath, and then later having his seat in hell usurped by Etrigan. All of this lets us play with Psimon's place in the world, and by being creative with this it actually informs when and how the Fearsome Five show up in continuity as well. It's a challenge, but we just have to make it work for us instead of against us.
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