Weather Wizard
40 years ago - Mark Mardon is born.
28 years ago - 12-year-old Mark's older brother Clyde leaves home to persue an education.
24 years ago - 16-year-old Mark starts hijacking delivery trucks.
20 years ago - 20-year-old Mark is caught during a bank robbery & sent to prison. His brother Clyde is his only contact.
18 years ago - 22-year-old Mark learns that his brother Clyde is working with Barry Allen to help understand the Speed Force.
17 years ago - 23-year-old Mark escapes from prison and meets his brother, who dies during the encounter. He releases his brother's nano-cluster satelites, becoming the Weather Wizard & battling Barry Allen.
15 years ago - 25-year-old Mark joins the Rogues. He briefly allies himself with Roscoe Dillon when he attempts to take control, but quickly abandons him when Leonard Snart shuts him down.
13 years ago - 27-year-old Mark sides with Leonard Snart when he allies the Rogues with Barry Allen & Wally West to stop Eobard Thawne's takeover of the Rogues after he kills Lisa Snart & Sam Scudder.
11 years ago - 29-year-old Mark & the Rogues ally with Gorilla Grodd until his plans become evident. They then help Barry Allen & Wally West stop him.
7 years ago - 33-year-old Mark is caught & sent to prison by Wally West when he ends Barry Allen's ideal with the Rogues, holding them responsible for the fall of Frankie Kane.
4 years ago - 36-year-old Mark manges to retake remote control of his nano-satellites from prison and escapes. he rejoins the Rogues.
3 years ago - 37-year-old Mark & the original Rogues stop Clifford Devoe's new, more lethal team of Rogues, earning a new deal with Wally West.
There are a finite number of super-powers in the world. While some characters have pretty innovative ideas, you tend to always come back to the classics. Controlling the weather is an old standard, and one of the earliest characters to weild this power was a particular Flash villain. He's cropped up in a wide amount of media, so it's very likely that most casual comic readers will already know of him.
Weather Wizard's Comic HistoryWeather Wizard was invented in 1959 by John Broome & Carmine Infantino, one of the many gimmick villains developed in the era. He's actually probably one of the more reasonable ones; a character that controls the weather might be a pretty comicy idea but it's still a pretty standard super-power. As it turns out, the best way to fight a superhero with super-speed is to alter the terrain of the battlefield. I'm not sure if this is deliberate, but the Flash enemies with the most longevity, like Captain Cold, Heatwave, and Mirror Master all do this in one way or another, and Weather Wizard is clearly a great example of this.
This character actually shows up a LOT. in almost every version of the Flash in popular media, be it his appearance in Superman: the Animated Series or in the CW live-action Flash series, Weather Wizard tends to be the very first villain we see. He was very effectively used by practically every writer to work with the Flash, and while he's never really broken out as a core threat to the DC universe at large he is a central part of the Rogues and of the story of the Flash. |
Our Weather Wizard StoryGetting the Weather Wizard just right is a little bit of a tight rope. Obviously, this is a guy who can get very powerful very quickly but who has never really been depicted as a major A-list villain. In order to get him just right you want to state his origins in a way that give him some built-in limitations. Since his ability to control the weather has always been based on technology, we invented the idea of 'nano-satellite clusters' that were created by his brother which he has control of. this would allow him access to all sorts of powers but put very deliberate caps on what he can actually do.
Speaking of his brother, there's actually some potential there. The Flash is a character who always works better when he allies himself with scientists. This role has taken on different shapes in different places, but it actually works really well if Mark's brother Clyde, the person who invented the weather wand, is first introduced to the Flash's universe as an ally of Barry Allen. Other than that, we've essentially defined the Weather Wizard using his relationship with the Rogues. This means a lot of things, because that particular group does quite a bit, but ultimately this is where Weather Wizard has always been the strongest character. |