Hunter Zolomon, otherwise known as Zoom, is a fictional supervillain appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. The second supervillain to be called the Reverse-Flash, he is the archenemy of Wally West (the third superhero to be called the Flash).
IGN ranked Zoom as the 37th greatest comic book villain of all time in 2009. In 2015, the character made his live-action debut on The CW's television series The Flash, portrayed by actor Teddy Sears.
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Publication history
Created by Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins, Hunter Zolomon made his debut in The Flash: Secret Files & Origins #3 in November 2001. He first appeared as Zoom in The Flash (vol. 2) #197 in June 2003.
Zoom Team Building Video
Fictional character biography
Origin
Hunter Zolomon had a troubled relationship with his parents, who rarely spoke to each other or to him. On the day Hunter was leaving for college, he came home to find police surrounding his house. His father, a serial killer who had killed six young girls, had killed his mother when she turned him in and he was killed by the police when he refused to surrender.
To stop people like his father, Hunter became obsessed with understanding the criminal mind. He studied criminology and psychology in college and joined the FBI with his girlfriend, Ashley (whom he later married), specializing in low-level costumed criminals. One case resulted in Ashley's father's death; Hunter thought the criminal they were after was incapable of facing his adult life, and would not use an "adult" weapon like a gun. Ashley left him shortly afterwards, and he was fired by the FBI. The case left Hunter with a damaged knee; he needed a cane to walk, and was unable to run.
He moved to Keystone City and got a job as a profiler, working with the police in its Department of Metahuman Hostilities. Hunter's work put him in constant contact with the Flash, Wally West, and they became good friends. Although his insight was critical in solving a number of cases, he resented being stuck behind a desk.
Transformation into Zoom
Hunter was severely injured in an attack by Gorilla Grodd in Iron Heights when Grodd staged a mass prison break, and was left paralyzed from the waist down. He asked Wally West to use the time-traveling cosmic treadmill in the Flash Museum to prevent this; West refused, saying that he could not risk damaging the timestream. Hunter, believing that Wally disregard such fears for the sake of their friendship, broke into the museum and tried to use the treadmill himself. The resulting explosion destroyed the museum, gave Hunter the use of his legs again and shifted his connection to time (described by Jay Garrick as "derailing" him from the timestream), giving him superspeed.
Hunter decided that Wally had refused to help because, unlike previous Flash Barry Allen, he had never experienced personal tragedy; if he became the new Zoom and brought tragedy to Wally's life, the Flash would be a better hero. With this belief as justification he attacked the Flash and his allies, creating a shockwave (by snapping his fingers) which caused West's wife Linda to miscarry their twins. After borrowing speed from the other speedsters to even the playing field (briefly allowing him to match Zoom's speed), Flash prevented his former friend from killing his wife. Wally used slight rips in time created by Zoom's powers to force Hunter into a temporal anomaly in which Hunter is comatose, continuously seeing the death of his father-in-law.
Hunter's ex-wife, Ashley, replaced him as a profiler and tried to communicate with him. After a car accident, she was hospitalized for a long time and Zoom awoke out of concern for her. Cautious, he remained in his cell.
Rogue war
Zoom is driven out of his self-imposed imprisonment by Cheetah (Dr. Barbara Minerva) to harness his superspeed and induct him into the growing Secret Society of Super Villains. Although they are attracted to each other, Zoom still considers himself married to Ashley.
He infiltrates the growing Rogue war between Captain Cold's Rogues, the Trickster's reformed Rogues and the Top's brainwashed Rogues. Spiriting Ashley out of danger to the home of Linda Park, Zoom returns to the battlefront to dispatch Captain Cold and say that the "Man Who Mastered Absolute Zero" is wasting the Flash's time with his longstanding, self-aggrandizing methods of villainy.
As the Flash and Kid Flash (Bart Allen) attempt to contain the battle, Zoom throttles Kid Flash and threatens to snap his neck as Barry Allen did to Eobard Thawne (Professor Zoom). Before Zoom can kill Kid Flash, Eobard Thawne arrives on a cosmic treadmill with Jay Garrick chained to the front end; Zoom had captured Jay and forced him to take him back to the day of Professor Zoom's death.
The two Flashes and Kid Flash fight the two Zooms, and Kid Flash escapes Zoom by vibrating to become intangible (the only speedster power Zoom cannot duplicate). The two Zooms grab Wally and jump aboard the treadmill. Zoom forces the Flash to watch their first fight, in which Linda miscarries their twins. He tells Professor Zoom to replay the experience, feeling that Wally should be forced to focus on his sorrow and loss. As the scene begins to rewind, Wally's uncle (and mentor) Barry Allen appears on his own cosmic treadmill after searching for Professor Zoom.
Barry removes Wally from immediate danger, telling him that he was there to return Thawne to his proper place in time; no matter how bad it seems, Wally can win if he pushes himself. He and Thawne then disappear. An enraged Zoom begins running around the world, building up speed to kill Linda by colliding with her. Although Wally rushes to catch up, he is a step or two behind. At the last minute he puts on a final burst of speed, pushing himself and hitting Zoom in the back. Zoom falls forward, caught in his self-created sonic boom and taking the brunt of its force. This creates a "fissure in time", preventing Linda's miscarriage in time for her to give birth in the present. Zoom runs to the treadmill, but Wally forces them back to their (mutual) present. Along the way, they see scenes from Zoom's life. Zoom recognizes his mistreatment of Wally, and apologizes before slipping into the timestream; he is later seen as a ghostly figure, apologizing to Ashley.
He returns in "Infinite Crisis" as the Secret Society of Super Villains' chief speedster, claiming that their adversaries would be stronger heroes if they survived. Zoom is part of the Society's strike force which massacres the Freedom Fighters, and scars Damage with superspeed punches.
One Year Later
Zoom later appears at the sacking of Rome, asked by Bart Allen's grandmother to help her protect Bart from a tragedy planned by the villain Inertia. He is pursued by the Justice League to find Sinestro after Batman and Hal Jordan learn of the existence of the Sinestro Corps.
Zoom is pursued by the Justice Society of America to Atlanta. Although Damage is banned from the city, he enters in search of revenge. During a scuffle, he takes Zoom hostage until he is talked down by Liberty Belle. Disappointed that Damage is not "improving", Zoom throws a sharp pipe to kill him. Liberty Belle uses her superspeed to catch it and throw it back, knocking Zoom unconscious.
Powerless
In Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge, Zoom frees Inertia from the paralysis inflicted on him by Wally West, hoping to make him his apprentice by teaching him to "improve" the lives of himself and others by inflicting tragedies. As "Kid Zoom", Inertia learns this lesson well and ultimately betrays the Flash's Rogues and Zoom himself. Revealing his own desire to make the heroes suffer whereas Zoom wanted them to work through their damage, Inertia unravels his mentor's timeline and returns him to the crippled, powerless Hunter Zolomon. When the resurrected Eobard Thawne is imprisoned in Iron Heights in Flash: Rebirth, Hunter approaches him and says that they can help each other to be better.
Powers and abilities
While traditional speedsters draw their powers from the Speed Force, Hunter Zolomon has the ability to alter time relative to himself, manipulating the speed at which time flows around him. With every step he takes, he uses time travel to control his personal timeline; he slows it down to move faster and speeds it up to move slower. This allows Zolomon to run at "superhuman speeds". He can also create powerful sonic booms and shockwaves by snapping his fingers, and is able to grant a form of "super-speed" to other beings by giving them the ability to control their relative timelines through himself (Zoom can shut this connection down at will).
Due to his slowed perception of time, Zolomon's physical attributes have been heightened to superhuman levels, allowing him to effortlessly react to danger and be able to withstand punches from speedsters while sustaining no serious injuries. The temporal nature of Zoom's powers renders him unaffected by the usual problems and hindrances encountered by other speedsters, such as friction and perception when moving at heightened velocities.
Zoom possesses a keen mind, as he was once an investigator specializing in the study of criminology and psychology. He is also an expert in many forms of hand-to-hand combat, including the martial arts form Taekwondo. Even prior to gaining his metahuman powers, Zolomon was already an avid cross country runner and jogger.
In other media
Television
- Zoom is alluded in Justice League Unlimited. In the episode "Divided We Fall", a fusion of Lex Luthor and Brainiac creates robotic androids of the Justice Lords to combat the Justice League; the yellow-suited Flash duplicate (voiced by Michael Rosenbaum) is loosely based on Zoom; he attempts to make the Flash (Wally West) a better hero via fighting.
Arrowverse
- Teddy Sears portrays Hunter Zolomon/Zoom on The Flash, where he serves as the main antagonist of season two. Tony Todd provides the character's disguised voice, stuntman Ryan Handley plays Zoom prior to his unmasking, and Octavian Kaul portrays Hunter as a child in flashbacks. Sears also briefly appears as Zolomon's Earth-1 counterpart, a non-metahuman individual. This version is depicted as a speedster from Earth-2 who produces blue lightning while running. He wears an all-black leather bodysuit with a demonic mask resembling a face restraint and clawed gloves. As a child, Hunter was forced to watch his father murder his mother, and this traumatic event resulted in him becoming a serial killer years later. He was eventually captured and sent to a mental asylum, where he was subjected to daily electroshock therapy. When Dr. Harrison Wells' S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator exploded as Hunter was being electrocuted, the dark matter released freed him in addition to giving him super-speed. Adopting the supervillain moniker of "Zoom", Hunter used his new powers to subjugate Earth-2. He attempted to further augment his speed by creating a velocity serum, and although the drug made Hunter fast enough to travel through time and cross parallel universes, it was also slowly killing him, forcing him to siphon another speedster's Speed Force energy as a cure. At some point, Zoom captured and decided to publicly impersonate Jay Garrick (the Flash of Earth-3) to give the people on Earth-2 a false sense of hope. Hunter proceeds to send numerous Earth-2 metahumans to challenge Barry Allen (the Flash of Earth-1) after presenting himself as "Jay Garrick" to Team Flash in order to push Barry to get faster. To avoid suspicion, Hunter used time-remnant copies of himself to ensure that Zoom and "Jay" could be on two different worlds at the same time. Zoom is eventually cured of his affliction when he steals all of Barry's speed, though the latter manages to regain his powers by entering the Speed Force. In the season finale, Zoom attempts to destroy every world in the Multiverse (except for Earth-1 for him to rule), but is defeated when Barry destroys his machine. The Time Wraiths then arrive and transform Zoom into the Black Flash before dragging him out of reality for corrupting the Speed Force. Having become the Time Wraiths' Grim Reaper-like enforcer, the Black Flash attacks Barry when the latter ventures into the Speed Force to save Wally West. The Black Flash is later sent to erase the time remnant Savitar from existence, but Killer Frost freezes and shatters him.
- The Black Flash appears in season two of Legends of Tomorrow. Able to sense the location of those who actively use the Speed Force, he pursues Eobard Thawne due to Eobard's nature as a "time aberration", and successfully manages to erase Thawne from existence in the season finale.
Video games
- Zoom appears as the fourth-level boss in the Game Boy Advance game Justice League Heroes: The Flash.
Merchandise
- In July 2016, a Funko POP! vinyl figure of Zoom was released based on his appearance in the TV series The Flash.
- In March 2017, DC Collectibles released a 7-inch Zoom figure based on his appearance in the TV show The Flash.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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