There are some truly strange villains out in the DC universe just as there are in Marvel, but some of them are a little stranger than others in interesting ways, such as Manchester Black. As a meta-human, or DC’s version of a mutant in this case, Manchester developed his abilities when he was a young man and was trying to save his sister from being run over. His psychic capabilities became so strong that he was actually able to handle the man of steel at one point and could have done what no one else had ever achieved had he really concentrated. The thing was he wouldn’t have had to stand toe to toe with Superman, he just had to think about what he wanted to do and it would happen. Out of all the enemies that Superman has ever faced, and he’s faced more than most people would like to count, Manchester Black is perhaps one of those that you would never really expect to be much of a danger to him.
Here are a few things you might not have known about this villain.
10. He was the leader of The Elite.
He had his own group that he led for a while until things started getting so bad that he just wanted to be put out of his misery. In fact you could say that for a while he was kind of DC’s version of the Punisher since his idea of cleaning up crime was to just kill the criminals so they wouldn’t cause any more problems.
9. He was abused as a child.
He and his sister were apparently abused by their father as children and were desperate to get out of the house. They took to stealing and became quite good at it as his sister would grab the attention of the marks and he would pick their pockets.
8. He managed to give Superman a stroke.
He might be hard as steel on the outside but pinch the right nerve inside Superman’s brain and he can still go down like a mortal. Superman has always been weak against psychic attacks, and this is Manchester Black’s specialty.
7. He became a part of the Suicide Squad.
His term wasn’t all that long but he did belong to the squad for a while and was a noted member. But like a lot of the people that were put on the squad he eventually found his way off. It’s not exactly a team that fosters a long life expectancy from its members.
6. He altered Doomsday’s mind.
Manchester actually made Doomsday forget about his utter hatred for Superman for a little while. Just think of what it would take to do something on that level that he could make a monster like Doomsday actually set his anger towards Superman aside.
5. He tried to commit suicide via Superman.
At one point he was just ready to end his life and wanted Superman to do it, to corrupt the man of steel. He actually made it appear that he’d killed Lois Lane so that Superman would stoop to his level and kill him. Unfortunately it didn’t work.
4. He used his powers to take his own life.
When you can use your own powers to push past the one thing that many people can’t do then you know you’ve hit a depressive state that there’s no coming back from. But the act itself was fairly easy since he was a lot more powerful than people believed.
3. He was able to control groups of super villains at a time.
Imagine a guy that could grab hold of the minds of multiple villains and control them like chess pieces on a board. That kind of power would be downright scary in a comic book or in a movie. But with an imbalanced personality it could also be highly dangerous.
2. His solution to stopping villains was to kill them.
Like I said, he’s kind of like the meta-human version of the Punisher. But even the Punisher had a few more morals than this guy it would seem since the Punisher was at one time a law-abiding citizen and had a decent life with a family. If anything Manchester is worse simply because he came from an abusive home and had no way to know what a real family or a decent life was all about. He was the kind of guy that figured the ends justified the means and that was how the world worked.
1. He killed his own father.
You can imagine that this wasn’t much of surprise since apparently he and his sister were constantly abused. When his powers came into focus there was no doubt that Manchester took matters into his own hands and showed his old man what he could do.
As far as villains go he’s a bit tragic and a lot crazy.
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