Darkman

Real Name: Dr Peyton Westlake

Identity/Class: Human mutate

Occupation: (former) Scientist; (now) vigilante

Affiliations: Ash

Enemies: Robert Durant, Deadites

Known Relatives: None known

Aliases: various people he impersonates, including Robert Durant

Base of Operations: Los Angeles

First Appearance: Darkman (movie, 1990)

Powers/Abilities: In order to keep him from suffering constant agony the hospital severed nerves in his spine, so that he now feels no pain but has also lost his sense of touch. Due to the lack of external stimulus, Westlake finds that he is prone to extreme emotional responses (anger, rage) and now adrenaline flows unchecked through his body giving him phenomenal strength and resistance to injury. He uses his synthetic skin formula to create perfect masks (which only last so long as they are not exposed to strong light) and his vocal impersonations are improving daily, allowing him to imitate others with a high degree of success.

History: Dr. Peyton Westlake was on the verge of a major breakthrough: synthetic skin that can be used to replace damaged tissue for burn victims and other such patients. However he had hit one snag; he couldn’t come up with a material that remained stable in light for more than 99 minutes. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Julie Hastings, had stumbled across a document proving that one of the city’s major corporate players, Louis Strack, had bribed most of the city council. Strack sent crime kingpin Robert Durant and his hoods round to break into Julie’s boyfriend Dr Peyton Westlake’s laboratory and retrieve the documents. They brutally beat Westlake up, leaving him for dead, and they blew the laboratory up. But Westlake was thrown clear in the explosion. Taken to a hospital as a John Doe with third degree burns over two-thirds of his body, the doctors were forced to sever nerve endings to protect him from the pain. A side affect of this was that his body now overproduces adrenalin constantly, giving him super-strength. Now crazed, he escaped the hospital, setting up laboratory in an abandoned warehouse. There he rebuilt his face using his synthetic flesh. With it he modeled a series of disguises for himself so that he could move among and revenge himself on Strack and his hoods. Much of the time he appears completely covered in bandages to hide his hideously burned body

Comments: The movie was directed by Sam Raimi. Darkman was played by Liam Neeson in the first movie, and by Arnold Vosloo (better known for playing Imhotep in the Mummy movies) in the later ones.

Marvel produced a short lived Darkman Magazine, and more recently the character has returned to comics, teaming up with Army of Darkness star Ash against the combined forces of Durant and the Deadites.

CLARIFICATIONS: Not to be confused with

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