Chronos (comics)
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Chronos is a DC Comics supervillain who takes his name from the Greek personification of Time and has the ability to time travel and manipulate history.
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[edit] David Clinton
Considered by some to be the arch-nemesis of the Atom (Ray Palmer), Chronos started his career as petty thief David Clinton who attributed his consistent incarceration to his timing, or lack thereof. To improve his timing he studied the rhythm of time pieces and by practise he learnt to synchronise each of his actions with the beat of the prison clock. By the end of his sentence he had developed an extraordinary sense of timing which he resolved to use to further his criminal career. He then adopted the colourful costume and alter ego of Chronos, the Time Thief. Clinton had acquired an unhealthy fascination with time and he developed a series of gimmick weapons and deathtraps based on time pieces (clocks with blades as hands, flying sun dials).
Chronos made his debut in Ivy Town, but was defeated by the Atom. He next tried to steal a collection of historic Hungarian clocks, but was again defeated. The Atom has since thwarted all of Chronos' plans. Each appearance or new crime prompted an evolution in Chronos' weaponry. His study of time led to more intricate and revolutionary inventions—lenses that prevent people from seeing certain events (e.g. his getaway vehicle or another specific object), circuitry embedded in his costume that could control the local flow of time (freezing people in time or altering his own perception of time), and ultimately a fully functional time machine (before it and the designs were destroyed). One story suggests that Chronos may have been receiving help from a future version of himself, but it is unknown at what relative time frame that Chronos came from. Another story, published in World's Finest Comics #321 (1985), suggests that Chronos made the transition from a mere thief with a time gimmick to a full-fledged time traveler after becoming acquainted with the mysterious Dr. Fox (perhaps named after Gardner Fox), a criminal scientist who had never been apprehended and who was described by Chronos as "the greatest mind since Einstein."
Chronos eventually stopped stealing for his own gain and began stealing to finance his time research. The Atom had always thwarted Chronos, but he had decided to turn his back on humanity and had retreated to a peaceful seclusion with a group a six-inch tall aliens in the Amazonian jungle. Chronos had more success without the Atom, but he brought himself to the attention of the Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) when he tried to blackmail one of the employees of Kord Inc. He also fought the Beetle during Darkseid's anti-hero riots. During one struggle against the Beetle, Chronos was hurled 100 million years into the past where he encountered a time-lost Captain Atom.
Upon his return to the present Chronos was able to use his technology to manipulate the money markets to amass a fortune, but old habits die hard, and Chronos's illegal endeavours were discovered and he was returned to prison. He was freed by the Calendar Man to work with the Time Foes, but was captured by the Teen Titans. Out of desperation and humiliation, Chronos took a drastic chance -- he accepted an offer from the demon Neron and exchanged his soul for the metahuman ability to travel through time. However bargains with Neron are never fair and Chronos found that each journey through the timestream accelerated his ageing. A man who should have been a healthy adult became an aged senior citizen. Clinton's efforts to bypass this flaw - passing his artificial age onto youths and intercepting other time travellers in an attempt to acquire their technology - brought him briefly into conflict with the Legion of Super-Heroes, in a somewhat confusing and often non-linear sequence of events.
All the experiments and Neron's "gift" had taken a toll on Clinton's body and be began to loose touch with any sense of the "now." He had trouble staying localised in time and appeared to fade away into nothingness. His disappearance was enough for him to be declared dead and speculation has suggested that he may have slipped into "The Void" of time. A funeral of sorts was held and his research was passed on to the second Chronos (Walker Gabriel).
Time travel being what it is, David Clinton's legal death has not meant the end of his presence in the DC universe; he has made several appearances since, such as during the Identity Crisis, when he claimed to have travelled forward from a point in time shortly before his final disappearance. This foreknowledge of his own (suspected) demise led to a somewhat subdued, even morose, demeanor.
[edit] Walker Gabriel
Gabriel got possession of Clinton's research after his death. He became the second Chronos and was the lead character of a short-lived comic book series published by DC Comics. The 1,000,000 issue of the series was a part of the DC One Million storyline.
Recently Gabriel briefly appeared in the pages of JSA (2005), where he was killed by Per Degaton, struck by a car a decade before he received his time-travel powers. However, given that Degaton's other escapades at the time were reversed, it's likely that Gabriel's demise was as well.
[edit] Other media
A version of the character appeared in the Justice League Unlimited animated series in the two-part episode "The Once and Future Thing". He was voiced by Peter MacNicol. In this incarnation, David Clinton is a man from the future (or rather, from the time of Batman Beyond). He was a small, meek physics professor who was ostracized by his peers for his theories on time travel. However, Clinton had secretly perfected a time-travelling device. Aware of the problems of time paradoxes, he tried not to use his device to do anything that would adversely affect the timestream; instead, he began collecting items from the past at the points when they would no longer be missed.
Eventually, the incessant hectoring from his wife Enid (played by Mindy Sterling) forced Clinton to retreat to the past. After failing to steal Batman's utility belt, he attracted the attention of Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern, accidentally pulling them into the Old West. Clinton's time belt was stolen by a local villain named Tobias Manning, so Clinton helped the heroes defeat him after they sprung him from Manning's prison.
Once free, the power-hungry Clinton retreated to the timestream to make himself, "the undisputed master of space and time", and adopted the Chronos identity. The three Leaguers followed him to the Batman Beyond timeline, only to find the world bizarrely altered (with the Titanic and the Leaning Tower of Pisa alongside Gotham's architecture, amongst other things). Chronos' irresponsible actions had started making time collapse. Batman and Green Lantern teamed up with the remaining roster of the Justice League Unlimited: (Warhawk, Static, Batman (Terry McGinnis) and the future version of Bruce Wayne. They forced the now-fearful Enid to tell them where Clinton was - in the jail from the Old West that Clinton had brought to the future, where he slept every night. (Presumably, this is because his six months in the jail cell were a vacation away from his nagging wife, and therefore far more comfortable to him.)
After a fearful battle with much life lost, Green Lantern and Batman chase Chronos into the timestream. Chronos' final intended act would be to return to the beginning of time, and therefore become a god. The heroes catch up with him, and Batman inserted a disc into Chronos' belt that somehow reversed everything that happened. Green Lantern, Batman, and Wonder Woman returned to the present day; Clinton himself became permanently trapped in his argument with Enid, looping over and over for all eternity.
[edit] Trivia
- In Marvel Comics, Chronos is one of the Eternals, though that character is also known as Kronos. (See Kronos.)
