Torque (comics)
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- For the Marvel Comics superhero, see Torque (Marvel Comics).
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Torque is a supervillain in the DC Comics Universe, and an enemy of Nightwing. Created by writer Chuck Dixon and artist Scott McDaniel, he first appeared in Nightwing (2nd series) #1 (Oct. 1996).
[edit] Character history
Inspector Dudley "Deadly" Soames was the dirtiest man working in the corrupted Blüdhaven Police Department. He first met Nightwing when he was ordered by Redhorn, the Police Chief, to execute the young vigilante. Soames, however, betrayed Redhorn and allowed Nightwing to live, with the intention to pit various factions in Blüdhaven against one another. He played both sides of the legal fence: he fed information on Blockbuster's criminal dealings to Nightwing, served Blockbuster as a mob lieutenant, and oversaw many of the criminal activities of Chief Redhorn's corrupt tenure with the police.
After Soames' scheme to use Scarecrow against Nightwing failed disastrously, Blockbuster grew weary of his underling, and attempted to have him killed. Soames responded with surprising cunning, and ultimately tried to take Blockbuster's invalid mother hostage as part of a last bid for power. Nightwing attempted to intervene, but was forced to save innocent bystanders as Blockbuster twisted the dirty cop's head 180 degrees, leaving Soames for dead.
Soames survived thanks to a breakthrough medical technique, and retrained himself to move normally, "seeing through the back of his head" with the use of glasses with a built-in array of mirrors. Soames brutally killed the doctor that had saved his life, morbidly renamed himself Torque, and (gaining the support of Intergang) started a new gang war for the control of Blüdhaven, revenge against Blockbuster, Nightwing, and the city he now felt he owned.
After descending further into madness, Soames was brought to justice by Nightwing, only to arrange a prison break with the help of the imprisoned vigilante Nite-Wing. This would prove his undoing, since once freed he wasted no time in returning to his old plans, even attempting to enlist Nite-Wing into his reign of terror. The vigilante, however, had a zero-tolerance policy for crime, and, upon realizing Soames' true nature, the two entered into a Mexican standoff that only Nite-Wing survived.
[edit] Controversy
Writer Devin Grayson's stint writing Nightwing was fraught with controversy, although to what degree this was deserved is debatable. Among the charges brought against her was the death of Torque, a villain that had been part of the Nightwing title from the first issue, and arguably the first villain created in the series to match the "grotesque" flavor that Batman villains are famous for; however, that it was actually Chuck Dixon himself that wrote the scene with Torque and Nite-Wing fighting for control of a gun, showing that shots were fired but not the result, thus leaving any incumbent writer with the no-win situation of having to either kill one of the two characters, or else unrealistically have both survive.
