Lightmaster

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Lightmaster

Cover to Spectacular Spider-Man #3
Art by Sal Buscema

Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #3 (Feb 1977)
Created by	Jim Shooter and Sal Buscema

Characteristics
Alter ego	Dr. Edward Lansky
Affiliations	Partner of Kraven the Hunter and Tarantula, One World Church
Abilities	Power suit grants: , Light manipulation

Lightmaster (real name Dr. Edward Lansky) is a fictional character, a supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe.

[edit] Fictional character biography

Edward Lansky was born in New York City. He was a physics professor and vice-chancellor of Empire State University who turned to crime as a way to prevent budget cuts for higher education that would have negatively affected the university. As the Lightmaster, Lansky employed Kraven the Hunter and The Tarantula to help him kidnap several officials of the city of New York. The three were defeated by Spider-Man, who foiled the plot.

However, while attempting to short-circuit Lightmaster's body suit, Spider-Man inadvertently caused him to become a being of unstable energy, dependent on constant exposure to light just to survive. In a further battle with Spider-Man, Lightmaster causes a blackout in New York City, causing his own unstable body to dissipate into what he called a "light dimension." Lightmaster escaped from this dimension twice, first by harnessing the powers of the mutant Dazzler, and then those of Quasar's quantum bands. On this latter occasion, Lightmaster succeeded in returning himself to a normal physical existence.

In a recent fight with Cable, he had been hired by the "One World Church" to distribute the Façade Virus, which the OWC intended to use to turn everyone blue and thus eliminate racial divides. Cable subverted his control and instead turned everyone pink for two days, before publicly disabling the virus.

[edit] Powers and abilities

Originally, Lansky required a unique power armor suit which utilized "gravity-pump circuitry" to allow him to manipulate light. With it, he could fly, emit blinding flashes of light, create semi-solid constructs (similar to those a Green Lantern might make with their Power Ring), or create ersatz Brass knuckles to increase the power of his punches. The suit could asborb fairly large amount of electrical energy without damaging the wearer, but a sufficient amount could (and indeed did) cause the circuitry to overload and convert the wearer into "living energy."