| Caped Wonder | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | New England Comics Press |
| First appearance | The Tick #1, March 1988 |
| Created by | Ben Edlund |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Clark Oppenheimer |
| Notable aliases | Ka-Ro, Caped Wonder |
| Abilities | X-ray vision, super strength, invulnerability, flight, heat-vision and super hearing, but weaken by Ottercreekite |
Clark Oppenheimer is a fictional character from The Tick comics and the cartoon and video game based thereupon. He is a thinly disguised parody and/or analogue of DC Comics character Superman.
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Clark was born as Ka-Ro, on the alien world of Ottercreek, which exploded shortly thereafter. His father, Ban-Al (referred to by The Tick as a "Spooky, disembodied alien head" and "Marlon Brando"), had anticipated the destruction of Ottercreek, and spirited his son away to Earth aboard a rocket which crashlanded in the farmland somewhere to the west of The City. In time, Clark moved to the north pole, where he created his Fortress of Fortitude using Ottercreek technology that his father had sent along with him in the spacecraft. Eventually, he emerged as The Caped Wonder, a superhero working as a reporter for the Weekly World Planet in The City.
Alongside Mighty Agrippa, Roman God of the Aqueduct, Clark is one of the two most powerful superheroes in The Tick universe. Despite this, (or possibly because of it) he has made a rather poor showing for himself in the various iterations of The Tick. In the comics, he only figures into a few issues early on, in which the Tick manages to accidentally waylay him by various forms of buffoonery (including, but not limited to accidentally constructing a backup copy of The Fortress of Fortitude in Clark's office at the newspaper, and breaking Clark's glasses) and from then on he was not seen again until many years later when he has apparently been driven insane by the Tick. He envies the Mighty Blue Arachnid for robbing him of the accolades and fame he feels he deserves.
He has all the typical Superman powers—X-ray vision, super strength, invulnerability, flight, heat-vision, super hearing—but is vulnerable to Ottercreekite, a radioactive substance left over from the destruction of his homeworld. However, only his invulnerability, super strength and heat-vision are actually used (he claims to have the others).
In the cartoon version, he is only seen twice: Once in the first episode, where he's constantly searching—without success—for a telephone booth in which to change into his alter-ego; and he has a brief cameo in the opening credits of the "Heroes" episode where he's part of a montage of random heroes of The City.
A similar character called "The Champion" appears in the live action Tick series.
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