Captain Perfect
Captain Perfect was a major superhero of Reality Z-25 31-H, principally active in New York City. Though never an outright supervillain, it surfaced, over the span of his long career, that he was not the morally-upstanding paragon he claimed, being prone to arrogance and acts motivated by self-interest. He had a complex, on-again-off-again relationship with fellow veteran hero Centennia.
His real name was Gary. (COMIC: The Search For Kate Five)
Description
Physical appearance
By the 2010s Captain Perfect was a handsome, thin, middle-aged white man with short, fair hair. He had angular features and covered the top half of his face with a mask. He did not wear any more of a “costume”, favouring well-tailored suits. In his prime, however, he had previously worn a more traditional spandex costume complete with an opulent cape. (COMIC: Interview With A Superhero)
Personality
Captain Perfect was a self-centered celebrity used to getting his way and breezing past scandals on sheer charisma. He committed various acts of dubious morality and legality, such as insider trading on the stock market, and seemed to care little that they had come out in public, so long as he stayed free of actual consequences. (COMIC: Interview With A Superhero) He was something of a sexist. (COMIC: Meanwhile, On Earth)
Powers & abilities
Captain Perfect displayed the ability to fly. (COMIC: Interview With A Superhero) He also had increased fortitude, being punched an inhuman distance by Centennia with no visible adverse effects. (COMIC: Meanwhile, On Earth) In direct one-on-one, bare-handed combat with neither having the element of surprise, he and Centennia appeared to be more or less evenly-matched. (COMIC: Meanwhile, In Queens)
Biography
Golden age
According to Hero Hour's overview of his life, when he emerged, Captain Perfect was “a hero to millions” and was soon invited to join the Mighty Protectors. However, he began trying to leverage his fame for personal interest, founding a corporation under his superhero alias. For a time, however, the Captain's popularity took a down turn. Accusations of insider training nearly drove the company he'd founded to bankruptcy (although wrongdoing was never legally proven), and his personal life also took a down turn when a scandal arose from explicit footage of him and Centennia being leaked. (COMIC: Interview With A Superhero)
Return
Around the time of Captain Evening's formation of the Odds, (COMIC: Redistribution) Captain Perfect began perfecting an official, highly-publicised “come-back”. A prestige movie about his life as a hero was screened, with himself and Centennia both attending the premiere, and he also arranged to be presented with the Keys to the City (COMIC: Interview With A Superhero) by Mayor Wilson. (COMIC: Meanwhile, On Earth) As part of this public relations effort, he was interviewed on Hero Hour, where he cockily declared that he'd “never really been gone”, (COMIC: Interview With A Superhero) and he managed to be named Time's “Dude of the Year”. (COMIC: Meanwhile, On Earth)
Alliance with Evil Cloak
Perfect was contacted by the mysterious Evil Cloak, who suggested a plan to boost his public image: arrange a fake supervillain attack at the ceremony where he would be given the Key to the City, which he could then dramatically foil in front of the cameras. The plan failed, however, when the Odds saw the early stages of the attack on television and instantly rushed to the scene thanks to Jenny's shifting powers. Distracted, he missed his cue and the “fake” attacker Ultimatron actually knocked him out, leading to a real fight between Ultimatron and the Odds breaking out. It was broken up by Centennia, who destroyed the Ultimatron exosuit and forced its operators to confess they were doing Perfect's bidding. The Captain weakly attempted to deny it to Centennia's face, leading her to punch him off into the distance.
Crawling back to his office, he found that his popularity was naturally taking a dive, and his new sponsors had dropped him. Evil Cloak visited him again, and he attempted to blame her for the failure, only for her to reveal herself much more powerful than he had previously believed (shifting him rapidly through several scary landscapes without moving a muscle herself). The terrified Perfect agreed to continue to follow Evil Cloak's direction. With the abortive spat ended, the two ended up making out. (COMIC: Meanwhile, On Earth) Perfect's fall from grace was soon reported on Hero Hour, which interviewed Kate Kerrigan, the spokeswoman of the Protectors, who confirmed that the team's standing invitation to Captain Perfect had been retracted.
A short time later, after Armagedda lured the Odds to the villains' lair, Evil Cloak finally revealed herself to heroes and villains alike as Jenny Nowhere before ordering the villains to attack the Odds. Perfect ended up facing Centennia, and tried to tell her to stand aside because he “didn't want to hurt her”. Centennia coldly replied that he “already had” and went ahead with attacking him. Realising they were about evenly-matched, Captain Evening soon told Centennia to refocus her efforts on Jesse Brain while Merv the Griffin tried to immobilise Captain Perfect. A short time later, after Jenny Nowhere was killed by Gazoom, Perfect left with the villains as they and the heroes agreed to call it a tie and cease fighting for the day. (COMIC: Meanwhile, In Queens)
Back to heroics
After the dust cleared on another adventure, Centennia found herself tentatively back together with Captain Perfect, who had returned to the side of (self-interested) good. While the Captain was happy to just give in to hedonism for a while, Centennia started to think at length about Kate Five. Wondering if she was alright, she learned that Kate had recently tangled with some superheroes in Angel Falls before disappearing. She travelled there with Perfect, and, chasing a lead, they found their way to the Bleeding Rose nightclub. There, while Perfect slept around with a few of the pretty vampire girls under the guise of “interrogation”, Centennia actually got useful information out of Marcus, who agreed to fly them to Sark Island in his helicopter, this being where he had only just taken Kate's other friends who were similarly looking for her.
On the Island, Centennia and the Captain were ambushed by Ohmega and soon restrained in their facilities; however, when the villains informed Centennia that Kate had been here, but had teleported to freedom mere minutes ago, a frustraded Centennia revealed that she was only playing along for information and easily tore through her restrains, to the surprise of the Captain, who'd been genuinely incapacitated. She then, even more frustratingly, received a phone call from Professor Madison announcing that Kate had just appeared back in New York City, right in the Fortress of Evening. (COMIC: The Search For Kate Five)
| Recurring elements of The Cosmic Beholder | ||||||||||
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