Clifford Michaels (Earth-616)

Clifford F. Michaels was the son of a chauffeur who worked for millionaire Morgan MacNeil Hardy. Hardy had seen the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and was responsible for much of the rebuilding of the city. He was ashamed at the "degeneration of manners and mores" in the following decades, specially since the beginning of World War I. Hardy tried to foster a movement in favor of traditional values, but he failed.

By that time, Michaels's father had died and Hardy took young Clifford as a foster son. He tried to teach him of the moral and values of the first years of the 20th century and, to do so, he restricted Clifford's access to the "outside world".
Thus, Clifford Michaels had been raised to believe in the moral and values of the beginning of the 20th century. As an adult, he discovered how far his ideas were from the real world, and he soon began to hate the social changes.
He then tried to impose those values in the modern world using the alias of Turner D. Century. He had a hairstyle from the 1900s, including a handlebar moustache, and dressed in a costume popular among middle-class young men in the year 1900 in the U.S.: Straw boater hat, striped green jacket and white trousers.
He attacked things and people representing the object of his hatred. He firstly tried to "clean" San Francisco, but was stopped by Spider-Woman.
Although mentally unstable, Michaels was deemed a criminal (perhaps because he would have an easy time escaping from a mental asylum, and thus was sent to jail). He nevertheless escaped and developed the "Horn of Time", intending to kill everyone under 65 years old in New York City. He was opposed by Spider-Man and Dominic Fortune, but had a chance to blow the horn. Fortunately, the horn did not work as was intended, and nobody was killed.
Michaels was sent to jail, but was eventually paroled or escaped. He was contacted by Gary Gilbert, a former customed criminal turned into business agent for criminals. Gilbert was worried about the Scourge of the Underworld, a masked figure who was killing customed criminals such as Gilbert and Century. Gilbert organized a meeting in the The Bar with No Name, Medina County, Ohio, to discuss potential counter-attacks. As the Scourge was known to use weapons instead of powers, weapons were to be left at the door. During the meeting, Century was impressed by the quantity and power of the previous victims. However, the Scourge infiltrated in the meeting disguised as the bartender and shot down all the seventeen criminals (including Century) wielding a cut-down .50 submachine gun in each hand.
Michaels's corpse, along with some of the other victims of that massacre, were recovered by genetics master Arnim Zola. Zola cloned Michaels and the other criminals to use them as corpses, but all of the clones were eventually killed by mercenary-with-a-mouth Deadpool.

Powers and Abilities

Powers

None

Abilities

He seemed to have some knowledge of History and some skill for invention.

Strength level

Unknown.

Weaknesses

None known.

Paraphernalia

Equipment: None known.
Transportation: Flying Bicycle Bult for Two, which flied due to unknown methods
Weapons:

Flamethrower Umbrella with a short range
Horn of Time, originally intended to kill everyone under 65 with ultrasonic waves. Due to Michaels's limited grasp of technology, it only knocked down everyone under 65 in a limited area.

Notes

No special notes.

Trivia

No trivia.

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Links and References

None.

[[Category:J.M. DeMatteis, Steve Leialoha, Bruce D. Patterson/Creator]]

Clifford Michaels (Earth-616)

From Marvel Database

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