Light-controlling Canadian supervillain determined to conquer first Canada and then the world.
Biography[]
“The twentieth century belongs to Canada.” Stirring words can be prologues for great dramas. Those words, spoken at the beginning of the twentieth century by Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier, left a permanent mark in Martin Frobisher’s psyche. Son of a schoolteacher in a northern Ontario mining town, he could see so much wrong with his country, and yet he could feel its grandeur around him. Those words took him away from the bitter reality around him — drunken aboriginals; sneering, profane whites; brutal, ugly scars carved into the Canadian Shield — and took him into the Canadian Ideal: a country linked from sea to sea by steel, populated by a vigorous, prosperous people working toward the highest ideals, allowing neither greed nor modern cynicism to stand in their way. It was a vision that demanded fulfillment. Martin got older and life got more brutal, but Martin never surrendered those ideals, the dream of the Canada that should be. He got an arts degree and a job as an administrator in Ottawa, working for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. Unfortunately, the job that should have fueled his passion for Canada disheartened him instead. Instead of teamwork, there was office politics. Instead of the best and brightest fighting together to solve Canada’s problems, people fought over promotions and perks. There had to be a better way. As his discontent grew, he began to experience dreams of a vast snowy landscape barren of trees. It was calling to him. At first he thought it was a dream, then a sign that he was going crazy. Finally it became a mission for which he would not apologize. In 1988 he quit his job, abandoned his marriage, packed his things, and journeyed into the Far North. He nearly died. He should have died. But at the end of his ordeal, when he lay on his stomach freezing in the cold of an arctic night, came not death but apotheosis. He became greater than what he was. The Land saw this dying man and sensed great power within him. It allowed that power to blossom. He became the most powerful superhuman in Canada. He christened himself Borealis because he believed his powers came from the northern lights. Borealis emerged from the North and proclaimed a new Canadian Order — a fierce, independent Canada that would lead the world. He attacked American icebreakers in Canadian waters and American defense installations on Canadian soil. He brutalized a Russian diplomat who’d killed a Canadian woman in a drunk driving incident. He took Canadian bureaucrats and judges who were guilty of what he considered corruption and incompetence and stranded them on top of the Peace Tower, to put their corruption in public view. He soon became the most wanted supervillain in Canada, but thanks to his nationalism also the most popular. He never deliberately killed his targets, though some people did die in the attacks, including a few bystanders. Since several of these deaths occurred on American soil, he’s been wanted in the US ever since. Nevertheless, in Canada he had (and has) more than a few defenders. In 1993, Borealis made his largest grandstand play yet. Claiming that Canada was “America’s parking lot for nuclear weapons,” he attacked a NATO installation and seized American missiles stationed on Canadian soil. He intended to embarrass the United States and destroy the missiles. But the United States reacted with alarm, dispatching a makeshift team of military supers with orders to bringing Borealis down at all costs. Realizing the Americans intended to kill him — and that he had an opportunity to play Canada and the US against each other in an unprecedented way — Borealis surrendered to his old enemies, the Vancouver superhero team SUNDER. He hoped the Americans would use lethal force to attack SUNDER and trigger a diplomatic incident that would prove his point. Instead, the heroes found the missing missiles and settled the dispute without coming to blows. Worse, Borealis had overestimated his ability to escape from captivity. The RCMP had prepared a special containment unit just for him. Borealis spent seven years in prison before becoming the first inmate in Stronghold North in 2001. He’d played the role of rebel martyr for years, and maintained a small but rabid following. He smuggled out messages and essays from prison which were compiled into a book Canadian Blood, Canadian Soil, a 2004 best seller in Canada. Some of his supporters lobbied for a pardon but no one was remotely inclined to give him one. Because America had a death penalty, Canada refused to extradite him for his crimes on American soil, which probably saved his life. By 2005, Borealis had become desperate to escape. He missed his freedom and the open sky. He had no way of knowing what was happening on the outside except when a guard got careless. The thought that he would die as a forgotten relic, trapped inside a force-field prison, was more than he could take. When an agent of the Land attacked the prison, Borealis was overjoyed. The aurora was shining in the sky, and his powers were at their zenith. But there was a snag — the Land demanded that he renounce his allegiance to Canada and place himself directly in service to the Land. “I will always respect the Land of my birth,” Borealis answered, drawing himself up haughtily. “But my light was meant for eyes that can see it.” The Land was displeased, but did not directly oppose Borealis’s escape. At least he was respectful. Moreover, failure would crush him as it had done before, as it does any man who dares to think of himself as a Force. Borealis returned to Canada with a vengeance. He attacked Parliament Hill but was beaten back by Celestar. He gathered his sympathizers into a new, militant Canada Destiny and assaulted major foreign interests on Canadian soil. He invaded the United States and visited destruction on American timber firms and American listening posts built along the US border. As of 2010, Borealis is one of the most wanted felons in the world. His patriotism has turned into a full-blown messianic complex; he believes the conquest of Canada is the first step to a greater goal, a Pax Canadiana, a utopia where he reorganizes the world along “Canadian” lines of peace, tolerance, and respect for the poor and the environment. He hasn’t figured out how to achieve this objective. He intends to maintain his assault on government corruption until the system breaks so he can seize power to institute “reforms”... and Heaven help anyone who has different ideas