Zoom (DC Comics)

Created by Jeff Jones and Scott Collins , Hunter Zolomon made his debut in The Flash: Secret Files & Origins # 3 in November 2001. He first appeared as Zuma in The Flash (vol. 2) # 197 in June 2003.

Hunter had a difficult childhood, his parents rarely talked with each other or even with him. Once, on his return home, Hunter saw a crowd of policemen surrounding their house. His father turned out to be a serial killer , last summer he killed five little girls and buried them in his garden. When Hunter's mother could no longer hide it and called the police, he chopped her up with an ax. Trying to attack the guards, Zolomon Sr. was also killed. After these events, Hunter became obsessed with understanding the criminal mind in order to stop people like his father. He began to study criminology and psychology in college and joined the FBI with his girlfriend Ashley (whom he later married), specializing in inexpensive criminals. One case was caused by the death of Ashley's father; Hunter thought that the culprit they were looking for was unable to resist his adult life and would not use such an "adult" weapon as a gun. Ashley shortly afterwards abandoned him and he was fired from the FBI. Hunter left the case with a damaged knee, where he needed a cane to walk, unable to escape.

He moved to Kinston City and got a job as a profiler , working with the police in his Department of Military Operations Metal. Hunter's work put him in constant contact with Flash Wally West , and they became good friends. Although his understanding was critical in a number of cases, he resented the fact that he remained at his desk.

Transform into Zuma

When life seemed to be getting better, an incident occurred in which Gorilla Grodd nearly killed Hunter in the Iron Heights prison, where he organized a prison riot: Grodd injured his spine, and Zolomon no longer felt his lower body. Hunter asked Wally to use his powers on the Space Track at the Flash Museum to heal himself, but Flash refused to interfere with the passage of time. A sense of helplessness forced Hunter to make his way to the Flash Museum that night. He wanted to change the past himself by activating the Cosmic Path, but the idea was a failure from the very beginning. As a result, the Path exploded right below it, destroying the entire museum, where the explosion gave Hunter the opportunity to use his legs again and switched his connection in time (described by Jay Garrick as “tearing off” his time stream), giving him superhuman speed.

Hunter decided that Wally refused to help, because, unlike previous Flash Barry Allen, he never experienced personal tragedy; if he becomes the new Zoom and brings tragedy to Wally's life, Flash will become the best hero. With this belief, he attacked Flash and his allies as an excuse, creating a shock wave (snapping fingers), which is why the pregnant wife Westa Linda's twins become miscarriages . After borrowing speed from other speedsters, even on the playing field (briefly allowing him to match Max's speed), Flash prevented his former friend from killing his wife. Wally used the small time gaps created by Max's forces to drag Hunter into a temporary anomaly in which Hunter was in a coma , constantly watching his father-in-law's death.

Hunter's ex-wife Ashley replaced him as a profiler and tried to contact him. After a car accident, she was hospitalized for a long time, and Zoom woke up worrying about her. He later remained in his cell.

Robber War

Zoom stepped out of his imposed prison sentence by Cheetah (Dr. Barbara Minerva) to use his super speed and introduce him into the growing Secret Supervillain Society. Although they love each other, Zoom still considers himself married to Ashley.

He is penetrating a growing illegal war between Captain Cold's bandits, the reformed subordinates of Trickster and the Wolf Bandits. Ashley is safe in the house of Linda Park ^[3] , Zoom returns to the front line to direct Captain Cold and say that “the man who mastered the absolute zero” spends Zuma’s time with his long-standing, complacent methods of villainy ^[3] .

As Flash and Kid Flash Bart Allen) try to hold back the battle, Zoom switches to Kid Flash and threatens to break his neck, as Barry Allen did with Eobard Thone (Professor Zoom). Before Zoom attempts to kill Kid Flash, Eobard Town arrives on a space treadmill with Jay Garrick chained to the front ^[3] ; Zoom captured Jay and made him pick him up on the day of Professor Zuma’s death.

Two Flash and Kid Flash battle the two Zooms, and Kid Flash eludes Zoom, vibrating to become intangible (Speedster's only duplicate force). Two Zuma captured Wally and jumped on board the treadmill. The zoom forces Flash to watch its first battle, in which Linda's twins become miscarriages. He tells Professor Zoom to repeat the experience, feeling that Wally should be forced to focus on his grief and loss. When the scene begins to rewind, Uncle Wally (and mentor) Barry Allen appears on his space treadmill after searching for Professor Zuma.

Barry leads Wally away from immediate danger, telling him that he was there to bring Tony back to his proper place in time; no matter how bad it seems, Wally can win if he pushes himself. Then he and Thane disappear. The angry Zoom begins to run around the world, increasing speed to kill Linda, faced with her. Although Wally rushes to catch up, he is a step or two behind. At the last minute, he puts on the last surge of speed, pushing himself and hitting Zuma in the back. The zoom falls forward, falls onto a self-reproducing sound boom, and takes the brunt of its power. This creates a “time gap” that prevents the actual birth of the Linda twins as miscarriages. Zoom runs to the treadmill, but Wally makes them return to their (mutual) presence. Along the way, they see scenes from Zuma's life. Zoom acknowledges his ill-treatment of Wally and apologizes before slipping into a temporary stream; he is later seen as a ghostly figure apologizing to Ashley.

He returns to Endless Crisis as the leader of speedsters in a secret society of supervillains, claiming that their opponents will be stronger heroes if they survive. Zoom is part of the strike group of the Society, which kills Freedom fighters, and inflicts scars on Damage inflicted by strikes with the help of high-speed strikes ^[4] .

One year later

Zoom later appears in the removal of Rome, asked Bart Allen's grandmother to help her protect Bart from the tragedy planned by the villain Inertia . He is pursued by the Justice League to find Sinestro after Batman and Hal Jordan find out about the existence of the Sinestro Corps ^[5] .

Zoom is located in Atlanta Justice Society of America. Although Damage has been banished from the city, it craves revenge. During the fight, he takes Zuma hostage until Liberty Belle calms him. Disappointed that Damage is not "improving", Zoom drops a sharp pipe to kill him. Liberty Belle uses her super speed to catch and cast back, confusing Zuma ^[6] .

Powerless

In Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge, Zoom increases the inertia of the paralysis inflicted on him by Wally West, hoping to make him his student, teaching him to “improve” the life of himself and others by causing pain ^[7] . Like Kid Zoom, Inertia is a good student of this lesson and ultimately betrays the “Rogues” of Flash and Zuma ^[8] . Having revealed his desire to make the heroes suffer, while Zoom wants them to work through their pain, Inertia unravels the timeline of her mentor and returns him to the crippled impotent Hunter Zolomon ^[9] . When the resurrected Eobard Thawn is imprisoned in The Iron Heights in The Flash: Rebirth , Hunter walks up to him and says that they can help each other be better ^[10] .

Hunter Zolomon has the ability to change time relative to himself, manipulating the speed with which time flows around him, while most speedsters in the DC Universe derive their strength from speed forces. With every step he takes, he uses time travel to manage his personal schedule; He slows it down to move faster, and speeds up his work. This allows Zolomon to work with "non-share speeds." He is also able to create powerful sound and shock waves by tying his fingers and is able to provide a form of “super-speed” to other creatures, giving them the ability to control their relative time frame through himself (Zoom can close this connection of his own free will) ^[11] . Due to his slower perception of time, Zolomon’s physical characteristics were increased to superhuman, allowing him to react to danger without much effort and be able to withstand shock from speedsters without receiving serious injuries ^{[12] [13]} . The temporary forces of the Zuma make it not subject to the usual problems and obstacles that other speedsters encounter, such obstacles are friction and perception when moving at higher speeds.

Zoom has a keen mind since it was once a researcher specializing in the study of criminology and psychology . He is also an expert in many forms of hand-to-hand combat , including the martial arts of taekwondo . Even before receiving his meta-human powers, Zolomon was already a passionate runner and jogger ^[14] .

In 2009, IGN put Zuma in 37th place on the IGN's list of 100 greatest comic book villains .

Television

• Zoom performed by actor Teddy Sears became the main antagonist of the second season (2015-2016) of the Flash television series ^[15] , where he is from the parallel world of Earth-2 and produces blue lightning during an ultra-fast run ^[16] . Originally shown as the main enemy of Jay Garrick ^{[17] [18] [19]} , the villain is obsessed with destroying all speedsters by consuming their Speed ​​Force and becoming the fastest creature in all parallel universes. This version has little in common with the original Zoom: he is dressed in a black suit with a demonic mask and clawed gloves and does not have the ability to absorb speed from speedsters (for this he needs Harrison Wells) ^[20] . The identity of Zuma (like the actor) was initially kept secret, however, it was known that the villain Tony Todd was voiced ^{[21] [22]} . Before the exposure of Zuma, he was played by stuntman actor Ryan Handley ^{[23] [24]} , and Octavian Kaul plays the role of Hunter as a child in his memoirs ^[25] . In series 11 on Earth-1, a Hunter double was shown, which is not a meta-person and grew up in a normal foster family. In the 18th series, Cisco Ramon , opening a gap between the worlds, lets Zuma down to Earth-1, where he reveals the secret of his life: as a child, he witnessed the death of his mother at the hands of his father, after which he ended up in a shelter and grew up in terrible conditions . This led him to become a serial killer (which on Earth-2 is an abnormal thing), and he was convicted of 23 murders. During the next electroshock therapy, he was exposed to a particle accelerator and became a Zoom. However, he later had problems and decided to play a double game: he stole the real Jay Garrick from Earth-3 and stole his identity, becoming the Earth-2 Flash as his own “temporary double” to give people false hope. Hunter continues to send numerous Earth-2 metal men to challenge Barry Allen (Flash from Earth-1), introducing himself as Earth-2 Flash to make Barry accelerate. To avoid suspicion, Hunter used temporary copies of himself to ensure that Zoom and Jay can be in two different worlds at the same time. Zoom eventually cures his suffering (excessive use of Speed ​​9 made him die) when he steals Barry's entire speed by abducting Wally West and then personally leaves with Caitlin Snow, although Dr. Wells manages to restore Barry's strength by sending him straight to the Force of Speed ^[26] . In the season finale, Zoom tries to destroy every world in the Multiverse (except Earth-1 so that he can rule there), but Barry defeats him when he destroys his car. In the 23rd series, the Ghosts of Time take Hunter with them (while turning him into a Black Flash, representing the death of speedsters) ^{[27] [28]} . In the third season, Saviiar calls the Black Flash to help himself during the final battle with Barry, but Killer Frost destroys him, because the cold is the monster’s only weakness.

• Hunter returns as Black Flash in the second season of the series “ Legends of Tomorrow ”, where he pursues Eobard Thawne , who has become a paradox of the time ^[28] , as well as in episode 16 of the 3rd season of “Flash”, where he fought with Barry in the Speed ​​Force.
• In the Justice League: Without Borders animated series, Zoom is mentioned in the Fallen series, when Lex Luthor and Brainiac create android robots of the Lords of the Intruders to fight the Justice League; Flash's yellow duplicate (voiced by Michael Rosenbaum) is freely based on Zoom; he is trying to make Flash (Wally West) a better hero with a fight.

Video Games

• 2006: Justice League Heroes: The Flash video game
• 2011: DC Universe Online Video Game

Toys

• In July 2016 Funko POP! released a vinyl Zuma figure based on his appearance on the Flash TV series ^[29] .
• In March 2017, DC Collectibles released a 7-inch Zuma action figure based on his appearance in the Flash television series ^{[30] [31]} .

• Profile on Hunter Zolomon
• Profile on Zoom
• Crimson Lightning — онлайновый указатель по приключениям Флэша в комиксах.