Arthur Pemberton

Arthur Pemberton is the nephew of Sylvester Pemberton, the original Star-Spangled Kid.

JSA All Stars

Pemperton shows up in Justice Society of America: All Stars #70 posing as one of the reporters attending the All Stars press conference. On the audience being asked if they had any questions Pemberton revealed himself and summoned a strike force to attack the proceedings.As a fight flares up between the All Stars and the strike force Pemberton introduces him to the confused Magog, and promptly blasts him with a beam of energy from his Mundane Staff, a weapon made in Ancient Crete to sap Demi-Gods of their strength. Upon seeing Magog's situation Power Girl flies over and destroys the staff whilst grabbing Pemberton, remembering him from their past encounters.

With Power Girl distracted by a blast of neutron star matter from one of the strike force members Pemberton makes his way to the real mission of the strike force's appearance - capturing Stargirl. After knocking Courtney unconscious using his energy gauntlets Pemberton flies off, his mission complete, leaving his team behind and letting the member who distracted Power Girl die by an explosion from her 'teleport belt', the distraction allowing Pemberton time to escape while the All Stars stand in a daze at what had just happened.

When Stargirl awakens she finds herself in an abandoned warehouse with Pemberton standing over her. On being asked why she was captured Pemberton informs her that her situation is nothing personal, but simply a business transaction he was hired to do. Pemberton refuses to say who his employer is and is promptly called away upon being told the warehouse is under attack.Outside, the remains of the strike force from the earlier confrontation are being attacked by the Injustice Society, led by Johnny Sorrow. The force are easily being beaten but as the battle seems to be going in the Injustice Society's favor the All Stars show up looking for their missing team mate.

As the battles rages on between the heroes, villains and the strike force Pemberton bursts through one of the warehouses windows wearing an armoured battlesuit and is promptly rushed by Power Girl. Pemberton states he is actually glad that he will get to test the suit out on Power Girl and, on grabbing Power Girl by the throat, instructs the strike force to focus their attacks on the All Stars.

After fighting for several minutes Power Girl throws Pemberton into the warehouse's wall and flies over to help Cyclone, who is being overwhelmed by Icicle. With the battle drawing itself to a conclusion Johnny Sorrow reveals that he was behind the kidnapping, he was Pemberton's employer because he was after Stargirl's love. Pemberton lay defeated on the ground as Sorrow and the Injustice Society teleport away, leaving him at the mercy of the All Stars.

The All Stars assume that Pemberton was arrested by the authorities and taken to prison but he actually escaped their custody to be with his daughter Lorna in Atlanta, Georgia. Lorna had succumbed to a bad fall and she went into a coma. Lorna is being secretly treated by Dr. Milo, who recommends unorthodox methods in reviving Lorna. Pemberton is familiar with Milo's reputation of using people as his guinea pigs for peculiar experiments so Arthur decides to look else where.

In Greenland, an ancient artifact is being loaded onto a plane and taken back to the U.S. However, the plane gets shot down and a group of thieves led by Arthur Pemberton and Pemberton takes the artifact. Pemberton is working with Atlantean sorcerers because he wants them to heal his daughter Lorna. The JSA All-Stars hear about Pemberton's heist and decide to head to Vienna because another artifact resides there. When they arrive at the artifact's location, the JSA All Stars get into a fight with Pemberton's band of sorcerers.

Pemberton enters the fight by using his Mundane Staff to weaken most of the All Stars but it transports Power Girl, Commander Steel and Wildcat to a limbo like dimension where the sorcerers were once imprisoned. The sorcerers load up the artifact and Pemberton heads to his next destination which is the office of a researcher in Tunisia because this researcher is familiar with the mysticism behind these stolen artifacts. Hourman (Tyler) decides to travel the timestream in order to locate his vanished teammates while the rest of the All-Stars figure out what Pemberton and his sorcerers are planning.

Roxy and King Chimera have explored the history behind these artifacts and discover something rather puzzling. The sorcerers are ancestral neophytes that have unleashed their Puzzlemen, stone giants with Easter Island heads, on members of the scientifically progressive community throughout time. The last time the Puzzlemen attacked was during 1720 in Kothen, Germany. The great composer Johann Bach devised a muscial partita in D minor that could cancel out the resonant frequencies that brings the artifacts together.

Hourman returns with good news and bad news. The bad news is he couldn't locate the All Stars that vanished but he did find out that the sorcerers are heading to a Manhattan hospital where Lorna Pemberton is being treated. The JSA All Stars head out to Manhattan while Roxy figures out Pemberton's motivation for these thefts. Roxy discovers that Pemberton's daughter was a violinist before her accident. Roxy begins to put two and two together. The violin that the Hourman android gave her when she joined the JSA All Stars, was meant to be used to for this precise event. Roxy would have to fuse her personality with Lorna Pemberton since her gifted fingers are capable of playing Bach's partita thus putting an end to the Puzzlemen.

The Puzzlemen are unleashed on the JSA All Stars and Pemberton uses his staff to transport Anna Fortune to limbo but only because Anna allowed him to. Anna regrouped with her lost comrades in limbo and figured out that Pemberton's Mundane Staff has dimensional manipulating properties. Pemberton's staff must have emitted a great enough force to open a rift in limbo to allow the sorcerers to escape. Power Girl searches throughout limbo to find a time displaced item that can emit the same force and she finds an atom bomb.

The missing JSA All Stars return to their normal point in time and help the rest of the team as they fend off against the Puzzlemen. Roxy suddenly appears in Lorna's body and plays Bach's partita. The Puzzlemen fall apart and the sorcerers retreat back into limbo along with Pemberton who was greatly angered by Roxy's lack of moral decency as she uses his daughter's body as a vessel for her own essence.