Foolkiller (Everbest)

For more in-depth pages for the second, third and fourth Foolkillers: see here, here and here respectively.

Origin

The original Foolkiller was a man called Ross Everbest. His parents, both active in military service, died when he was a child. Everbest was a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair from birth. It greatly bothered him that he could never be an active soldier himself. As a teenager, he had an encounter with traveling evangelist Reverend Mike Pike, who enabled him to walk through faith healing. Everbest underwent an immediate religious conversion, thereafter traveling with Reverend Mike's caravan. He became a disciple and a popular preacher in his own right. Still greatly enamored of the military, he was greatly disturbed by the anti-Vietnam protests and the hippie movement. He came to blame social decay on unwitting agents of Satan, or "fools," and developed a fanatical religious philosophy whose terms required that an avenging agent of God kill them. He chose himself to be this contemporary savior and called himself the Foolkiller.

Creation

Foolkiller made his debut in Man-Thing, published in 1974. He was created by writer Steve Gerber and was penciled by ledgendary comic book artist Jim Mooney.

Major Story Arcs

Man-Thing

While traveling with the Reverend Mike, Ross completed his Foolkiller outfit and proceeded to show it to Mike, he discovered the latter drunk and carousing with a young girl. Enraged at this betrayal and disillusionment, he killed Mike. The Foolkiller used the money from the caravan's treasury to preserve Mike's body in a glass tank that became his central shrine, a testimony to the memory of what Mike had once represented. In the following months, Everbest carried on his crusade, killing dozens of fools - from Satanists to Socialists. His actions brought criticism from the press, notably from an Ohio disc jockey named Richard Rory. In response to death threats he received from Everbest, Rory moved to Florida, along with others that the Foolkiller had targeted. One of these targets was chemist Ted Sallis, who by now had become the creature known as the Man-Thing.

Capturing Rory and his other target, an industrialist, the Foolkiller brought them to a swamp near Citrusville to be executed. The Man-Thing, sensing the riot of emotions by this activity, intervened. In the subsequent fighting that resulted between Everbest and the Man-Thing, Reverend Mike's shrine was shattered, and a piece of glass from it became lodged in Everbest's heart, killing him.

Powers and Abilities

All of the Foolkillers have been normal men with no powers, but who trained themselves to be physically fit through intensive exercise. They relied primarily on their weaponry in their crusade against fools, using their physical skills as a last resort. The first three Foolkillers all used a "purification gun" as their primary weapon. First used by Everbest, the gun was capable of firing a powerful disintegration ray capable of incinerating a human body or destroying solid material. The gun's origins are unknown.