Derek Powers

"And behold, I shall be a blight upon the land, and everything I touch shall wither and die!"

- Blight "You wanna talk about poison!? Hahaha! I am poison!"

- Powers after being exposed as Blight.

Derek Powers later known as Blight is the main antagonist in season 1 of Batman Beyond. He is a corrupt businessman who later transformed into an extremely dangerous and toxic supervillain.

He was voiced by Sherman Howard.

Biography
He once owned his own business called Powers Technology but later gained power of Wayne Industries in 2019. 20 years later, he began taking over more of the business and developed a dangerous nerve gas that slowly eats away at the victim's flesh. To test the compound, he infected an employee, Harry Tully, with it. Tully passed the information along to his co-worker, Warren McGinnis. Tully later died from exposure to the nerve gas. Desperate to retrieve the information, Powers sent his assistant Mr. Fixx to kill McGinnis and make it appear the latter was the victim of The Jokerz gang. However, Fixx did not obtain the disc of information, which had been earlier found by Warren's son Terry. Terry gave the disc to Bruce Wayne, whom Terry discovered was once Batman. Terry would take up the guise of Batman to avenge his father's death.

Powers planned to ship the nerve gas to Kaznia, a foreign country, and promoted it to Kaznian ambassador Vilmos Egans, showing him gruesome pictures of Harry Tully's gradual death at the hands of the gas. The shipment was stopped by Batman who throw a batarang at the container which caused the nerve gas to spread on Derek Powers. The gas, combined with radiation used to treat him, left him filled with radiation with his skeleton showing. He wore artificial skin daily and hired doctors to find a possible cure for his condition.

When the government decided to build a new lunar station, the two possible contractors for the job were Wayne-Powers and Foxteca. Powers hired saboteur Inque to hinder Foxteca. Batman interfered so Powers contracted Inque to kill Batman and any of his associates but she failed.

His radiation grew stronger and his fake skin would barely last a day. Dr. Stephanie Lake made the bold suggestion of using his baseline DNA to clone a new body and transfer his neural patterns to it. They tested it on Mr. Freeze, whose head was kept in Wayne-Powers. When Freeze reverted, they decided to perform a biopsy on him, but he escaped, came back for revenge, and froze them both. Powers freed himself from the ice with his radiation. In his glowing skeletal form, Powers introduced himself as Blight and brutally crippled Mr. Freeze. Freeze used the last of his energy to save Batman from Blight.

Powers wanted to bulldoze Gotham's historical district for profit, but Bruce Wayne opposed the movement. He hired Walter Shreev to assassinate Wayne. Batman intervened and Shreev became a criminal. When Shreev sought revenge, Powers convinced him to become the supervillain Shriek and casually ordered him to murder both Bruce Wayne and Batman. Shriek failed and the district was saved.

When it looked like he couldn't control transforming into Blight, he handed over the operations to his son, Paxton, whom he had exiled years ago. The radiation took its effect, and after the "Blight" side of Powers was exposed, he went into hiding. Only his assistant, Miss Winston, knew of his whereabouts - Powers hid in an old nuclear sub that would conceal his own radiation. After following her, Batman confronted Blight. Blight demanded to know who Batman was and Batman replied "You killed my father". But Blight, having killed countless people, found this information useless.

Paxton showed up and revealed he planned to kill Blight with a pinch cell. Blight's rage and radiation went out of control and the submarine had a reactor breach and sank. Blight's body was never found.