Monarch (DC)

Monarch is a villain who first appeared in Armageddon 2001 2. Fifty years in the future, life was a nightmare. Monarch ruled all and everyone obeyed his every whim. Of course, not everyone liked it, especially Matthew Ryder, a scientist involved in temporal studies. Ryder knew that in 40 years in the past, one of Earth's meta-human protectors would become the deadly menace Monarch, and 30 years in the past, Monarch would conquer the world. Determined to stop Monarch from ever coming into being, Ryder used the temporal technology to hurl himself back in time and learn which hero would become Monarch and kill him or her. The trip backwards changed Ryder, turning him into a living temporal being now named Waverider. He approached dozens of Earth's protectors and was able to access their likely future time paths. Oddly enough, Waverider visited variation upon variation of the future, but no one he explored was Monarch. At the JLE Embassy in England, Waverider touched Captain Atom and unleashed an enormous amount of quantum energy. This opened up the quantum field and allowed Monarch access to ‘present day'. During Waverider's time studies, he never noticed that he was being monitored by Monarch, who merely awaited the right time to come back in time and stop his errant scientist. After all, if Waverider altered time as he planned, Monarch would cease to exist. During the battle against Earth's heroes Monarch managed to escape, stopping along the way to pick up Dawn Granger, otherwise known as Dove. During the next few hours, Monarch used his teleportation ability to steal an odd array of equipment. Standing atop a hilly glen, Monarch proceeded to build a powerful device that would subjugate the Earth of ‘the present' to his will. By this time, Hawk tracked them down and when Dove tried to stop Monarch, the villain killed her. Hawk and Dove were always destined to be two sides of the same force, and they needed each other to maintain stability. With Dove dead, there was no one who could keep Hawk's mind in check no one to stop him from slipping into chaos. And in a rage, Hawk killed Monarch - learning that he himself was the Monarch of the future. Hank Hall looked at the dead Monarch and then the machine he was building. Muttering to himself that Earth needed someone to maintain balance, someone to instil a sense of order, he put on Monarch's armour and continued building the device.