| “ | 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 the first season of Batman Beyond. He is a corrupt businessman who later transformed into an extremely dangerous and toxic supervillain.
He was voiced by Sherman Howard.
History
Powers in his younger years, prior to buying out Wayne Enterprises in 2019.
Backstory
Powers started out as the CEO of a small business called Powers Technology which later gained power after he acquired Wayne Industries in 2019. And although Bruce Wayne prevented the corporate takeover on several occasions he was forced do to failling health to accept Power's offer and as a result the company was renamed Wayne-Powers and placed under Power's unscrupulous care. Some 20 years later Powers began taking over more of the business , now a powerful conglomerate corporation. Powers became known in the financial world as a "financiar czar" and a "coorporate kingpin" for the numerous downsizes, layoffs and hostile takeovers of several other industrial firms. Among other things Powers fired Lucious Fox Jr., the son of Lucious Fox, one of Bruce Wayne's closest friends during his glory days, thus gaining more disstrust from Wayne. Powers would interact only indirectly with Wayne, such as delivering to Wayne baschets with oranges for Christmas and very briefly ever talking with him. Aside from his questionable ethics Powers was cruel to his son, Paxton Powers, whom he often negleted and eventually had him exiled to South America to run the local Wayne-Powers division, a job which Paxton regarded as "grunt-work".
Rebirth, Part I
Powers had 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, but not before Powers could document the effects to show to potential buyers. 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.
Rebirth, Part II
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. Terry McGinnis would steal the newest version of the Batsuit and take up the guise of Batman to avenge his father's death. The shipment of nerve gas was stopped by Batman who threw a batarang at the container which caused the nerve gas to spread on Derek Powers. In order to save himself from the gas's efefcts, Powers had to undergo radiation-therapy in secret. And although the radiation had destroyed the virus, the gas was revealed to have mutagenit properties which combined with radiation used to treat him, thus transforming Powers into a radioactiv metahuman with his skeleton showing.
Black Out
Despite reveling in his newly acquired powers, Powers wore artificial skin on a daily basis to hide his condition 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.
Meltdown
As Powers's anger began intensifing his metahuman abilities his radiation grew stronger and his fake skin would barely last a day. The recently added member of Power's medical team, Dr. Stephanie Lake made the bold suggestion of using his baseline DNA to clone a new body and transfer his neural patterns to it. Before proceeding with the plan Dr. Lake decided to test the procedure first on another individual who also had mutated DNA. To that end she tested the procedure on Mr. Freeze, whose cryogenic head was kept in Wayne-Powers laboratories. After the procedure proved to be a success, Powers presented Freeze on the Net (television of their era) as a hoax campaign towards a new form of medical treatment. But when Freeze began reverting to his cryogenetic state, Powers and Dr. Lake decided to perform a biopsy on him. However Freeze escaped and came back for revenge by freezing them both and then planned to have the laboratories blown-up, killing himself in the process as well. Powers freed himself from the ice by means of his radiation, though at the expence of his skin. In his glowing skeletal form, Powers introduced himself as Blight and brutally crippled Mr. Freeze. After a heated battle with Batman, Freeze used the last of his energy to save Batman from Blight and sent Blight flying out of the laboratories and into a frozen lake. The laboratories was only partly destroyed with Freeze still inside. Blight was able to pull himself out of the frozen lake and was picked-up by his medical team, but not before mocking them for their stupidity.
Shriek
At this point, Powers had baught Shreeve Industries, small-time bussines that was developing various sound-based technologies, including a suit that could sound for mining opperations. He claimed that the bussiness was failling abd instead appropriated its technologies fr criminal activities, convincing its owner and namesake, Walter Shreev, to use his sound suit for assassinations. Powers wanted to bulldoze Gotham's historical district for profit, but Bruce Wayne opposed the movement. In order to overrule Wayne, Powers hired Walter Shreev to assassinate Wayne. Batman intervened and Shreev failed to assasinate Wayne. Instead he implanted a sound divace inside one of Wayne's bandages in order to fool him into thinking he had gone mad and force him into committing suicide. Batman was able to locate Shreev and expose him as a criminal to the police and later removed the sound device from Bruce's bandage. When Shreev sought revenge, Powers convinced him to become the supervillain Shriek, telling him that fear was a better method of gaining respect and casually ordered him to murder both Bruce Wayne and Batman. Shriek failed and lost his hearing after Batman destroyed one of his sound amplifiers. With Shriek in prison and Wayne still alive, Powers was overruled by the company shareholders and the historical district was saved.
Ascension
When it looked like he couldn't control transforming into Blight, hPowers handed over the operations to his son, Paxton, but only as a puppet, as Paxton would be acting chairman of the board while receiving orders from his father. During a meeting of the company shareholders, in which Bruce Wayne was also attending, a group of citizens of the South American nation of Verdeza broke in to protest against Paxton. They had managed to enrage Powers to such an extent that his 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. Before they could capture Blight, Paxton also ordered his men to kill Batman in order to cover his tracks. But Blight's rage and radiation went out of control and the submarine had a reactor breach and sank. Blight's body was never found and Paxton became the new chairman of the board, with Batman threatening to eventually have him exposed.
Seasons Two and Three
Blight made no more appearances after his apparent death, althought the memory of his actions continued to be told. His son, Paxton, was reminded twice of his father and his abilities, once by reporter Ian Peek who referred to Derek as Paxton's "blighted father", and another time by Commissioner Barbara Gordon as Paxton's "father who glows in the dark". More noticably, Blight had also gained respect by half of the children of Gotham as an idol do to his attitude of not letting anyone stop him and for getting what he wanted.
Powers and Abilities
Derek Powers was a highly inteligent man in the fields of economics, bussiness and black-market racketeering. He was able to acquire power in the financial world after buying out other companies and imposing high demands from them. To that end he would fire anyone who apposed him, but under clever pretences of either disobedience or incompetance. A notable example was buying out Walter Shreev's sound based technology firm, claming that Shrieeve lacked the practicality to properly run a bussiness. Another example of coorporate takeover was when he fired Lucious Fox Jr. do to the man's ties to Wayne, whom Powers had already severed ties from their mutual company. On one instance of an attempted takeover of yet another firm, Powers kept a late-night meeting in order to harangue the owners into selling him their company. Under Wayne'Power's legitimate earnings Derek Powers also dabled into illegal waste disposal, for instance dropping radioactive materials into Gotham harbour.
Derek Powers would often hire thugs, crooks and even terrorists for his more radical actions. He enlisted the muscle Mr. Fixx to murder Warren McGinnis after realizing that McGinnis was withholding the data regarding his nerve gas. He also hired industrial saboteur Inque to destroy his competitors's factories. Powers was also charismatic and resouceful enough in order to convince Walter Shreev into using his sound-based technology for assassinations.
As Blight, Derek Powers was a walking radiation emmiter, able to produce balls of radioactive fire from his hands, or cascading waves of radiation from his entire body. These blasts were able to melt heavy metal constructs and even damage Batman's high-tech suit despite its incredible durability. Powers was able to use these blasts of energy with pin-point accuracy. The heat created by the radiation was able to protect him from intense levels of cold which would normally be lethal to humans. He even brok out of Mr. Freeze's ice prison without sustaining any damage. As a drawback of his condition, Powers could not holdback the radiation on his own, as such he was forced to wear a suit of artificial skin in order to maintain a resemblence of normality. Worse still, the radiation intensified with anger, thus pealing away at his artificial skin more and more until it could hardy last a day.
