WANTED: Earth-Two's Most Dangerous Super-Villains
The Thorn
Personal information
Name: Rose Canton
Residence: Usually Mobile
Occupation: Professional Criminal, former botanist assistant
First Appearance (Golden Age): Flash Comics #89 (November 1947)
First Appearance (Post-Golden Age): All-Star Comics #72 (June 1978)
Character History
Rose Canton is a life-long schizophrenic, a disease which
manifest itself even as a small child. When her mischievous side took
over, she told her parents of an evil "other little girl" who
committed the acts of mischief. As a young woman, she was a student of
Professor Benton Hollis studying the flora of Tashmi Island in the Pacific.
Hollis gave Rose two plants to study, a jungle rose and a toxic thorn. In
her studies of the thorn, she learned that the toxins produced by the plant
produced alterations in her physiology, making her immune to thorns and
granting her a limited form of super-speed. The discovery served as a wedge
that chiseled apart Rose's two personalities: The meek, helpful Rose and the
merciless, murderous Thorn. As time wore on, Hollis noticed a strange figure in
the jungle at night and to his regret, learned the nature of Rose's
transformation. As the Thorn, she had been stalking the jungle at night,
terrifying the natives and eventually murdering Hollis.
Leaving the island,
Rose made her way to America where she established herself as a criminal in
America's emerging super-villain community. In 1947, the Thorn moved her
operation to Keystone City and deliberately provoked an encounter by announcing
her robbery of the Mid-Town Bank. When the Flash arrived, he found several
thugs absconding with the bank's money and quickly rounded them up. As he
scolded them for their antics, he was confronted by a green whirlwind with a
woman's voice. When he tried to touch the spinning dervish he was stung
violently and hurled backwards. With the hero incapacitated, the Thorn revealed
herself. Not content to let the villainess escape, Garrick leapt to his feet
and tried to seize her, only to be again met with the whirlwind. As she spun up
and out of sight, the lithe figure of Rose Canton appeared. Telling a rather
biased version of the Thorn's origin, Rose claimed to be the criminal's
"sister" and won the Flash's confidence.
Shortly
thereafter, the Flash again encountered the Thorn as the she tried to rob a
large shipment of diamonds being brought into Keystone on a barge. As the Flash
captured her assistant, the Thorn herself swam towards a departing ocean liner,
intending to blend in among the passengers and disappear. Seeing the Flash
closing in, she hurled a special explosive thorn stunning the hero and sending
him below the waves. Unfortunately for the would-be escapee, the blast
dislodged her from the side of the boat to which she clung and detonated the
remainder of her explosive arsenal. Assuming the Thorn killed in the explosion,
Garrick returned to Joan's apartment. Shortly thereafter, Rose Canton arrived
and was told of her "sister's death", not
realizing that the criminal was in fact standing right before them (Flash
Comics #89, with additional details from Infinity Inc. Annual #1 and
unpublished Flash Comics #107).
A few months
later, Garrick was visiting Canton at her home to check her progress. As the
two walked in the rose garden, Garrick was stuck by a thorn. This event
excited the Thorn half of Canton's personality and within hours, the Thorn had
unleashed a massive thornstalk in downtown Keystone City. Vaguely aware of
Garrick's suspicions, the Thorn waited at her apartment disguised as Rose while
the stalk grew and after a quick and confounding visit by the Flash, departed
for the scene. After some initial efforts by the police fail, they managed to
remove the Thorn from her protective vines only to have her vanish in whirl of
thorns. While the dazed hero recovered in her wake, Rose Canton appeared
bewailing the errant ways of her "sister". The next day, everyone who
had been touched by the Thorn's plants ran amok in a drug-induced rage. When
the Flash captured them all, the Thorn appeared again and offered her hand,
daring the Flash to walk her to a jail cell. When he did, she shoved him inside
and set off an explosion with her explosive thorns. Her ploy failed, of course
and as the Flash bore down on her, she dove into a nearby sewer drain and
detonated the street behind her. Again assuming his adversary dead, the Flash
reported the news to mournful Rose (Flash Comics #96).
In 1949, Rose Canton finally made a
confession to Garrick, that she and the Thorn were one in the same. While the
Rose aspect of her personality was repentant of the Thorn's crime, the Thorn
aspect was enraged at what she perceived as betrayal. She attacked Garrick in
his laboratory and revealed her plan to kill him, Joan Williams and the Flash
in turn. Leaving the scientist for dead, she kidnapped Joan Garrick and left an
ultimatum for the Flash to try to rescue his confidante. When the Flash
arrived, the Thorn had Joan trapped in an explosive bubble, perched high atop
Stony Point, a cliff overlooking the river. Seeing the hero approach, the Thorn
pushed the bubble over the edge, sending Joan to her doom. As the Flash
freed his future wife from the trap, it exploded, knocking the Thorn from her
perch overlooking the river. Her fall knocked her unconscious and she recovered
in Joan's apartment, Rose again managed to assume control. In the 1940's,
mental health care was inadequate to the needs of as complex a case as the Rose
and Thorn. Contacting the Justice Society, the Flash, Green Lantern and
Wonder Woman agreed that it was best that she be tended to outside of the
American penal system, specifically on Transformation Island, a rehabilitation
facility administrated by the Amazons. As Rose was taken aboard Wonder Woman's
invisible plane, her attention to Green Lantern became a fateful obsession that
would become significant years later (unpublished Flash #107 with
addition details from Infinity Inc. Annual #1).
As far as is known, Rose remained on Transformation
island for nearly twenty years, a model prisoner. However, while the outward
schism between herself and the Thorn seemed contained, Rose had developed an
obsessive crush on Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern. After years of
good behavior, Rose as allowed to return to the States where she dyed her hair
black and developed an alias as Alyx Florin. Her youth preserved by
Amazonian science, she moved to Gotham City where she aggressively pursued Alan
Scott. In the late 1960's, the two were wed. On their honeymoon, the Thorn
re-asserted herself, seizing the sleeping hero's power ring. Unable to wear it,
she flung it into the fire, creating an explosion that covered her departure
and left the grieving Scott believing her dead. Unbeknownst to Scott, however,
Rose was now pregnant with his children, twins who she put up for adoption to
keep them out of the clutches of the Thorn (Infinity Inc., Annual #1).
For years
thereafter, the Thorn remained submerged beneath the personality of Rose, who
disappeared into American society and obtained a job as a nurse in Keystone
City. In the late 1970's, the Flash revealed that he and Jay Garrick were one
in the same in an interview in We magazine (Flash Spectacular
#1). This event triggered the re-emergence of the Thorn, who launched a
crime wave in Keystone City which attracted the attention of the Justice
Society. Recruiting the Sportsmaster and the Huntress as her allies, she
murdered several officials in Keystone before turning her attention to Joan
Garrick, now publicly known as the wife of the Flash. After nearly killing
Wildcat, the Thorn and her cronies were rounded up and carted off to a maximum
security prison in the Midwest (All-Star Comics #72-73).
Several years later, the Thorn escaped. Now aging and lacking direction, she retreated to Tashmi Island to further study the flora that had given her original powers. How long the Thorn remained on Tashmi and whether she occasionally left is unknown. In the early 1980's, her children, now grown and displaying super-powers of their own, visited Tashmi Island after finding it on a map in the JSA headquarters. Thinking the island deserted, the heroes planned a quiet vacation, a vacation that was rudely interrupted when their presence evoked an appearance of the Thorn (Infinity Inc. #13). Realizing who the children must be, the Thorn left Tashmi and attempted to capture them but was thwarted by the Harlequin, a Golden Age adversary of the Green Lantern who had been keeping track of the children since their adoption. In a climactic confrontation, the Harlequin, Jade, Obsidian and Alan Scott faced off again the Thorn, who had sworn to kill them all. Before she could execute her intentions, the personality of Rose emerged with maternal fury and rather than allow the Thorn to continue, killed herself, removing the Thorn in the process. In the aftermath, the Harlequin revealed to the astonished heroes and their common bond with the Thorn (Infinity Inc. Annual #1). Whether the legacy of the Thorn's madness affects her children on Earth-Two remains to be seen.
Powers and Abilities
The Thorn's principle abilities derive from the toxins of rare flora known only to Tashmi Island. These toxins have given her the ability to spin and possibly move in other ways and high levels of speed, though certainly not as fast as The Flash. She has a toughed epidermis that makes her immune to minor injury such as pricks from the thorns. She has also has developed a number of weapons based on thorns, including explosive thorns, poisoned thorns and thorns with attachments such as rope. She maintains an operation of several criminal agents which have designed her specialized planes, boats and automobiles with a thorn motif. She is able to grow and manipulate large thorn vines but it's not clear if that is an inherent ability or a function of the chemical is which she is so well-versed.
Weaknesses and Limitations
While she has some minor powers, the Thorn has essentially the same limitation as most mortals. Her major Achilles Heel is the warring factions within her own mind. Her submissive side, Rose Canton, often asserts itself under stress to undo the criminal ambitions of the Thorn, making her vulnerable to defeat.
Multiversity
Prior Earth-0
The history of the Thorn is thought to be largely similar to her Earth-2 counterpart. She re-surfaced earlier than the Earth-2 timeline as part of an early group of villains fighting the Justice League (JLA: Year One LS) but otherwise is thought to have lived our her life and died in a similar manner.
Appearances
|
Issue |
Comment |
Reprinted in |
|
Flash Comics #89 |
First Appearance, vs. The Flash |
The Flash: 80 Years of The Fastest Man Alive Deluxe Edition |
|
Flash Comics #96 |
vs. The Flash |
The Flash: 80 Years of The Fastest Man Alive Deluxe Edition |
|
Flash Comics #107 (Unpublished) |
vs. The Flash |
Robyn Snyder's The Comics - vol. 6 #10, The Flash: 80 Years of The Fastest Man Alive Deluxe Edition, Lois Lane #113 (partial) |
|
W/the Huntress and the Sportsmaster vs. Justice Society |
Justice Society TPB Vol. 2, Showcase Presents All-Star Comics Vol. 1, All-Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever |
|
|
vs. Infinity Inc. |
The Best of DC #69 |
|
|
Revealed as mother of Jade and Obsidian, dies in this story |
Crisis on Infinite Earths Companion Deluxe Edition #2 |