REAL NAME: Jericho Ornitz
OCCUPATION: Professional criminal
IDENTITY: Secret
CLASS: Human mutate
LEGAL STATUS: Citizen of USA
OTHER ALIASES: Mr. Onyx
PLACE OF BIRTH: Nedor Pines, USA
MARITAL STATUS: NA
KNOWN RELATIVES: NA
GROUP AFFILIATIONS: The Shady Quartet
BASE OF OPERATIONS: Mobile
FIRST APPEARANCE: America's Best Comics #4 (February 1943)
HEIGHT: 6' 7"
WEIGHT: 650 lbs
EYES: White irises
HAIR: None
Doctor Thomas Clark was a university professor who discovered a super resistant prehistoric bacterium. A criminal named Huber, who attended Clark's classes, mistakenly believed that the bacteria was actually a serum that Dr. Clark was secretly developing, and that it would be capable of giving powers to whoever injected it. The bad guy stole a vial of the bacteria, but since he wasn't a complete idiot, he had it injected first in one of his goons, a guy named Ornitz. Inexplicably, the bacteria eventually worked, turning Huber's thug into an unstoppable creature. Ornitz destroyed the rest of the vial, got rid of Huber and became the leader of the gang, now naming himself "Mr.Onyx". For a time the Onyx gang was quite successful in their criminal activities, but crime doesn't pay, and in the end Ornitz was arrested and found with his bones behind bars in a high security prison for supercriminals. There he met Twisto and Inferno, with whom he would team up to escape, helped from outside the prison by Miss Shady. The four would become known as "the Shady Quartet".
POWERS & WEAPONS
Ornitz's body underwent a mutation that transformed him into a stone-like creature and endowed him with superhuman strength, invulnerability, and increased his natural aggressiveness.
