Overlord (comics)

Overlord
Overlord battles his archenemy on the cover to Savage Dragon #7, January 1994. Art by Erik Larsen.
Publication information
Publisher	Image Comics
First appearance	The Savage Dragon (vol. 1) #1 (1992)
Created by	Erik Larsen
In-story information
Alter ego	Antonio Seghetti Victor Nixon
Team affiliations	Vicious Circle
Abilities	Brilliant criminal leader. Wears a suit of cybernetic powered armor that enhances his strength and protects him from harm.

Overlord is a comic-book supervillain created by Erik Larsen, first appearing in Larsen's Savage Dragon series and serving as that title's first principal villain. Like many of Larsen's characters, Overlord was based on a character that Larsen had created during his childhood. First conceived as "Bronzeman", a sort of criminal counterpart to Iron Man, Larsen later found he disliked the name and changed it to Overlord. The character's costume also went through multiple revisions before Larsen was satisfied.

Fictional character biography

Overlord is a Chicago-based crime lord named Antonio Seghetti with extensive ties to the mafia and the European pocket nation of Lieberheim. As a child, he kills his sister's rapist during the act itself. Though noble, he starts a downward spiral into thuggery. He soon is involved in all sorts of crime, including rape itself.

In the 1990s, the superhuman population of the world skyrockets, resulting in Seghetti's illegal operations being threatened. In response, Saghetti has Sebastian Kahn (a cybernetics genius) design and construct for him a powerful battlesuit to wear. Donning the armor, Saghetti dubs himself Overlord and recruits countless superhuman thugs into his criminal empire, calling the group the Vicious Circle. With superhuman agents, he breaks away from his Mafia connections and Overlord soon has the city of Chicago at his mercy. The Overlord's luck changes when the Savage Dragon becomes a police officer. The Dragon began to dismantle his empire piece by piece. Later the Overlord also has to contend with Kahn, who had been technologically augmented and is now called CyberFace. CyberFace leads a team of superhumans called the Annihilators against the Vicious Circle, but is arrested. After negotiating with the police, CyberFace plans to testify against Overlord and reveal his identity. Overlord panics and dispatched several assassins. Cyberface ended up dead in his cell, having been poisoned through his food. He is soon revived through artificial means.

Dragon's first confrontration with Overlord ends with being thrown off a roof and impaled on a church spire. Later, the Dragon returns with a S.W.A.T. team. The other police officers are killed almost instantly. The Dragon takes apart Overlord's armor and shoots him in the mouth, one of his few vulnerable spots. Overlord falls off the roof, breaking a spire and slamming into the sidewalk.

Armor On

Other forces conspire to send Dragon to hell, though Dragon does not believe it is real. Nevertheless, he viciously torments Antonio when they meet. Antonio has his armor recreated by mystical means. The Dragon bites off Antonio's finger and spits it through the man's head.

Since then, Overlord's armor has been used by others who have tried to gain power in the Chicago underworld. Some, such as Brainiape, must deal with literally not being able to fit into the armor. Then there was Victor Nixon, Chicago Police officer. He had developed an attraction to the married Rita Meadermade. His use of the armor to spy on her corrupts Nixon, mixing his thought patterns with Antonio's remnants. Nixon ends up killing Rita's other stalker, her homicidal brother-in-law. He also seemingly kills Dragon's wife, but Jennifer had been replaced by a double.^[1] Nixon then gathers a force of villains to go after Dragon. This fails and in a one-on-one confrontation with the Dragon, Nixon is beaten to death. His identity is only discovered after the fact.

Under careful supervision, the armor is destroyed in a fire.

In an alternate dimension, the armor is used by a mysterious figure to keep the Vicious Circle in line with the mutation-granting blood of Dragon. Overlord claims to be trying to turn the Circle 'straight', to become a mutated-beings rights group. As part of this goal, he works unofficially with the police.^[2] These stated goals suffer a setback after the Dragon, overcome by his previous persona of evil Emperor Kurr, kills many of the Circle's powered forced.^[3]

In other media

Overlord is the main villain in the short lived Savage Dragon animated series, voiced by Tony Jay.

References

1. ^ "Savage Dragon" #62 (June 1999)
2. ^ The Savage Dragon #159 (June 2010)
3. ^ The Savage Dragon #162 (September 2010)