JUMPER

Real Name: Robert Horton

Class: Human mutate

Occupation: Professional criminal

Group Affiliation: None

Known Relatives: unnamed father

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Keystone City, Kansas, 1940s era

First Appearance: Flash Comics #77 (November, 1946)

Powers: The Jumper had superhumanly strong leg muscles, allowing him to leap in great bounds. He was a skilled arsonist and armed with dynamite.

History: (Flash Comics #77) - Bobby Horton’s father was a scientist who always warned him to stay out of his lab, but one day Bobby’s curiosity got the better of him and he discovered his father’s lightning-generating machine. He fooled around with the machine and a lightning bolt struck his legs, crippling him. He was confined to a hospital until adulthood and harbored an irrational hatred of laboratories and science. One day he found that not only could he walk, but he could leap great bounds because the lightning that struck him supercharged his legs. He vowed to wreck havoc in the scientific community and took the supervillain identity of the Leaper. He crashed the Science Congress on the Future of the World, ranting that the future was doomed unless scientific progress was halted. Flash was slated to talk at the convention since he’d been to the future a few times, to tell the world about the future World University and the bomb defense the Justice Society investigated. He confronted the Leaper, who knocked him out with a kick to the head. The Leaper assembled a gang, and laid out his plan to destroy the labs that had discovered a new way to make copper. Copper stocks had plunged, and they’d all but them up, because they’d soar again once the new scientific breakthrough was wrecked. Jumper handily destroyed the labs through arson and setting off explosives while his gang kept lookout. Jay Garrick didn’t understand the patterns of the Jumper’s crimes, but knew he targeted laboratories, so he announced his lab had discovered a sugar substitute. Jumper and his gang bought up sugar stocks and trashed the lab. Jay changed into the Flash to confront them, but Jumper knocked him out again. Flash almost perished in the lab fire, but waved his helmet back and forth to displace air and summon thunder, alerting the police, who rescued him. Flash finally tumbled onto the Jumper’s M.O. and investigated  who’d been buying up copper and sugar stocks. He visited Jumper’s apartment, guarded by one of Jumper’s gang, who spilled the beans that Jumper’s next target was the E-J Electrical Laboratories. Flash got the jump on the Jumper, who knocked into an electrical device, and the surge of electricity left him powerless. Flash brought him to prison.

Comments: Created by Gardner Fox & Everett E. Hibbard.

In the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DCU Jumper lived on Earth-2.