Fictional Character Biography
The Time Trapper was originally a strange robed warlord from the extremely distant future, well past the time of the Legion of Super-Heroes. In his early appearances, the Time Trapper (also known as Paras) created a strange "Iron Curtain of Time" that prevented the Legion from going into their future. He also commanded a vast number of slaves and had a henchwoman named Glorith, whom he eventually murdered.
The Time Trapper (as The Time Master) appeared in 1958 to challenge Wonder Woman and Colonel Steve Trevor under the alias T.Y.Master by creating a diabolical "fun house". Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor were transported to various disasters throughout time when opening a door before defeating the Time Master by Wonder Woman vibrating through the doors. The villain then admitted defeat and disappeared, possibly returning to the "Iron Curtain of Time".
In February 1979, Time Trapper appeared again to defeat the Super Friends. During the investigation, Wonder Woman suggested that the Time Master and the Time Trapper were the same person. Superman deduced that the Time Trapper wanted to get rid of all superheroes throughout time, particularly the Legion of Super-Heroes. Time Trapper kidnapped and transported the Wonder Twins in the past by trapping Jayna on Krypton and Zan on a water planet near the star-sun Neryla. With the help of Queen Hippolyta, the Super Friends separated into small teams to locate and rescue the Wonder Twins. Returning to the present, the Super Friends defeated The Time Trapper who then disappeared. Superman believed he was imprisoned by the Controllers from his world.
Later, it was revealed that the Time Trapper was a member of the fascist but well intentioned race of Controllers. The Time Trapper was defeated by the Legion and it was believed that his menace ended when the villain Darkseid removed almost all of his power during the Great Darkness Saga.
Later retcons made the Time Trapper not a Controller at all, but of a wildly changing series of origins. These origins include him being the Legionnaire Cosmic Boy, Lori Morning, Superboy-Prime, the living embodiment of Entropy in the Universe, and a sentient alternate timeline.
One of the more noteworthy stories involving the Time Trapper came after the reality-altering mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths and the 1986 revamp of Superman's origin, which removed Superboy from Superman's and the Legion's history. Given the problems this posed for Legion continuity, it was later revealed that the Time Trapper created a pocket universe from a slice of time in the distant past, and altered events in this reality so that an Earth resembling the pre-Crisis one was formed, complete with its own Superboy. The Time Trapper then further manipulated the timestream so that whenever the Legion would travel into the past to visit the 20th century (or Superboy visited the Legion's future), the two would be directed into each other's worlds. However, the "pocket universe" lacked a Kryptonian Supergirl, and thus was not a perfect answer to patching Legion continuity. (The "pocket universe" was later revisited and made the point of origin for a non-Kryptonian Supergirl, also known as Matrix).
Four Legionnaires, (Duo Damsel, Brainiac 5, Saturn Girl, and Mon-El) were involved in a conspiracy to destroy the Time Trapper, against the Legion's regulations. They managed to reach his citadel at the end of time and seemingly destroyed him by using the Infinite Man against him. During this attack, Duo Damsel's second body was killed and Mon-El was put into a coma.
Following the five-year gap in Legion history, Brainiac 5 learned that the Trapper's essence had survived in Mon-El's mind. Mon-El then murdered the Trapper in the Pocket Universe, which caused a chain reaction throughout time and resulted in the sorcerer Mordru dominating the universe for a time. Mordru's former sidekick Glorith, through a magical spell, managed to take the Trapper's place in history and it was revealed that the Time Trapper had originally engineered the creation of the Legion in order to halt the inevitable rise of Mordru.
However it is eventually revealed that the Time Trapper had managed to survive and was probing Glorith's mind in an effort to regain his power. Enraged by this violation of her person, Glorith confronts the Time Trapper in the remains of his Pocket Universe and literally consumes him effectively becoming the Time Trapper.
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