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Klaw

Klaw, the self-styled Master of Sound, is a fictional character, a supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe. The character first appeared Fantastic Four volume 1 #53 (1966), and is considered to be the archenemy of the Black Panther.

Fictional character biography

Origin

Ulysses Klaw is a Dutch physicist (born in Vlaardingen, Netherlands), working in the field of applied sonics at the Technical University at Delft, he designs a sound transducer able to convert sound waves into physical mass. The theoretical element necessary to make his device work is vibranium, a substance known to exist only in certain meteoric deposits in the small African nation of Wakanda. Desperate for a sample, Klaw organizes a team of mercenaries to help him seize the element from the African tribe who guarded it, the Wakandas. When T'Chaka, the leader of the Wakandan cult of the Black Panther, refuses to yield any of the metal from the sacred mound, Klaw orders his men to kill him. Witnessing his father's death, T'Chaka's adolescent son T'Challa seizes Klaw's sonic blaster weapon and aimed it at the marauders, shattering Klaw's right hand with one burst and scattering his troops with a second.

Driven away, Klaw vows to return and wreak vengeance. When he reaches civilization, Klaw has his mangled hand amputated and fitted with a claw-like prosthetic device into which he built a sonic-force blaster. Ten years later, he mounts a second attack on the Wakandas and is opposed by the Fantastic Four and T'Challa, now the Black Panther, who has succeeded his father as ruler. Thwarted again, Klaw leaps into his massive sonic converter device (the vibranium for which he had acquired criminally on the open market), hoping to gain superhuman powers to combat his foes. His gamble was successful and Klaw was transformed into a creature whose body was composed of "living sound. In his new form, Klaw as a professional criminal battles the Fantastic Four in New York and is pummeled into unconsciousness by Mister Fantastic wearing vibranium knuckle guards and taken to prison.

Global supervillain

Klaw is soon freed by the Crimson Cowl, an alias of Ultron, and invited to join the second Masters of Evil. The Masters of Evil manage to capture the Avengers, but they later escape. Klaw is subdued by his old foe, the Black Panther. Too powerful to be imprisoned by conventional means, Klaw escapes and frees some of his cronies from the Masters of Evil. A second foray against the Avengers, and the Lady Liberators, is less successful than the first and Klaw was again subdued.

Managing to escape custody again, Klaw journeys back to Wakanda where he helps steal a device capable of augmenting the metal-disintegrating property of a vibranium alloy. Encountering the Thing, the Human Torch, and the Black Panther, Klaw is defeated.

Klaw later joins forces with the murderous Solarr and traps the Avengers within a solid sound barrier. Klaw threatens to execute them if the Black Panther does not abdicate the throne of Wakanda to him. The Panther manages to subdue Klaw and Solarr before he could make good his threat.

Klaw is later freed from prison by a member of the extra dimensional race of Sheenarians, who wish him to use his sonic powers to help open a dimensional portal big enough for their invading armada to enter Earth. Klaw agrees and after a skirmish with Ka-Zar in London, travels with the Sheenarian to the Savage Land where there is a vibranium deposit large enough to create the portal. After Ka-Zar repulsed the invaders, Klaw flees into the Sheenarian dimension, and unable to salvage anything substantial from his allies, uses their technology to return to Earth.

Materializing in the Nexus of All Realities located in the Florida Everglades, Klaw happens upon the wand of the Molecule Man. Helping the Molecule Man find a body to possess, Klaw and his new ally travel to New York to wreak revenge on their common enemy, the Fantastic Four. Klaw is subdued by the visiting Impossible Man.

Klaw begins to realize that his sonic powers have been waning over the years and undertakes an elaborate scheme to manipulate a youth gang into restoring him to full power. Although the scheme works, Klaw is overpowered by the Black Panther and the Avengers.

Prisoner

Klaw's prosthetic device is recovered and taken to Project Pegasus, a government energy research facility, for analysis and safekeeping. When Solarr, another ward of the Project, is inadvertently freed from his containment cell, he seeks an ally to help him escape from the heavily-fortified facility. Finding Klaw's hand-blaster, Solarr thinks that the Project is responsible for killing him and throws the device angrily against the wall. The sonic vibrations of the impact provided the necessary energy for Klaw, whose mental essence had found refuge inside the prosthetic device, to reconstitute his solid sound body. Klaw and Solarr fought the Thing, Quasar, Giant-Man, and Aquarian. The two criminals' attempt to escape is thwarted, however, and Klaw collapses back into his sonic device.

After that, Klaw fights the Thing, Ka-Zar, and American Eagle.

Project scientists soon revive him again in order to study him. Weeks later, when the mutant Dazzler was at Project: Pegasus to have her sound-transducing powers tested, Klaw tricks the mutant into helping him escape confinement. Realizing her mistake, the Dazzler uses her body's sound absorbing abilities to siphon Klaw's energies totally into herself. Klaw's mental essence, rendered unconscious, is also transferred to the Dazzler. When the Dazzler expends the vast quantity of energy that is Klaw while aboard the starship of the world devourer Galactus, the advanced alien circuitry of Galactus's craft absorbs it and Klaw's mental essence.

Freed

Some time later, Galactus is among the many beings assembled for study by the omnipotent extra dimensional Beyonder. Needing to consume the energy of a planet-sized object, Galactus sends for his solar system-sized home base, to which his starship is docked. Doctor Doom, another of the beings abducted by the Beyonder, steals aboard Galactus's home base to find weaponry to battle first Galactus then the Beyonder. While trying to fathom the alien technology, Doom uses Galactus's machines to bodily resurrect Klaw, whose mental essence had been flitting through the circuitry of the base. Beginning with this resurrection, Klaw is entirely made of solidified sound, even his prosthetic weapon. As a result of his experience in disembodied form, Klaw is mildly insane when Doom restores his form. Doom nevertheless exploits the fact that Klaw's energy-form was attuned to Galactus's ship and carves up Klaw's non-organic body into special lenses. These lenses enable Doom to siphon the energy released when Galactus converts his home base into fuel. Succeeding in the audacious scheme, Doom attacks the Beyonder. Doom believes he has totally eradicated the Beyonder from existence, but the Beyonder instead takes refuge inside Klaw's now restored energy form. After witnessing how Doom handles his omnipotent power, the Beyonder manipulates Doom into returning it. The Beyonder then dispatches Doom and Klaw back to Earth.

Alongside the new Frightful Four, Klaw later fought the Fantastic Four again. During the Acts of Vengeance, Klaw joins with Wizard to face Iron Man, but he is defeated.

A crueler and no longer insane Klaw is among the villains assembled by the newest Crimson Cowl in the newest incarnation of the Masters of Evil, only to meet defeat by the Thunderbolts.

During an attempted prison break, Klaw was attacked by Ms. Marvel. She absorbed his sound blast, causing his form to lose cohesiveness and be sucked inside his sonic claw.

He has since appeared (Post-Civil War) as a (fifth) member of the Wizard's latest Frightful Four, restored by the Wizard via a sound file found on BitTorrent.

Powers and abilities

Ulysses Klaw was converted into a being composed of psionically "solidified" sound by his vibranium-powered sonic converter, giving him a somewhat inhuman appearance. He has superhuman strength, durability and endurance, and can normally lift approximately five tons. As a being of pure sound, Klaw does not need air, food or sleep and he is immune to diseases and most impacts. His form is resistant, if not immune, to telepathy. He is highly resilient and his body malleable, and he can reconstruct if sliced or discorporated. He can grow into a giant or shrink by absorbing or dissipating sound. He has also mixed other substances into his body, once adding water to become a kind of watery giant.

The molybdenum steel solidified sound generator that serves as a prosthetic appliance which replaces Klaw's right hand is able to transform ambient sound to accomplish various tasks. It can thus perform a variety of effects, including the projection of intense high-volume sonic waves, blasts of concussive force, creation of mobile sound/mass constructs, and dealing blows with waves of solid sound. Klaw can project deafening sonics or focused blasts that are powerful enough to obliterate solid steel. Klaw can manipulate sounds in numerous ways. He can sense his surroundings using sonar, absorb or manipulate area vibrations, and project various sonic frequencies. He can cause vertigo, hypnotism, and burst the eardrum of victims. He can deafen anyone in a .6 mile radius. The sound converter was invented by Klaw, and later improved by AIM scientists and technicians.

Klaw can project solid sound constructs and creatures, called Sominals, under his mental control. They can speak if he wills it. The Sominals tend to have superhuman strength and durability, shown capable of matching an enhanced Thing during Klaw's brief membership in the Frightful Four, but not to be as durable as Klaw himself. He has also created bullet-proof walls, sonic armor, and even a baseball team. He has also made balls of solid sound that are capable of absorbing sound mass independently. Klaw can reabsorb his constructs at will.

Klaw can transport himself by transforming himself into non-solidified energy. While propelling himself at the speed of sound he was able to smash through the hull of a battleship. Klaw has also transported himself and his various teammates inside his constructs.

As a result of his transformation, Klaw has the inability to exist outside a medium that allows the propagation of sound waves (i.e. in a vacuum) without the technological improvements made to his sonic converter by AIM. He also has the inability to regain his original organic form. He has a susceptibility to vibranium, which can cause his mass/energy form to collapse. He is also subject to temporary mild insanity when forced to exist as sonic energy without humanoid form for long periods of time.

As an expert in physics, vibranium, and advanced weaponry, Ulysses Klaw is a bona fide scientific genius with a Ph.D. in physics. He is an expert physicist specializing in applied sonics.

His prosthetic "sound claw" is now composed of solidified sound like the rest of Klaw.

In other media

Television

Klaw appeared in the 1967 Fantastic Four episode "Klaws".

Klaw made a cameo appearance on the Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends episode Attack of the Arachnoid. He was seen in the prison with Electro, Human Fly, and Blastaar.

Klaw appeared in the 1994 Fantastic Four cartoon series episode "Prey of The Black Panther" voiced by Charles Howerton.

Klaw has appeared (as part of the Frightful Four) in the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes episode "Frightful". There, his "Soni-claw" is a robotic hand that transforms into different sonic weapon configurations.

Video Games

Klaw appears in the arcade game Captain America and the Avengers alongside the Living Laser. The two are sub-bosses in the first level.

In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Klaw is mentioned by Black Panther when the player ask him about his history and Black Panther mentions that Klaw killed his father.