Terror 2000

---

Date of death: 2005
Place of death: Invertica, USA


Eyes: None, white on 3D interface
Hair: None, black on 3D interface
Race: Sentient machine


Occupation: Protector of Invertica
Group affiliation: Terror Incorporated
Base of operations: Invertica, Terra Obscura


Story: When the humans first set foot on the Moon on July 20th, 1969, they woke up an alien that had crash landed and been buried there since the Moon was formed. The alien killed the astronauts and went to Earth where it started mining for something on Antarctica. The members of S.M.A.S.H. tried to stop the alien but all except Tom Strange got killed or trapped in a force bubble and placed in orbit. Bob Benton, the Black Terror, was one of the heroes to get killed in the fight. In order to get help from the only source he knew, Tom Strange traveled through space on foot for 30 years until he reached Earth and Tom Strong in October 2000 [5].

Tom Strong and Tom Strange went back to Terra Obscura, where they found the imprisoned super-heroes trapped in their force bubbles [5]. In the force bubbles, time had stood still and Strange and Strong was able to rescue them all. The traces of Bob Benton's spirit led the heroes to one of the Terror's secret hideouts, where they found Terror 2000. Terror 2000 was Bob Benton's personality reduced to a program in a mainframe with a number of small spheres that could generate a 3D picture of Terror 2000 and function as an interface [6].

The alien in the meantime had tried to convert the planet to a new space ship to replace the one it had crashed. While it was big, it had only used a small part of Antarctica, and Terror 2000 was able to rewrite the programming and make it leave the planet with the size it had gained [6].

After the alien had left, Terror 2000 went back to protecting the city Invertica, forming Terror Incorporated with Tim Roland. He was considered a threat to Smenkhkare's plans of World domination, and Smenkhkare tried to have him shut down. The attempt failed [1], and Terror and some of the other heroes stopped Smenkhkare's plans [2].

The program being an imperfect copy of Bob Benton started to deviate from the original programming. After Tim died from an overdose [3], Terror created a robot duplicate and started acting like Tim. He became obsessed with getting back with Diana Adams, with whom he had had a brief romance, and became a danger to Diana Adams and the rest of the heroes. He was finally terminated by a time displaced Bob Benton when he tried to get control of the time displacements to rewriting history for his own benefit [4].


Continuity: America's Best Comics
Publisher(s): America's Best Comics
First app.: Tom Strong #12 (2001)
Creator(s): Alan Moore
Country of origin: USA


Background notes: When Alan Moore started using some of the old public domain characters from Better Publications for his Terra Obscura stories, he also introduced a couple of new ones. Strictly speaking, Terror 2000 is not a new character, but rather a new version of the original Black Terror. The original Black Terror however is included in the Terra Obscura continuity, and Terror 2000 is so different from the Black Terror that for all intents and purposes, he must be considered an original character.


Related links/characters:


References: 1: Terra Obscura (vol. 1) #1