Toyo Harada
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| Toyo Harada | |
|---|---|
| File:Toyoharada.jpg | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Valiant Comics |
| First appearance | Solar, Man of the Atom #3 (November 1991) |
| Created by | Jim Shooter Don David Perlin |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Toyo Harada |
| Team affiliations | Harbinger Foundation |
| Abilities | Telepathy Telekinesis Mind-control |
Toyo Harada is a fictional supervillain, who has appeared in various series published by Valiant Comics. Created by writer Jim Shooter and artist Don David Perlin, he is the primary antagonist of Valiant's Harbinger series, as well as a major influence in the larger Valiant Universe. Valiant Entertainment is the current owner of Toyo Harada and the rest of the original Valiant Comics characters.
Fictional character biography (Valiant Comics)
He is the most powerful psionic on Earth. One of two known harbingers to possess the "Omega Power" (the other being Peter Stanchek), Harada commands the full spectrum of psionic abilities, including telepathy, telekinesis, mind-control, and many other deadly talents.
Fearing that humanity may eventually destroy itself, Harada decided early in his life to preserve the planet by clandestinely conquering it. To this end, he established the Harbinger Foundation to recruit others with paranormal abilities, whom Harada refers to as "harbingers of the next step in human evolution". He seldom confronts his enemies directly, preferring to leave such dirty-work to his elite harbinger warriors, the "Eggbreakers" (as in the saying, to make an omelette...).
With tremendous economic and political clout, Harada seems close to achieving his goals, and is ready to destroy anyone who stands in his way. The great irony is that Harada truly feels he was born to save the human race; in his own mind, he is the hero of the story. But, in his haste to eliminate any opposition to his grand scheme, Toyo Harada has lost his own humanity.
Fictional character biography (Valiant Entertainment)
Toyo Harada, CEO of Harada Global Conglomerates and the most powerful mentalist in the world, has a vision for a perfect future. Guided for decades by the visions of the mysterious Bleeding Monk, Harada has used his seemingly limitless powers to build his public-facing company into a force that is seen to provide food and medicine to the world's poor. Behind the scenes, however, he's assembled a private army in the form of the Harbinger Foundation, a secret academy built to activate and train young individual psychics called "psiots" that, like himself, exhibit an array of abilities of the mind with extraordinary potential.
For decades, Harada's Harbinger Foundation and paramilitary contractor Project Rising Spirit have waged a secret war over these psiots, and, over the years, each collected a small army of empowered children as they sought to inflict their agendas on the world.
The consequences of their actions were put on full display when a group of these children escaped from P.R.S. and took refuge in Las Vegas. With a new band of psiots now in play, a war quickly erupted between Harada's team, P.R.S., Bloodshot, and Harada's former pupil Peter Stanchek, as they battled to claim the children for themselves. In the end, Harada emerged triumphant, capturing the children, as well as Bloodshot and the entirety of Peter's team. However, the victory only added to the mounting responsibilities on Harada's shoulders.
In Harada's eyes, the world will only survive if he is able to enact his vision of the future. That vision was threatened, however, when X-O Manowar invaded Romania and pushed Europe to the brink of war. Harada responded by assembling a team of the world's most deadly individuals to kill the self-proclaimed king and avert nuclear war, while also attempting to claim Aric of Dacia's ultra-powerful armor for himself.
However, Harada was betrayed by his own team and brutally defeated by former compatriot Livewire donning the X-O Manowar armor. In the aftermath, the combined stress of managing the Harbinger Foundation, psychically suppressing Peter Stanchek, and tending to his many responsibilities around the world became too much for Harada. He suffered a terrifying "mind squall'-a massive psychic eruption that severely devastated every mind in the immediate area as well as psychokinetically leveling the surroundings. In the wake of the event, the Renegades escaped, and Harada's Harbinger Foundation was staggered by substantial losses.
As Harada's grip further weakened, he encountered a new threat in the form of @X-a psiot and young hacker who leaked classified Project Rising Spirit files to the world, revealing the true nature of Harada's powers and the existence of the Harbinger Foundation in the process. With his mask of respectability ripped away, he publicly declared that he would now use his powers to bend the world to his will, forcing Peter Stanchek and the Renegades into an all-out, public war against the now exposed and newly unhinged Harada.