Threshold (comics)
| Threshold | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Wildstorm Productions (DC Comics) |
| First appearance | Gen¹³ (limited series) #1 (1994) |
| Created by |
Jim Lee Brandon Choi J. Scott Campbell |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Matthew Callahan |
| Team affiliations |
DV8 International Operations |
| Notable aliases | Tom Hallinan |
| Abilities | Telepathy, telekinesis |
Threshold (Matthew Callahan) is a fictional supervillain from the Gen¹³ and DV8 comic books, published by Wildstorm.
Matthew Callahan is the son of Stephen Callahan, a former member of Team 7. Team 7's superiors, the intelligence agency International Operations had exposed the team to the Gen-Factor, a substance that endowed the team with superhuman powers. The survivors from this experiment were codenamed Gen12. I.O. hoped to use them as weapons, but Team 7 turned out to have a will of their own. A couple of years later, I.O. decided that Team 7's children could have inherited their fathers' powers and if they could raise them from childhood, they could ensure their obedience. Most Team 7 members went into hiding with their children. Stephen and his family tried to escape as well, but I.O.'s troops caught up with them in Ohio and shot and killed Rachel; Stephen's wife. They then shot Stephen and took Matthew and his sister Nicole with them. Years later Stephen turned up alive, claiming that he had been wounded and taken prisoner by I.O. Matthew and Nicole were raised by I.O. and became obedient soldiers (Matthew more so than Nicole), but seeing their parents die had damaged their minds. Matthew had become a psychopath and Nicole was obsessed with controlling people. During his training, Matthew was injected with drugs to boost his powers. A side-effect was his left eye exploding during a test. He wore a red plastic or metal patch over of his eye, refusing to have a bionic replacement.
A couple of years later, I.O.'s leader Miles Craven was so impressed by Matthew and Nicole (now calling themselves Threshold and Bliss) that he ordered Ivana Baiul to restart Project Genesis. The project would screen children and teenagers for genetic anomalies (usually indicating that they were the children of Gen12 members) and bring them back to the project to be gen-activated. Baiul would use Threshold and Bliss as superpowered guardians in case the gen-activated children became troublesome. Baiul controlled Threshold with a mixture of sex and addictive drugs. Former Team 7-member and high-ranking I.O. operative John Lynch took an interest in the project, both out of concern for the children (many Gen-activated humans went mad or died) and in an attempt to locate his own missing son. Lynch suspected that Threshold might in fact be his own son, taken by other Team 7 members for his own safety. Threshold didn't believe this, because he could still remember his real father's death. John Lynch would later discover that Robert Lane was really his son.
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