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THE HUCKSTER

The Homicidal Con-Artist

When mere madness isn't enough, the Huckster takes insanity to nearly superhuman levels. So unpredictable even he doesn't know what he'll do next, the ultimate con-artist is the one villain who can reliably catch Nighthawk off guard.

Character history:
No one knows where the Huckster comes from, not even Nighthawk, but the Darkwinged Detective has a theory: once, there was a salesman so fantastic, he could sell the proverbial refrigerators to Eskimos. Then something went wrong. One of his products poisoned him, or he was betrayed by an employer when he learned the wrong secret, or perhaps his first 'crime' -- poisoned fertilizer that tainted an entire town's crops and killed half the population -- was a terrible accident. No matter what happened, the Huckster was born from that disaster. Wearing the loudest polyester suit imaginable (when not in disguise), driving around in a beat-up 50s Cadillac that always has a few tricks built in, the Huckster scams innocent victim after innocent victim.

Stunningly charming when he puts his broken mind to it, the Huckster is still a salesman nonpareil, but now his goods all range from the harmful to the deadly. He lives solely for the next con, each sale a work of sick, demented art. Fortunately, the madness that makes him so dangerous, resilient and unpredictable is often his undoing as well. Sometimes, he will simply give up on the most brilliant scam, throwing his nauseating Huck-Up bombs with glee just before fleeing, or he might change plots in mid-course from a plan to 'buy' a Cosmopolis bridge to painting the entire structure to look like his impossibly loud jacket, then to blackmailing the city by threatening to blow it up -- all in the same day. While his madness makes him Nighthawk's most dangerous foe, he is easily the least reliable member of the Squadron Sinister.

Tactics:
Who knows? Pick a feature on the latest Fate Deck card and run with it. The Huckster thrives on chaos and devastation, though he has a particular affinity for betrayal and despair. He has just enough of a survival instinct not to stab Kro in the back, but anyone else is fair game. On the other hand, he seems to have managed something that almost resembles a friendship with Brainchild, and the two will often run head games on heroes by combining the misogynist's mental powers and the madman's manipulative gifts.

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 ===    /  "Everybody's got something inside them, some kind
  O   (/)  of power that makes them unique. I knew what mine
 ===  /    was. I knew it all along." -Barry Allen

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