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History

Tom Hendricks was an inventor who in 1936 married Lolita Dale, a model who was renown for her modelling for paintings of the goddess Diana. Eventually, Lolita squandered Hendrick's fortune and left him, and unknown to him lost her beauty due to some unknown illness. She started up a model photography agency called Super-Studio, charging models $1000 for photo shoots that would eventually be paid back. However, she and her assistant Hogy decided to murder the models before they had to pay them back.

By 1946, their plan came to fruition as Tom Hendricks had gone completely insane, and not recognizing his ex-wife was easily manipulated to kill the models to Lolita and Hogy's ends. They convinced him to formula his "Diana" plan, creating spider suits that fired webs so that he could kill models who were either named Diana or the first letter of the names of successive victims spelled out the name "Diana". The murders stumped police and attracted the attention of Betty Dean and the Sub-Mariner. Eventually, after another death, they deduced the connection between "Diana" and Tom Hendricks. When Namor travelled to Hendrick's Catalina home and began questioning him, Hendricks seemingly shot the hero dead and buried him alive and then rushed off to his hideout, unaware that he was leading the Sub-Mariner along the way.

There, he attacked Hendricks and Hogy but was knocked out by Lolita. Hendricks then put on one of his spider suits to kill the next victim, leaving Hogy and Lolita to dispose of the Sub-Mariner. They let slip part of their plan in the scheme and left Namor to die by gas, but the hero managed to free himself with the help of Betty. Rushing back to Long Beach, Namor prevented the death of the next model and easily subdued Tom. Learning about the connection to Super-Studio, Namor then rounded up Lolita and Hogy. At the police station, Lolita revealed her true identity to Hendricks who was happy to learn that his hated ex-wife was going to share the same fate as him.[1]

This fate, whatever it may be, is unknown.

Attributes

Weaknesses

Hendricks suffered a mental breakdown caused by the loss of his fortune and the departure of his ex-wife. He was homicidally insane.

Paraphernalia

Weapons

Tom Hendricks' Spider Costumes from Sub-Mariner Comics Vol 1 20 0001

Hendricks' spider costumes

Hendricks carried a pistol. He also developed spider costumes, giving each a name. Named suits were "Caesar" and "Ambros". Each costumed made the wearer appear to be a giant spider, it could fire silk webbing that was many times stronger than a spider's actual web, although at full strength the Sub-Mariner could break it.

See Also

Links and References

References

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