| CAVE CARSON (Calvin Carson) | BIOGRAPHY |
| Created by France Herron and Bruno Premiani |
PERSONAL DATA
Real Name: Calvin Carson
Occupation: Professional spelunker, geology professor
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: Bonnie Baxter (ex-mistress); Thula a.k.a. Fetish (daughter)
Base of Operation: Inside Earth
Group Affiliation(s): Leader of his own "Cave Carson Crew", The Forgotten Heroes (frequent member), Time Masters (former associate), Shadow Fighters (former member), LexOil (former employee)
Gender: Male
Height: 5'11"
Weight: 178 lbs.
Eyes: Blue, one eye replaced by a cybernetic one
Hair: Brown, often with beard
First Appearance: Brave and the Bold #31 (August-September 1960): "The Secret Beneath the Earth"
Creators: France Herron and Bruno Premiani
| Hi, folks! Good day for spelunking! - Cave Carson Quote taken from Eclipso #3 (January 1993) |
OVERVIEW
The world's most famous spelunker, Cave Carson has made numerous amazing subterranean discoveries in his time. He has also worked alongside various meta-humans, chiefly through his associations with the Forgotten Heroes and the United States government.
HISTORY
Possessed of a lifelong fascination with tunnels and caves - but maybe not always of high moral values - young Calvin 'Cave' Carson started his career as a lab-tech for the company 'E. Borsten & Sons'. There, he got involved in the so-called ' Mighty Mole Project', developing a remarkable digging machine to help in mining-access. However, due to the government's priority of space shuttle and satellite projects, the funding of the Mighty Mole Project got cut.
Cave then saw his chance to fulfill his lifelong dream, and simply stole the Mighty Mole machine from the project. He assembled a crew of highly skilled adventurers to help him in his explorations. This team included ex-convict, strongman, and tunnel expert Bulldozer Smith, renowned geologist Christie Madison; and the 'devil-may-care' adventurer and fellow spelunker Johnny Blake. Accompanied by Bulldozer's pet lemur, Lena, these four devoted their lives to uncovering the hidden secrets of the world.
The team experienced many bizarre adventures under the surface of the Earth. They uncovered the remains of ancient cities, located lost civilisations now living underground, and battled evolutionary throwbacks and even various alien life-forms, all dwelling inside Earth. It is not too much to say that, during this time, Cave became the world's foremost expert on the world within the world.
When the Borsten company legally sued Carson for millions of dollars and thereby threatened the team’s continued existence, the adventurers used the Mighty Mole for what they thought was their final adventure. In a cavern, they encountered a group of Neo-Nazis performing some time travel experiments to bring back no less than Adolf Hitler himself. After defeating the Nazis and thwarting their plans, Cave stole the Nazis' hidden gold reserve to finance his future adventuring career. As the government found out about the Nazi experiment in time travel, the Borsten group got access to the time travel technology and let Cave Carson keep the Mighty Mole. (As a side note: in the future, the company’s Reinhold Borsten would use the technology to build a famous Time Platform and bring Western hero Jonah Hex to the 21st century.)
Since this was still a few years before the likes of Superman, Batman, and the Justice League appeared to kick off the new heroic age, the team soon became world-famous adventurers and were regarded as national heroes, financing their activities with funds and lost treasures Cave had acquired as a result of his underground discoveries.
Cave Carson and his crew continued to adventure beneath the earth for years. As the super-heroes started to reappear, however, "plain heroes" like themselves (and others like the Sea Devils and the Challengers of the Unknown) did no longer hold the spotlight as they used to. Their team adventures became more infrequent, although Cave himself repeatedly conducted new scientific research with the Mighty Mole.
Becoming a loner, Cave retreated to a tropical island where he continued his experiments with the Mighty Mole. During this time, he was called upon to aid the interstellar heroes called the Omega Men to find Superman. When it was revealed that Superman was trapped in a location beneath Metropolis, Cave reluctantly helped the other heroes to find Superman and defeat a costumed criminal called the Mole (I).
Some time later, Cave accidentally discovered an ancient golden pyramid that the government had classified top secret, and thereby was banned from further exploring. Recruited by the Immortal Man, Cave joined forces with a number of other once-famous adventurers who had encountered similar objects and whose careers were in decline. This team called themselves 'the Forgotten Heroes' and uncovered the secret of the mysterious pyramids as part of a plan by Immortal Man's ages-old foe, Vandal Savage, to conquer the world. Under Immortal Man's direction, and with Superman's eventual aid, the group managed to destroy the pyramids and save the world.
At Immortal Man's suggestion, the group decided to band together formally to protect the world against menaces only their unique skills could hope to defeat. Among their main foes was the criminal organization known as the Forgotten Villains, who were attempting to form a supernatural coalition that would dominate the Earth. During the event known as the Crisis, the Immortal Man - at least seemingly - died, and the Forgotten Heroes disbanded soon afterwards.
Cave Carson's adventurer's career had diminished, which he did not seem to mind since he soon began a new career as a geology teacher and professor. It was then he met a young woman named Bonnie Baxter. The two of them soon became lovers.
When Bonnie was recruited by renowned time scientist - and former Borsten employee Rip Hunter, as the first member of his team known as the Time Masters, Cave came along as an associate. After Rip's mountain lab was destroyed by Vandal Savage's organization, the Illuminati, the Time Masters relocated to Cave Carson's underground headquarters. For a time Cave remained the principal financial backer of the team, as well as its spiritual mentor, due to his lingering emotional involvement with Bonnie.
Later, Cave was recruited by Amanda Waller into the loose-knit team called the Shadow Fighters to help fight Eclipso, the self-proclaimed God of Vengeance, in South-America. Although a good help for the team, Carson soon resigned from further missions. That was probably a good thing, since a whole bunch of heroes who encountered Eclipso were killed in action soon thereafter.
Cave does usually not work with his old crew these days. Johnny Blake is known to sit in a wheel chair and live a bitter life in a home for old people with the lemur Lena as his only company, and Bulldoxer Smith worked with tunnel warfare for the government for some time. However, Carson recently teamed up with Bulldozer and Christie once again to investigate the effects of a worldwide earthquake. This brought them into contact with Wonder Woman and to Antarctica where they discovered an ages-old civilization deep underground.
Thereafter, Cave re-formed the Forgotten Heroes to search for the missing Immortal Man. The team now included Animal Man, Ballistic, the Ray, the Vigilante, and Fetish, the daughter of Cave and an unnamed woman that he had encountered in an underground civilisation years before. The team's quest led them not only to the Immortal Man, but also to his kindred spirit Mitch Shelley, the Resurrection Man, with whom they joined up in combat against Vandal Savage and the Millennium Creature. The Forgotten Heroes remain semi-active under the leadership of Carson, banding together when the need arises.
Carson has since continued with his lifelong habit of spelunking. When the Mighty Mole recently broke on a mission, he plunged further down into the depths of the earth instead of returning to the surface world, living of whatever food and warmth he could find. There, he uncovered traces of the alien Brainiac 13 technology, coiled deep beneath the earth. Following the technomatter upward toward the surface, he came face to face with Talia Head, the CEO of LexCorp, who wanted to mine as much of the technology as she could. She signed Carson to a lucrative contract and put him to work for LexOil. Carson led LexOil to a petroleum deposit beneath Central Asia, but discovered alien mutations of "sulfaterespiring fungi" inside the oil. Fearing the alien consciousness, Carson alerted Superman, who was able to stop LexOil from mining the cybernetic petroleum.
In later years, Cave Carson somehow lost an eye and replaced it with a cybernetic one. How that happened has not yet been revealed.
POWERS AND WEAPONS
Cave Carson does not possess any super-powers, but is nonetheless a fair athlete and competent hand-to-hand combatant, with natural leadership ability. His most important skill however, is his knowledge about spelunking and geology. He is also a very good technician.
Cave uses an arsenal of various high-technological weapons, but his main equipment is the unique underground digging machine known as the Mighty Mole. The thermo-ray in the Mole's nose is capable of burning through solid rock like a hot knife through butter, while its interior contains adjustable lightning, a recycling oxygen system, a compact lab, and a small arsenal in case of emergencies.
It is not known whether Cave's new techno-eye gives him any extraordinary vision abilities.
CHRONOLOGY
For a definitive list of appearances of Cave Carson in chronological order click here
PROFILE REFERENCES
Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #4 (June 1985)