Real Name-- Arthur Parks

Class-- altered human

Affiliations-- Avengers villain

Occupation-- criminal , former scientist

Scale of Operations-- worldwide

Powers: Originally, Parks possessed no superhuman powers. He would employ wrist-mounted lasers (and later, body-mounted diodes) as weapons capable of emitting powerful blasts of amplified light.

When Parks' body was transformed into a sentient quantity of light, he proved invulnerable to all physical and most energy attacks. He could also move at light speeds, fire beams of coherent light, cause intense bursts of blinding light, and project holographic illusions of his human form.

History: Arthur Parks was a research scientist who worked on developing the laser (Light Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Radiation) for use as an offensive weapon. Building the smallest laser capable of use as a weapon yet devised, Parks fitted two of the miniature projectors to his wrists and fashioned himself a costume. Upset by the break-up with his girlfriend, Parks, calling himself the Living Laser, first used his weaponry in an attempt to vent his rage against his ex-girlfriend's fiancée. However, he soon became infatuated with Janet Van Dyne, the heroine known as the Wasp, and in an attempt to impress her, began to lay waste to portions of New York City. Finding himself in battle with Wasp's hero team, the Avengers, Parks kidnapped the Wasp and fled the country. The Avengers tracked him down to Costa Verde, a tiny South American nation whose guerrillas Parks was aiding. The Avengers thwarted his schemes, rescued the Wasp, and extradited him to America.

Serving time for his rampage in New York, Parks freed himself from prison with the aid of the villain Mandarin. He then began a career as a henchman, working for the Mandarin, and later, Batroc the Leaper, the Lethal Legion, and others.

After suffering various defeats, Parks spent over a year in his laboratory and devised a way to incorporate laser devices into his own body. With the assistance of underworld scientist Jonah Harrow, Parks had an array of miniature laser diodes implanted in various places over his body. Defeated again by the Avengers when he attempted to procure the powerful extradimensional object, the Serpent Crown, Parks was then contacted by Count Nefaria, who offered to augment his power further. Agreeing, Parks learned too late that Nefaria was using him as a dupe to acquire superhuman power for himself.

Nefaria's treatment activated the energy-gathering diodes in Parks' skin so that he could not shut them down. Desperate, Parks met with East German agents and agreed to help them power their laser-armed satellites in exchange for their siphoning off sufficient energy to save his life. However, months later, he met Iron Man in battle and his energy began to overload. To prevent the satellites from being armed, Iron Man destroyed the siphoning machine. Parks power overloaded and he exploded.

Although Parks was seemingly killed by the explosion, he continued to exist as a sentient energy being. His body's energy was collected by a Stark International satellite and able to assume a humanoid form. Driven insane by the experience, Parks attempted to kill Iron Man, whose alter ego, Tony Stark, owned the satellite. With the help of his ally James Rhodes, Iron Man captured Parks and remanded to the Avengers' West Coast compound, where the scientist Henry Pym sought to restore him to normal.

Unfortunately, Pym remained unable to restore Parks' physical body, and Parks remained imprisoned until an attack on the Avengers' headquarters by the villainous U-Foes allowed him to escape. Parks was intercepted by the Avengers' Quasar. Realizing that Quasar's energy-manipulating Quantum Bands could prove his undoing, Parks fled to the moon, where he entered the citadel of the enigmatic Watcher. Quasar pursued him, and Parks jumped into an interdimensional transporter.

Some time later, Quasar, with the help of the Watcher, retrieved Parks, but he fled once more. Parks sought revenge on Iron Man and nearly succeeded in besting the hero until Iron Man discovered he could disrupt the frequencies of light energy that formed Parks' body. Parks' corporeal form was dispersed, and it took him months to be able to resume his bodily form, using a laser chamber at Stark Enterprises. Instead of confronting Tony Stark, the alter-ego of Iron Man, Parks was approached by James Rhodes, Stark's successor as the head of his company and his heroic identity of Iron Man. Rhodes delayed a battle with Parks by offering him a research position, but he soon attacked Parks after placing modifications on the Iron Man armor that would ensure his victory. Parks was forced into the laser chamber for an interstellar communications laser, at which point Rhodes fired it into the Andromeda Galaxy.

Park's ultimate fate may yet be unrevealed.