Power Dampener

Power Dampener
Name	Power Dampener
Owners
Current Owner(s)	Victor von Doom
Physical Characteristics
Type	Technology
Origin
Reality	Earth-616
Lead Designer	Victor von Doom
Creators and Appearances
Creators	Marv Wolfman, Keith Pollard
First	Fantastic Four #197 (May, 1978)
First	Fantastic Four #197 (May, 1978)

History

The power dampener is a metalic hedgear that Doctor Doom designed to cancel a prisoner's mental or psionic powers. It was far from perfect: While the dampener reduced mental powers of a captive, it could never totally cancel a power, but only leave the power at a minimum level. The dampener did not prevent the detainee from speaking or seeing, as it only covered the upper head. Doom built only one dampener and kept it in Castle Doom.

in use

Doom once used the dampener on a bound Invisible Girl. He had also captured her teammates of the Fantastic Four, placing it on a specialized cage - the Human Torch in a Liquid Prison and the Thing on a Power Compressor while Mr. Fantastic went on a dangerous mission for Doom's purposes. Doom meanwhile explained the Invisible Girl and his other hostages his plot to abdicate in favour of his supposed son, commemorating the event with a statue of himself for the United Nations. While he went on, he and the Fantastic Four could see through a monitor how Mr. Fantastic fell to his supposed death; and not even the shock of her husband's death was enough for the Invisible Girl to overcome the restriction of the dampener. Doom later replaced the dampener on the Invisible Girl with an Electronic Shackle to take her to a Power Transference Machine. Doom kept the dampener at Castle Doom, apparently never duplicating it.

Trivia

• Machines of Doom #1 says that Doom had used a power dampener to neutralize the Invisible Woman's powers. However, at that point, Susan Storm went by the alias Invisible Girl.
• Machines of Doom Vol 1 1 also presents a captioned image of a dampener on page 34. It is also reproduced on page 48, just before the page describing the dampener.

See Also

• 6 appearance(s) of Power Dampener
• 3 minor appearance(s) of Power Dampener
• 3 image(s) of Power Dampener