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| Real Name: Arnold Paffenroth |
| Also Known As: Michael Wyatt |
| Place Of Birth: Las Vegas, Nevada |
| First Appearance: Werewolf By Night Vol.1 #9 (1973) Bronze Age Villain |
| Known Associates: Hangman, Gypsy Moth, Shroud, Werewolf by Night, Misfit, Needle, Dansen Macabre, Tick Tock, Brothers Grimm, Digger |
| Group Affiliation: Night Shift, former operative of the Committee |
| Base Of Operations: Los Angeles, California |
| Grudges: Westcoast Avengers and Moon Knight |
| Creators: Gerry Conway and Tom Sutton |
| Gallery: Click |
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| Arnold Paffenroth was the only son of a husband-wife vaudeville tap-dancing act, who began dancing at the age of eight. At eighteen, he met a dancer named Julia Walker and, adopting the stage name Michael Wyatt, formed a dance team with her that became popular enough to star in a number of motion pictures made in the late 1940s and early 1950s. |
| Paffenroth, knowing such success couldn't last, carefully invested his earnings in a Las Vegas casino. When indeed he could no longer get work in Hollywood, he split up with Julia Walker to attend to his casino business. In the early 1970s, while trying to acquire other real estate, Paffenroth ran afoul of Las Vegas mobsters, who swindled him out of everything he owned. Mentally deranged by the experience, he fled to Los Angeles where he soon became a drunken derelict. For several years he eked out a bare existence on the outskirts of society. |
| Finally, he was recruited into an army of derelicts by Sidney Sarnak, a former sound engineer turned criminal. Sarnak had been hired and outfitted by the Committee; a secret cabal of Los Angeles businessmen attempting to foster a climate of fear, which they believed, would stimulate the economy. To this end, Samak organized a small army of derelicts, which he controlled by means of a specially designed ultrasonic whistle capable of stimulating the emotional centres of the brain. Paffenroth was one of Sarnak's chief operatives until Sarnak went mad after an encounter with the Werewolf, Jack Russell. The Committee gave Paffenroth his own campaign of terror. Calling himself the Tatterdemalion, Paffenroth struck out randomly at the wealthy, whose ranks had once claimed him as a member. |
