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Inspector Dudley "Deadly" Soames AKA Torque is a Blūdhaven criminal and villain to Nightwing. Torque is a corrupt-cop turned mobster who has a backwards-facing head due to having survived a neck-snapping.

History[]

Inspector Dudley "Deadly" Soames was the dirtiest man working in the corrupted Bludhaven Police Department. He first met Nightwing when he was ordered by Redhorn, the Police Chief, to execute the young vigilante. Soames, however, betrayed Redhorn, and allowed Nightwing to live, with the intention to pit various factions in Bludhaven against one another. He played both sides of the fence; he fed information on Blockbuster (Roland Desmond) 's criminal dealings to Nightwing, served Blockbuster as a mob lieutenant, and oversaw many of the criminal activities of Chief Redhorn's corrupt tenure with the police.

After Soame's scheme to use Scarecrow against Nightwing failed disastrously, Blockbuster grew weary of his underling, and attempted to have him killed. Soames responded with surprising cunning, and ultimately tried to take Blockbuster's invalid mother hostage as part of a last bid for power. Nightwing attempted to intervene, but was forced to save innocent bystanders as Blockbuster twisted the dirty cop's head 180 degrees, leaving Soames for dead.

Soames survived thanks to a breakthrough medical technique, and retrained himself to move normally, "seeing through the back of his head" with the use of glasses with a built-in array of mirrors. Soames brutally killed the doctor that had saved his life, morbidly renamed himself Torque, and (gaining the support of Intergang ) started a new gang war for the control of Bludhaven, revenge against Blockbuster, Nightwing, and the city he now felt he owned.

After descending further into madness, Soames was brought to justice by Nightwing, only to arrange a prison break with the help of the imprisoned Nite-Wing . This would prove to be his undoing, since once freed he wasted no time in returning to his old plans, even attempting to enlist Nite-Wing into his reign of terror. The vigilante, however, had a zero-tolerance policy for crime, and upon realizing Soames' true nature, the two entered into a Mexican standoff that only Nite-Wing survived.

Powers and Abilities[]

No superhuman abilities, but he was a skilled marksman with the Thompson .45 machine gun; wears specialized glasses with rear-view mirrors.

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