Jonathan Grant

Jonathan Grant led a colorful life. In the 1970s, he was part of the drug and hippie counter-culture, which sparked Grant’s interest in chemistry and his involvement in the early market in designer drugs. The money he made in his early “entrepreneurial ventures” started Grant Conglomerates, allowing him to continue to develop newer and more powerful ways to “improve on the human experience.” Grant became fabulously wealthy from the creation of pharmaceuticals and investing in other technology start-ups.
The top of the business world wasn’t the end for Jonathan Grant, however. He chose to run for Mayor of Freedom City following the retirement of Mayor Michael O’Connor, Jr and won in a drawn-out and often vicious campaign. Mayor Grant was often a controversial figure: a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative and business figure with some socially progressive ideas but “the heart of a fascist,” according to some of his critics. He managed to win a difficult reelection campaign and was faced with the challenge of dealing with the first influx of non-hostile extraterrestrials on Earth. When his oldest daughter, Sarah Grant—a civil rights activist on the other side of the “illegal alien” issue—turned up dead, Mayor Grant practically turned Freedom City into a police state. When it was later revealed Ms. Grant’s killer was a genetically altered human, Mayor Grant himself was murdered in office. His assassin has not yet been found (nor is there much hope of it at this point).

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Jonathan Grant was the third Grant to lead Grant Conglomerates, which got its start as the Grant Medical Supplies company in 1922 under his grandfather Charles Grant. Over the intervening 80 years, Charles and his son Norman expanded the company mto a worldwide concern enveloping HMOs and new technologies from biotechnology to genome mapping. The family and company have always been surrounded by ugly rumors, like Charles being accused of being a Nazi sympathizer-a long-hidden truth, as Charles helped smuggle numerous death camp doctors into America and onto his payroll. Two years after graduating from Harvard, Jonathan inherited the business in 1989 on his 24th birthday after the sudden death of his father, his heart attack often suspected to be drug induced murder but this was never proven.
Jonathan Grant was a vain man whose interests lay less in business and more in power, so when Constantine Urallos stole his father's company with a hostile takeover in 1986, he did what it took to stay in control of his research laboratories. When he finally proved loyal (and amoral) enough to be shown more of The Labyrinth (by sacrificing his father), Jon accepted Taurus as his new master in exchange for the freedoms to experiment at will on "society's dregs in hopes that we can create superhumans to serve our wills." He knew he was not a self-made man, nor was he in control of his fate, but that mattered little to him. Jon simply wanted to be the one (rather than Dr. Hanks, whom he saw as his lesser) to crack superhuman DNA and be able to control its mutations at will. In public, he put on his mask as a friend of Freedom City, using his company to create better and cheaper drugs (Without mentioning that his company also produces some of the diseases it finds cures for as well).
To some, he posed as Mr. Cancer, the masked leader of the Cartel Zodiac. The cartel is a fictional construct that exists as an underworld myth and threat to steer the mobs and gangs and others away from certain Labyrinth interests. Grant enjoyed the amoral freedoms allowed him in his role as Mr. Cancer, enough that he often forgot that he was still subordinate to Urallos, Taurus, and the Labyrinth, and he tried to turn the Cartel Zodiac into a realty. When situations demanded it, Payback role-played as Mr. Sagittarius, another masked member of the cartel; he only made two appearances as such for the benefit of keeping Dybbuk, Grant's then reluctant bodyguard, in the dark as to her true handlers.

Social

Family Ties

He assumed his wife and most of his family were loyal to him and knew nothing of his illegal activities, but his eldest child, Sarah Grant, secretly hated him; she was a budding mutant empath who picked up on some of her father’s nastier thoughts and feelings, and was close to discovering the truth about him and his business.

Year of Death

2013