Name: Black Manta
Universe: Earth-1
Alter Ego: Unknown
Occupation: Professional Criminal
Marital Status: Single
Group Affiliation: None
Base of Operations: Mobile
Known Relatives: None
Height: 6 ft. 1 in.
Weight: 187 lbs.
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Brown
First Appearance: Aquaman #35

History:
A professional criminal all his adult life, Black Manta has spent years plundering the ocean floor of its valuable contents. In this time, he has assembled a considerable number of henchmen, as well as bioengineering mutants he calls his Manta-Men.

Little is known of the man beneath the Manta costume, save that, like most of his henchmen, he is black. "Not that racism is my motive," says Manta, "but since blacks have been suppressed for so long on the surface, they fight well for a chance to be masters below."

Black Manta has attempted several times to create his own undersea kingdom, but each attempt has been thwarted by the King of the Seven Seas, Aquaman. In the course of one of these conflict, Black Manta was directly responsible for the death of Aquaman's son, Arthur Curry, Jr., thus becoming one of the Sea King's greatest foes.

Powers:
Black Manta wears a costume that provides him with unlimited air and communications capacity and protects him from the extraordinary pressures of the deep. The lenses in his helmet are also equipped with sophisticated laser beams, capable of piercing carbon steel. Over the years, he has used various undersea craft, probably of his own design. He has also designed and had performed upon many of his henchmen an intricate series of gill implantations, enabling them to survive indefinitely beneath the sea, though Black Manta himself has not yet undergone this still-experimental process.

Having spent so many years beneath the waves, Black Manta has become proficient in all forms of undersea combat and is a skilled hand-to-hand fighter.