In other words, he was beaten up a lot in school.

Quite intelligent and artistically creative, Boosler's talents were little appreciated by the tough youths of his neighborhood, and he suffered regular ostracization and physical abuse at the hands of his peers as a result. A not particularly supportive father advised him to "quit snivelling, toughen up, and deal with it."

As he joined in with a bad crowd of local toughs to survive, his grades in school quickly fell and, with them, his chances of making a better life for himself. Eventually dropping out of high school in the tenth grade, he also quickly amassed a lengthy juvenile record for petty theft and vandalism during this same period.

Abhoring the acts of violence with which his crew were becoming involved as they progressed into their teenage years, he quit his association with them and, moving to a crummy apartment by the railroad tracks across town, took up the life of a full-time, professional thief at the tender age of seventeen.

A clever, crafty young man, he was moderately successful in his new career. Specializing primarily in drug store robberies, he made a decent living selling stolen pharmaceuticals to local dope addicts (although he was always smart enough not to take any of the product himself).

Unfortunately, a physically weak and non-violent individual, he suffered the occasional beating at the hands of desperate or greedy junkies reluctant to pay for what they could take instead. A lone operator, he had little protection from such abuses.

At the age of twenty, he engineered one of his most successful scores, and one of his most disastrous. Recruiting a gang of three other thieves, he led a daring burglary of a pharmaceutical laboratory in Anytown's industrial sector. Breaking into a testing lab with a rather large cache of assorted pharmaceuticals, including several untested, experimental drugs, the gang of thieves were able to cart off a grossly huge supply of prescription drugs.

However, before the raid even took place the other three gang members (dope addicts who did not appreciate their boss' reluctance to let them consume some of the profits personally) had already decided not to share the loot with their erstwhile leader. Seizing him on the factory loading docks as they prepared to make their getaway, the gang members (higher than a kite) forced him to drink an overdose of several experimental amphetamine solutions.

Abandoned at the factory as he stroked out and suffered multiple cardiac arrests, Lenny survived (miraculously!) but fell into a coma that lasted over a month. During his coma, he underwent certain "changes," almost certainly induced by the odd combination of experimental drugs he was forced to ingest. He would not be fully aware of the nature of those changes for several more months to come.

Unfortunately, when he awoke from his coma, he was already in police custody. Refusing to name his confederates (primarily for fear of retaliation), he was the sole suspect charged with the factory robbery. Convicted, he was sentenced to two years in a state prison.

Prison life was, understandably, not at all to his liking. Small and physically weak, his cleverness didn't count for much on the inside. He almost certainly would have suffered rather horrible abuse at the hands of his fellow inmates, excepting that, two weeks into his sentence, his superhuman speed manifested itself for the first time.

Frightened when a riot erupted between two rival factions in the prison yard during exercise period, he immediately bolted away from the area of the fight. . . at 55 miles per hour!

Startled by his newfound speed, Lenny slammed into a wire mesh fence at full speed, knocking himself cold. Unfortunately for him, his burst of speed was witnessed by several of the prison guards, and, by the time he regained consciousness, he was already enroute to a federal holding facility designed specifically to incarcerate superhuman prisoners. To add insult to injury, he was sentenced to an additional eighteen months imprisonment for attempted escape.

Although a maximum security facility, the federal prison was, for Lenny, a welcome change from the state penitentiary. Due to the special needs involved in incarcerating superhumans, each prisoner had a private cell designed specifically to compensate for their special powers. Additionally, prisoners were kept very isolated from one another, generally only having contact with the other members of a six-man "cell block."

Although this arrangement might be called cruel to some, it suited Lenny just fine, as he knew he might otherwise be ill-used by his fellow inmates in a more traditional prison environment.

During his stay, Lenny was a model prisoner, earning a limited trustee status shortly before his release, as well as a six month early parole. During this time, he also befriended the prisoner in the next cell, a rather simple fellow named Herbie Flannery (AKA the Midnight Revenger). Much smarter than his friend, Lenny felt oddly protective of Herbie, who had, in his own way, suffered as much abuse for his mental shortcomings as Lenny had for his physical ones.

Feeling that the two men complimented each other perfectly, Lenny made a pact with his friend to "partner up" on the outside world. Sure enough, when Lenny was paroled, Herbie, who had been released six months earlier, was waiting to pick him up at the prison door. The two men immediately returned to a life of crime, with Lenny acting as the brains of the operation and Herbie the brawn.

Given a distinct advantage by their superhuman powers, their partnership proved remarkably lucrative. Returning to his M.O. of drugstore robberies, Lenny led his friend to several highly successful scores. Additionally, with Herbie's muscle to back him up, Lenny never again suffered any of the mistreatment at the hands of his customers that had plagued him in his pre-partnership career.

Heady with the flush of success, Lenny eventually decided it was time to move on to bigger and better things. . . jewelry store robberies (never mind that he had absolutely no idea how to move that kind of merchandise). At his insistence, the two men adopted full fledged supervillain identities, although Herbie only very reluctantly, as Blue Lightning and the Midnight Revenger!

Unfortunately, they proved far less successful as supervillains than they had as ordinary thieves. On their very first outing, they were apprehended during a midnight robbery of a downtown jewelry mart by the superhero clergyman known as Father Poppo.

Convicted of attempted robbery, they were returned to the federal super-prison. Isolated from his partner by the prison staff, Lenny was certain that his partnership with Herbie had been permanently ended, believing that his friend probably resented him deeply for getting him sent back to prison. Imagine Lenny's surprise when Herbie picked him up from prison for a second time.Imagine no one's surprise when both men immediately returned to a life of crime.

Swearing off grandiose schemes, Lenny returned to a life of simple, non-costumed burglary. However, alarmed at the increasing violence of the drug trade, he and his partner switched to the theft of consumer goods from downtown warehouses.

Once again, the partnership flourished. Once again, overwhelmed by success, Lenny decided it was time to go "big time" as genuine supervillains--this time plotting a daring armored car robbery. Once again, Herbie was less than thrilled. Once again, their efforts proved less successful than they'd hoped.

Unfortunately, this time around they were captured by the ultra-violent ex-wrestler turned vigilante known as the Bruiser. His invulnerability proving no match for the Bruiser's superhuman strength and berserker fury, the Revenger was very nearly beaten to death in the encounter.

Once again sent to federal super-prison, Lenny was once again certain that Herbie would, no doubt, abandon their friendship in the face of this latest grand failure. Once again, he was surprised to find his friend waiting to pick him up when he was finally released.

This time, Herbie was not waiting alone. Lenny was also met at the prison gates by a man named Jordan Ludd. Like Lenny and Herbie, Ludd was also a career criminal, with a very minor set of superhuman abilities and a very long line of failures against superheroes.

Believing in strength in numbers, Ludd had formed an organization of "minor" supervillains, and hoped to recruit Blue Lightning and the Midnight Revenger into the ranks. Although Herbie was quite skeptical, Lenny convinced him to join against his better judgement, and Ludd, also known as The Flasher, welcomed in the newest members of The Second String.

Membership in the organization of second-rate supervillains proved surprisingly worthwhile. Led by Ludd, the group pulled off several successful high level robberies, despite occasional opposition by such costumed interlopers as the Ebon Tiger, One-Eyed Jack, Hockeyman, and the SewerRat. The individual members of the Second String were each amassing a fairly tidy pile of wealth, and life was, generally speaking, pretty good. Naturally, it couldn't last. . .

Unfortunately, Ludd shared Lenny's own colossal failing: heady with success, he dreamed of grander things. Engineering a mad scheme to kidnap the Vice President of the United States for ransom, he led his team to Washington D.C. Not violent individuals (and recognizing that the Flasher's plan was doomed from the start), Lenny and Herbie secretly alerted the city's resident costumed hero, the Liberterian, who, leading a raid by over a half-dozen superheroes, including Golden Condor, Jack-knife, and the Suicide King, managed to thwart the plan and capture the entire gang.

Given very light, concurrent sentences on their Second String burglaries in exchange for testimony on the kidnapping plot, Lenny and Herbie were sent back to jail once again. Serving their time quietly, they are due to be paroled any time now. Whether they will return to a life of costumed crime or not is uncertain. . . but likely.

Herbie will be less than thrilled.

Blue Lightning is, at his core, a petty thief and burglar. Not a violent person, when confronted with conflict, he will seek any opportunity to escape, without harming anyone else.

However, he is fiercely loyal to the Midnight Revenger, and will not abandon him under any circumstances. He will even engage in physical combat to protect him, using whatever is at hand as a makeshift weapon with which he will strike his opponents while passing by at superhuman speeds. Note: he will only do this as a last resort to protect his partner.

Although actually quite intelligent, Lenny has never bothered to apply his gifts to any but the most corrupt enterprises. He's just clever enough to get himself in trouble, without being quite smart enough to get himself out of it.

The brains behind his partnership, he also gets too cocky when things start going well for him. Inevitably, he hatches some grandiose scheme that ends up with both he and his partner in jail.

He is extremely loyal to the Midnight Revenger, the one man in this world who has remained loyal to him through thick and thin, but isn't above manipulating him into doing something he really doesn't want to.

In terms of his outward demeanor, Lenny is actually a very charming, friendly guy. He has a good sense of humor, and is, frankly, the last person anyone would suspect of being a part-time supervillain.

"He's such a nice, quiet boy. . ." his neighbors like to say.

As Blue Lightning, Lenny wears a pair of electric blue, Converse high-tops, electric blue plastic and velcro inline skater's kneepads, black nylon bicycle shorts with an electric blue racing stripe down each side, an oversized white tee shirt with a huge electric blue lightning bolt emblazoned from the left shoulder down across the torso to the right hip, electric blue plastic and velcro inline skater's elbowpads, and leather aviator's goggles dyed (you guessed it!) electric blue, with tiny crudely made lightning bolts glued to the upper outer corners of each lens.