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Personal DataRose Canton. Also Alyx Florin Scott, estranged wife of Alan Scott. Mother of Jennie Lynn Hayden-Scott (Jade) and Todd Rice-Scott (Obsidian).Residence: Mobile, mainly Keystone City
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Leaving the island, Rose made her way to America where she established herself as a criminal in America's emerging super-villain community. In 1947, the Thorn moved her operation to Keystone City and deliberately provoked an encounter by announcing her robbery of the Mid-Town Bank. When the Flash arrived, he found several thugs absconding with the bank's money and quickly rounded them up. As he scolded them for their antics, he was confronted by a green whirlwind with a woman's voice. When he tried to touch the spinning dervish he was stung violently and hurled backwards. With the hero incapacitated, the Thorn revealed herself. Not content to let the villainess escape, Garrick leapt to his feet and tried to seize her, only to be again met with the whirlwind. As she spun up and out of sight, the lithe figure of Rose Canton appeared. Telling a rather biased version of the Thorn's origin, Rose claimed to be the criminal's "sister" and won the Flash's confidence. |
A few months later, Garrick was visiting Canton at
her home to check her progress. As the two walked in the rose garden, 
Garrick
was stuck by a thorn. This event excited the Thorn half of Canton's personality
and within hours, the Thorn had unleashed a massive thornstalk in downtown
Keystone City. Vaguely aware of Garrick's suspicions, the Thorn waited
at her apartment disguised as Rose while the stalk grew and after a quick
and confounding visit by the Flash, departed for the scene. After some
initial efforts by the police fail, the managed to remove the Thorn from
her protective vines only to have her vanish in whirl of thorns. While
the dazed hero recovered in her wake, Rose Canton appeared bewailing the
errant ways of her "sister". The next day, everyone who had been touched
by the Thorn's plants ran amok in a drug-induced rage. When the Flash and
captured them all, the Thorn appeared again and offered her hand, daring
the Flash to walk her to a jail cell. When he did, she shoved him inside
and set off an explosion with her explosive thorns. Her ploy failed, of
course and as the Flash bore down on her, she dove into a nearby sewer
drain and detonated the street behind her. Again assuming his adversary
dead, the Flash reported the news to mournful Rose (Flash Comics #96).
In 1949, Rose Canton finally made a confession to Garrick, that she
and the Thorn were one in the same. While the Rose aspect of her personality
was repentant of the Thorn's crime, the Thorn aspect was enraged at what
she perceived as betrayal. She attacked Garrick in his laboratory and revealed
her plan to kill him, Joan Williams and the Flash in turn. Leaving the
scientist for dead, she kidnapped Joan Garrick and left an ultimatum for
the Flash to try to rescue his confidante. When the Flash arrived, the
Thorn had Joan trapped in an explosive bubble, perched high atop Stony
Point, a cliff overlooking the river. Seeing the hero approach, the Thorn
pushed the bubble over the edge, sending Joan to her doom. As the
Flash freed his future wife from the trap, it exploded, knocking the Thorn
from her perch overlooking the river. Her fall knocked her unconscious
and she recovered in Joan's apartment, Rose again managed to assume control.
In the 1940's, mental health care was inadequate to the needs of as complex
a case as the Rose and Thorn. Contacting the Justice Society, the Flash,
Green Lantern and Wonder 
Woman
agreed that it was best that she be tended to outside of the American penal
system, specifically on Transformation Island, a rehabilitation facility
administrated by the Amazons. As Rose was taken aboard Wonder Woman's invisible
plane, her attention to Green Lantern became a fateful obsession that would
become significant years later (unpublished Flash #107 with addition
details from Infinity Inc. Annual #1).
As far as is known, Rose remained on Transformation
island for nearly twenty years, a model prisoner. However, while the outward
schism between herself and the Thorn seemed contained, Rose had developed
an obsessive crush on Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern. After years
of good behavior, Rose as allowed to return to the States where she dyed
her hair black and developed an alias as Alyx Florin. Her youth preserved
by Amazonian science, she moved to Gotham City where she aggressively pursued
Alan Scott. In the late 1960's, the two were wed. On their honeymoon, the
Thorn re-asserted herself, seizing the sleeping hero's power ring. Unable
to wear it, she flung it into the fire, creating an explosion that covered
her departure and left the grieving Scott believing her dead. Unbeknownst
to Scott, however, Rose was now pregnant with his children, twins who she
put up for adoption to keep them out of the clutches of the Thorn (Infinity
Inc., Annual #1).
For years thereafter, the Thorn remained submerged beneath the personality of Rose, who disappeared into American society and obtained a job as a nurse in Keystone City. In the late 1970's, the Flash revealed that he and Jay Garrick were one in the same in an interview in We magazine (Flash Spectacular #1). This event triggered the re-emergence of the Thorn, who launched a crime wave in Keystone City which attracted the attention of the Justice Society. Recruiting the Sportsmaster and the Huntress as her allies, she murdered several officials in Keystone before turning her attention to Joan Garrick, now publicly known as the wife of the Flash. After nearly killing Wildcat, the Thorn and her cronies were rounded up and carted off to a maximum security prison in the Midwest (All-Star Comics #72-73).
Several years later, the Thorn escaped. Now aging and lacking direction, she retreated to Tashmi Island to further study the flora that had given her original powers. How long the Thorn remained on Tashmi and whether she occasionally left is unknown. In the early 1980's, her children, now grown and displaying super-powers of their own, visited Tashmi Island after finding it on a map in the JSA headquarters. Thinking the island deserted, the heroes planned a quiet vacation, a vacation that was rudely interrupted when their presence evoked an appearance of the Thorn (Infinity Inc. #13). Realizing who the children must be, the Thorn left Tashmi and attempted to capture them but was thwarted by the Harlequin, a Golden Age adversary of the Green Lantern who had been keeping track of the children since their adoption. In a climactic confrontation, the Harlequin, Jade, Obsidian and Alan Scott faced off again the Thorn, who had sworn to kill them all. Before she could execute her intentions, the personality of Rose emerged with maternal fury and rather than allow the Thorn to continue, killed herself, removing the Thorn in the process. In the aftermath, the Harlequin revealed to the astonished heroes and their common bond with the Thorn (Infinity Inc. Annual #1).. Whether the legacy of the Thorn's madness affects her children remains to be seen.
Power and Skills
The Thorn's principle abilities derive from the toxins of rare flora known only to Tashmi Island. These toxins have given her the ability to spin and possibly move in other ways and high levels of speed, though certainly not as fast as The Flash. She has a toughed epidermis that makes her immune to minor injury such as pricks from the thorns. She has also has developed a number of weapons based on thorns, including explosive thorns, poisoned thorns and thorns with attachments such as rope. She maintains an operation of several criminal agents which have designed her specialized planes, boats and automobiles with a thorn motif.
Weaknesses
While she has some minor powers, the Thorn has essentially the same limitation as most mortals. Her major Achilles Heel is the warring factions within her own mind. Her submissive side, Rose Canton, often asserts itself under stress to undo the criminal ambitions of the Thorn.
Golden Age Appearances
Flash Comics #89
Flash Comics #96
Flash Comics #107 (unpublished)
Silver Age Plus Appearances
All-Star Comics #72-73
Infinity Inc. #13
Infinity Inc. Annual #1
Lois Lane #113 - partial reprint of Flash Comics #107
Robyn Snyder's The Comics - vol. 6 #10 - reprint of Flash
Comics #107 in B&W