Toyo Harada is one of the most powerful psiots and biggest villains in Valiant comics. Through his telepathic abilities, Harada can control people’s minds, send psionic bolts of energy, and see events in the future. His telekinetic powers are nearly limitless, giving him the ability to fly, generate forcefields, and manipulate large objects. Additionally, Harada can project illusions, is a genius with an eidetic memory, and has limitless ambition.

Created by Jim Shooter, Toyo Harada debuted in Solar, Man of the Atom #3 (November 1991). His origin story occurred during World War II when he was in Hiroshima during the atomic bombing, which activated his psionic powers. Seeing the devastation around him, Harada became convinced that the world would only survive if he became its leader. His belief led him down a path to gain power, wealth, and influence in the name of saving the world.

Guided by visions from the Bleeding Monk, Harada became the CEO of the Harada Global Conglomerates. To the public, Harada’s company was a philanthropic organization that provided aid to the poor and vulnerable people around the world. What the public didn’t know was that he used the company to create the Harbinger Foundation, a secret academy to activate and train young psiots – whether they wanted to be there or not. Through the foundation, he created his own army of psiots with a multitude of powers.

The Harbinger Foundation spent many years battling Project Rising Spirit, a paramilitary group, over future psiots. At one point, those two groups, a team led by former Harada student Peter Stanchek, and Bloodshot fought to claim psiot children that had escaped from Project Rising Spirit. In the end, Harada was victorious, capturing the children, as well as Stanchek’s team and Bloodshot.

When X-O Manowar invaded Romania and drove European countries to the edge of war, Harada sent a team to stop the would-be king and he tried to take control of the alien technology of the X-O armor. Instead of it being a successful mission, Harada’s team betrayed him and Livewire stopped him by using the alien tech.

In the aftermath of the defeat, things started to spin out of control for Harada. He became weary from psychically suppressing Stanchek’s powers, running the Harbinger Foundation, and handling his responsibilities of the Harada Global Conglomerates. The stress caused him to have a major psychic eruption that affected the minds of everyone nearby and leveled structures. The Renegades escaped and the Harbinger Foundation suffered many losses.

His empire spun further out of control when the psiot hacker known as @X-a leaked details about Project Rising Spirit and the Harbinger Foundation. Now that he was exposed to the world for kidnapping and controlling psiots, Harada stopped pretending to be a philanthropist. He used his remaining forces to steal a US aircraft carrier and fled to Eastern Somalia where he planned to rebuild his empire.