William Batson (New Earth-One)

Early Life
Billy was born to C.C. Batson and his wife, Marilyn Batson, two archaeologist. Billy was born with a twin sister named Mary in Fawcett City.

Billy and his sister would be raised by his parents in till he was 6 years old, when his parents left to go to a dig site in Egypt and were killed by an unknown person. After his parents deaths, Billy was separated from his sister who went to live with some foster parents, while he was sent to live with his uncle Ebenezer Batson, who didn't like Billy and only kept him for the money that the government sent him for Billy's care.

Billy would later run away from Ebenezer's home when he was 11 and would spend spend his first year on the street living place to place and try to make money by street preforming and when that didn't work Billy was forced to steal, but would often pay the place that he stole from the amount of money that the item was worth later. During this time, Billy would sleep at the Fawcett City Zoo, where he would witness a tiger named Tawky Tawny being mistreated by the zoo worker, who was supposed to feed him. The zoo worker would tease Tawky and would withhold food from him. When Billy saw this he decided to steal some of the food and give it to Tawky. This would continue even after Billy stopped hiding out at the zoo.

Around the time Billy was 12, he was being chased by the police during a thunderstorm for stealing a sweatshirt and new shoes from a clothing store. Not wanting the police to catch him and send him back to his uncle, Billy did as much as he could to escape them, which eventually led to him to the old abandoned WHIZ Radio Tower, where Billy managed to find a hole in the fence and would enter the building after picking the lock to the backdoor. After hiding in the building for a few hours, Billy decided that he should make the Tower his new home.

The Wizard
By the time Billy turned 14, he had made WHIZ Radio Tower his home and kept all his belongings and supplies there. By this time Billy had made a conformable and somewhat normal life at the Tower and had been getting by fine.

Billy's conformable life would come to an end after he begin having strange visions. The visions showed Billy the images of an old man, a giant rock, and a bolt of lightning frozen in place. Billy thought nothing of the visions and continued his regular life. Billy would eventually go to the Fawcett City Zoo one night, where he was planning on give Tawky his evening meal, which he did, but after doing so Tawky began to grow at something outside of his cage. Billy thinking it was the zoo security tried to run, but a voice called to him and said that if he ran he would die. A man would jump into the habitat and walk towards Billy and Tawky. As the man moved toward him Billy decided to run believing that Tawky would stop the man. The man tried to attack Billy, but was intercepted by Tawky, who attempted to bite the man's head. Billy would look back expecting to see the man dead, but to his surprise saw the man grabbing Tawky by the neck, which he snapped moments later. Upon seeing Tawky die, Billy began to run, while cried for his friend. The man would continue to follow Billy, who continued to try to run. Billy knowing that the man would kill him if he caught him, decided to try to lose him in the subway.