Born a dwarf, Thomas Thompson used his genius to build an arsenal of weapons and devices to enable him to battle crime. Nicknamed Tom Thumb, he became the Squadron Supreme's second recruit. When the Squadron implemented their Utopia Program, Tom Thumb became the principal architect of many of the solutions to the world's ills, developing such inventions as personal force field protection devices, pacifier pistols, and a behavior modification device. However, he could not discover a cure for cancer, a problem made more acute by the discovery that he himself was dying of brain cancer. He kept his condition a secret while searching for a cure, but after several failed attempts, including a compromise of his principles with the villain Scarlet Centurion, Tom Thumb instead created the Hibernaculum, a cryogenic device that could keep the body in stasis should a cure become available. Ultimately, Tom Thumb succumbed to the cancer and died, being the first to be placed in a hibernaculum.