DEATHLOK I

 

DEATHLOK I

Real Name: Luther Manning

First Appearance: Astonishing Tales (Vol. 1) #25, August 1974

Powers: On Earth-7484, Luther Manning was a United States Army Colonel whose body was torn apart by a concussion bomb during a training exercise. Wishing to preserve Manning’s knowledge and experience, Simon Ryker selected him for Project: Alpha-Mech when he didn’t survive surgery. The CIA project, spearheaded by Simon and his brother Harlan, was designed to build an army of cyborg super-soldiers. After 5 years in stasis, Manning’s body was reanimated as the cyborg Deathlok with his remaining flesh was in a dead, necrotizing state while most of his body was reconstructed using metal and plastic components.

The reinforcement to his skeleton and muscles gave him mild superhuman strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reaction time. His artificial left eye provided variable visual modes, including telescopic, microscopic, infrared, and night vision capabilities, as well as advanced computer-guided targeting programs. He was still technically alive, and so required oxygen, food, water, and rest, although not to the same degree as before his cybernetic conversion. He is powered by a thermonuclear generator and, in all but his later incarnations, his mind was computer augmented. Deathlok's onboard computer system contained an advanced scanning suite that included thermal scans, motion and proximity sensors, and a storehouse of data on various subjects. The interactive intelligence ran on an internal modem, provided Deathlok with a “voice” in his head with intelligence updates, scanning alerts, and probability breakdowns for various possible tactical responses to a given scenario.

He has worn a woven metal-mesh costume and carried a helium-neon laser pistol, a 9” metallic knife that magnetized to his cybernetic leg, and a variety of bladed, ballistic, or energy-discharging weapons he could attach to his modular limbs. He also carried one of Godwilf’s Time Gauntlets, enabling time-travel. In later incarnations, Deathlok removed the computer intelligence from his head and adopted a bulkier and more heavily-armored cybernetic frame. Called the Demolisher, Manning now had increased levels of superhuman strength and durability, and he employed modular cybernetic arms with different weapons such as laser cannons, combat blades, or a vulcan cannon.

Deathlok is a gifted intellect, a brilliant military strategist, and formidable hand-to-hand combatant, all of which was augmented by his on-board computer.

BOOKWORM

 

BOOKWORM

Real Name: Nelson Gruber

First Appearance: Sleepwalker (Vol. 1) #4, September 1991

Powers: Nelson Gruber was originally a baseline human with no superhuman powers working as a laboratory assistant at Metropolitan University. He received his powers after conducting a sleep study on Rick Sheridan, the human host for the extra-dimensional vigilante known as Sleepwalker. During the study, he electronically recreated the synaptic patterns produced by Rick Sheridan's brain waves from when he and Sleepwalker were bonded and then amplified them. When his computer overloaded as a result, Gruber absorbed the energies of the Mindscape (Sleepwalker’s home dimension) that those patterns represented.

As Bookworm, he could summon those energies from the Mindscape and shape it into constructs that manifested as anything he read from the printed page. The speed at which he summoned multiple constructs in a row indicated that Bookworm was not actually reading each book he utilized for his powers, but merely focusing on the concepts the book represented. Although he chiefly used books to focus his power, it's likely anything that stimulated his imagination could potentially summon the energies necessary for his constructs. The constructs he formed were animated and even lifelike in their activities: Projections of King Arthur or Amazon warriors acted as Bookworm imagined they would, even after he left the immediate area and they operated without his direction. He could direct the actions of his constructs as well, commanding them to attack a particular opponent.

SPECTRA

 

SPECTRA

Real Name: Selena Slate

First Appearance: Sleepwalker #13, June 1992

Powers: Selena Slate was a laboratory assistant who was transformed into a superhuman being after making contact with a synthetic diamond being used for experiments in light. She can now transform into an energized state, generating a shifting spectrum of light colors from her body, as well as plumes of light-charged mist that wrapped around her body. Although her powers were innate, she carried the diamond to enhance and focus her abilities. Spectra is capable of flight and could project different forms of light offensively. She could generate blinding flashes of light, coherent laser beams, manipulate temperature to create intense heat or cold, and induce a neural jolt that caused tremendous pain to living creatures. Spectra could also manipulate light to cast illusions and bend visual patterns to make objects appear off center from where they actually sat. Her solid light constructs could form as battering rams, razor spikes, nets, etc.

COBWEB

 

COBWEB

Real Name: (unpronounceable by human standards)

First Appearance: Sleepwalker (Vol. 1) #3, August 1991

Powers: Cobweb is being from the psychic dimension known as the Mindscape. The Mindscape is equivalent to the astral plane, an extra-dimensional realm inhabited by sentient beings composed of pure thought, or representational matter. All human minds are linked through the Mindscape, and it is possible for denizens of the Mindscape to enter the minds of humans, influencing their dreams or causing them trauma or madness from their subconscious. A denizen of the Mindscape may be unable to find their way out of a human mind, though, either back into the Mindscape or out into the waking world. The beings known as the Sleepwalkers have long made it their purpose to patrol the Mindscape and guard defenseless minds everywhere from evil creatures who would invade other beings consciousness in order to feed upon their mental energies. One such creature was the being who would become known as Cobweb. Cobweb developed a rivalry with one Sleepwalker in particular, who defeated him many times over and banished him to the furthest reaches of the Mindscape. Cobweb eventually returned and lured his rival Sleepwalker into the mind of Rick Sheridan.

Cobweb appears composed of material that resembles webbing. He is elastic and durable, able to bend with impact to absorb attacks without suffering harm. His body can extend and reshape itself, increasing the length of his limbs or distorting his appearance. He can weave duplicates of himself, animating them from a distance with a single thread to divert his prey. Cobweb can influence the minds of other beings, creating illusions and false realities that mislead his opponents. These illusions can actually become reality over time if the victim believes them for too long. From his position in the Mindscape, Cobweb can scan the minds of human beings or monitor their waking activities, but whether this is a "power" or simply the nature of the Mindscape is unknown.

8-BALL

 

8-BALL

Real Name: Jeffrey Hagees

First Appearance: Sleepwalker (Vol. 1) #2, July 1991

Powers: Jeff Hagees was a designer of mission propulsion systems for a defense contractor. A compulsive gambler, he was fired by his employers who feared he'd sell defense secrets to pay his gambling debts. Furious, he created the costumed criminal identity of 8-Ball, basing his custom pool cue on his propulsion system work.

His pool cue worked as a force-amplification delivery system. By striking a target with the cue, the target would receive hundreds or even thousands of times greater directional force than the average strike of a pool cue would generate. With his own talent for billiards and angular geometry, 8-Ball could then launch objects as projectiles towards his true target to cause massive damage. The strike itself seemed to transfer force, not apply it: Striking a person with the pool cue would not hurt them with 100x greater force than normal, it would amplify the force they were experiencing from the strike, causing them to move with greater force and velocity, but without experiencing the impact that would normally be necessary to transfer that amount of force into their bodies. Whatever the pool cue launched them into would be a crushing impact, but getting hit by the pool cue itself would not. His costume was a billiards motif consisting of a bulletproof helmet and a variety of pool balls for throwing, some designed to act as grenades. He traveled aboard a hover rack in the form of a giant pool ball.

Jeffrey Hagees holds a masters degree in engineering. A gifted intellect and inventor, he is a skilled gymnast, an expert pool player, and an experienced designer of missile propulsion system.

SLEEPWALKER

 

SLEEPWALKER

Real Name: (unpronounceable by human standards)

First Appearance: Sleepwalker (Vol. 1) #1, June 1991

Powers: The being called Sleepwalker is a native of the Mindscape, a dimension which borders the unconscious minds of all living beings. He belongs to a group of guardians of the Mindscape called Sleepwalkers who are sworn to prevent the evil beings of their realm from entering the minds of innocents.

A disastrous encounter with one such foe left him trapped in the mental landscape of a human, Rick Sheridan. Whenever Rick falls asleep or unconscious, Sleepwalker materializes out from Rick's mind into our world. When Rick wakes up, Sleepwalker returns to his mind, fading from physical existence wherever he is on Earth at the time. He possesses Class 10 strength and superhuman endurance, reflexes, and resistance to physical injury. His primary power is his warp-vision, which is capable of manipulating matter in a number of ways. Sleepwalker can cause inanimate objects to seemingly come to life and attack his opponents, inducing fences or lamp posts to wrap around and entangle a victim or the street to rise up and strike someone or immobilize them in place. He could redirect the direction of matter, such as causing a burst water main to turn at a right angle and strike a specific target. Warping matter also allows him to "stretch" it in some way, like when he wrapped a mugger in a playground swing, then caused the posts the swing set was mounted with to shoot up more than 50 feet tall. Sleepwalker has taken an oath never to use his warp-vision on living beings, because the disruptive effect in excruciatingly painful and could prove fatal if not immediately reversed.

Sleepwalker possesses telescopic vision and can see in different wavelengths of light beyond the human range thanks to his warp-vision, and can project two-dimensional images in mid-air that replay anything he has seen in the past. He cannot manipulate or animate these images, but merely show exactly what is in his visual memory. As an extension of his warping effect, Sleepwalker is capable walking on air by projecting auras of energy from his feet. He is capable of mentally controlling the height of his levitation, but cannot move through the air any faster than he can walk or run, unless he uses his warp-vision to construct a wind tunnel in order to propel him at high speeds. Sleepwalker is dependent on energy from the Mindscape in order to sustain his powers and survive, and so if Rick remains unconscious for too long a time, Sleepwalker will begin suffering ill-effects. Fortunately, the normal human sleep cycle seems to be short enough that it doesn't affect Sleepwalker, and only in rare cases has this been a problem. Also, Sleepwalker's powers are inexplicably tied to contact with the ground, meaning that he becomes weaker the higher up in the air he levitates, and is rejuvenated by returning to Earth. While in the Earth's dimension, he is resistant to it's native magic, even to that of its Sorcerer Supreme.

DARKHAWK

 

DARKHAWK

Real Name: Christopher Powell

First Appearance: Darkhawk (Vol. 1) #1, March 1991

Powers: Chris Powell was a teenager who found an amulet in an abandoned amusement park which enabled him to access a Darkhawk android body, from the Darkhawk Ship in the dimension known as Null Space. The Ship holds six Darkhawks at once, each held in stasis on a different platform known as a Perch. Powell's amulet was a recreation of another one, and thus originally it was one of two amulets linked to a single hawk. By holding the amulet and concentrating, Chris transpositions his body and mind with the Darkhawk. In a flash of energy, the android and Chris's body exchange places, with him going to the Perch and the Darkhawk appearing wherever he was a moment before. At the same time, Chris's mind is transferred into the cerebral-net of the Darkhawk body, which is capable of supporting a host consciousness. As Darkhawk, Chris possessed Class 10 strength, superhuman speed, agility, endurance, reflexes, and resilience. His optic sensors included telescopic, infrared and night vision capabilities. The amulet, which fused itself onto the Darkhawk's chest during the transformation, acted as a power source and was capable of focusing energy. It could fire concussive blasts or shape a tangible disk of energy, which could be projected out a varying distance from Darkhawk's body. It was most commonly used as a shield, but could also be a battering ram or pin people or objects against a wall or floor. He had a claw cable mounted on one wrist which had a three-pronged claw that rested on the back of his hand. Darkhawk could extend the telescopic hooks to make it into a Wolverine-style claw weapon, or fire the entire claw as a wire-guided grappling hook. By tapping his arms to his sides, Darkhawk could unsheathe his retractable glider wings. Initially, Darkhawk could not truly fly, and relied on his claw cable to get him airborne then glided on air currents. During a trip through time, however, Darkhawk spontaneously developed the power of true flight. The unique temporal lag between Null Space and other dimensions enabled Chris to make use of a "fast healing trick" for his android body. If Darkhawk was injured in any way, Chris could tap the amulet and revert to his human self, then immediately tap the amulet again and transform into a fully healed Darkhawk. This worked because the Darkhawk Ship maintained and repaired the androids on their Perches, and the temporal displacement between "there" and "here" enabled the Ship to fully complete any repairs before a relative second passed for Chris.

During the Amulet Quest event, Darkhawk's amulet was realigned to link with a new prototype Darkhawk body. This new body was stronger, faster, and better armored than the original. It still had wings, but was capable of self-propelled flight without them. In place of the old claw-cable, each arm had a spear point which could be extended by more than a foot for melee combat or fired off as a grappling cable similar to his original weapon. The amulet could now create a full body transparent force field to protect Darkhawk, and projected Darkforce energy as concussive blasts. By merging the force field and the Darkforce, Chris could generate an enormous "dark hawk" projection around his body. He also now had thermoscopic eye beams, the ability to become invisible at will, and the power to remotely summon weapons and technology from the Darkhawk Ship to himself. However, he was also split into two independent but identical consciousnesses: One inhabiting his human body, the other inhabiting the Darkhawk. This put an end to the "fast healing trick", and so Darkhawk was given the ability to summon a large energy pod at will. By climbing inside of it, the pod's energy would slowly work to regenerate and repair and damages to his android form. By the end of his first reign as Darkhawk, Chris and Darkhawk were re-merged back into a single being. Since that time, Darkhawk has apparently reverted back to his original android body and powers. Somehow, his amulet also enabled more than one Darkhawk to be summoned at once, when Phil Urich stole than amulet and became Darkhawk, and then Chris touched it to become another Darkhawk and fight the thief.

Darkhawk's abilities have changed considerably since he learned the true nature of his powers. Powell is actually heir to the amulet of one of the last surviving members of the Fraternity of Raptors, a league of armored warriors who committed acts of sabotage, counter-intelligence, kidnapping and assassination in the name of the Great Purpose. The Great Purpose is revealed to the Raptors through the Datasong, a streaming of accumulated memories and information dating back through the Fraternity's several millennia of existence. Everything a Raptor learns or gains access to is shared by all others through the Null Source. The Datasong not only provides extensive knowledge on a variety of subjects, it also uses psycho-historical variables to chart the future and predict upcoming events, and the actions the Fraternity of Raptors need to take in order to assure specific outcomes. This is the Great Purpose. The Fraternity of Raptors fell into disarray six thousand years ago, long before humanity reached the stars. As a result, Chris Powell is actually incompatible with the amulet he wields, and has not been able to tap the Datasong or the full scope of his armor's abilities. The "events" he experienced with Evilhawk and the origins of his armor were actually a hallucination created by his mind attempting to properly interpret the Datasong.

The amulets of the Fraternity of Raptors are far less benevolent than Powell had been led to believe. When functioning properly, the amulet latches onto a host body, casting it into a crystal cage inside the Null Source at the Tree of Shadows. The host is then used as a living power source for the Raptor, whose consciousness and armor materialize in place of the host in the real world. The bonded "partner" is nothing more than a battery to the Raptor, held eternally in captivity while the Raptor operates in their place. Chris Powell's amulet was linked to a Raptor named Razor, but his human incompatibility kept Razor's personality from becoming dominant, allowing Powell to wield the Raptor's armor and some of the powers himself as Darkhawk. This new concept explains how Chris spontaneously developed the power of flight previously, created his second armor, and even manifested more than one armor at once with Phil Urich.

In his present state, Darkhawk's "default armor" is much stronger than before. The suit possesses greater levels of superhuman strength, durability, and at least Mach 4 atmospheric flight. Darkhawk can survive for extended periods of time in the vacuum of space, and mechanically open personal stargates for faster-than-light travel across the galaxy. His claw cable has a new feature: It can be nano-reconfigured into a Scout-hawk, a remote-flying bird drone that can transmit sensory data back to Darkhawk's visor for reconnaissance. The Scout-hawk can also visually display its findings for others to see. Darkhawk can generate a disguise skin, a holographic cloaking field that can hide his true appearance behind a false identity. Besides the basic features, Darkhawk can reconfigure his suit to summon variant armor designs. The conversion can be as simple as selecting different kinds of ordinance to morph his hands into, but more extreme reconfigurations actually call upon different armors. The Heavy Duty suit gives Darkhawk significantly increased physical power, boosting his strength and durability with exoskeletal components. The Carbon-fiber Lightweight suit does the reverse, reducing his strength and weapon systems to make him non-metallic and highly agile and maneuverable. The Rescue suit has front-mounted spotlights on his chest and an advanced sensor array. Darkhawk has augmented his firepower several times by calling on the Strike Suit, Warflight suit, or Heavy Weapons armor. The armor looks similar each time, so its unclear if these are different combat armors with individual weapons or ordinance, or just different names for the same basic armor enhancement. With full firepower, Darkhawk has access to lasers, particle beams, and micro-munition assaults which release a cluster of highly explosive ammunition.

For a time, Chris Powell's amulet lost it's power, and he later regained his abilities under different circumstances. Razor had learned from Chris's example and became an apostate to the Fraternity of Raptors, severing from the Tree of Shadows and (in doing so) breaking his connection to Chris and the amulet. Events conspired to bond the two of them again, but with an altered status quo. Because Razor was separate from the Tree, it was no longer possible for he and Chris to exchange points in space. Rather, the amulet recorded a blueprint of each user and stored it during transformation. This meant Chris's human body was physically destroyed and rewritten into the Darkhawk body when he changed, then rebuilt from a stored file when he reversed the effect. The Darkhawk he became during this period was generally more powerful than before, but the amulet only had so much "storage memory" and so, in order to maintain the blueprint of Chris, it could not allow Darkhawk to reconfigure into the previous stored body designs.

More history of the Tree of Shadows was revealed. It was created when the Elder of the Universe known as the Gardener planted in the exotic soil of the Darkforce Dimension. The Tree bloomed into Null Space, where it was fought over by ancient Shi'ar and Skrull. Raptor Prime was born when an avian race Shi'ar connected with the amulet-seeds of the Tree, gaining not only great power but also reconfiguration abilities to match its enemies, the Skrulls. The Fraternity of Raptors was eventually born from an attempt to suborn and control the Tree of Shadows to a particular end. As the Shi'ar both worship and fear the Phoenix Force, the Fraternity was created in the image of Ratha'kon, the Hawk-God of the cosmic pantheon who was the Phoenix's opposite. While the Phoenix represented chaos in its ties to unbridled life and evolution, the Hawk-God lived to impose order. The Fraternity of Raptors "tamed" the freestyle shape-changing of the Tree's original Raptors, creating mechanoids that harnessed the reconfiguration for specific, pre-approved combat designs.

These revelations explain how Darkhawk regained his own power of reconfiguration, Together, he and Razor threw off the strictures imposed on the amulets by the Fraternity. Darkhawk's Raptor body could now alter in size and strength, becoming a mobile and occupied battle mech, produce various new forms of technology and weapons outside of existed combat forms, and so on.