Travis Clevenger

It is a violent police thriller about superhuman crime.

The protagonist, Clevenger, is a hulking force of nature as well as a gifted abnormal psych profiler. He is in prison for multiple murders and being a corrupt cop, but allowed to work under the authority of Special Agent Bell of the FBI – a sharp lady who can keep Clevenger on a leash.

Together, they investigate messed up crimes in and around Atlanta.

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Background

Powers & Abilities

Travis “Clev” Clevenger has always been a man-mountain, and he worked out intensively in prison. His physique is meant to evoke Conan the Barbarian (in the Frazetta/Schwarzenegger take on the character) or the wrestler Triple H, with the typical super-hero comic book exaggeration on top of that.

Clev hits like a truck, and can demolish a wide variety of items using raw strength. He is also nigh-impossible to take down with street-level weaponry, including most handguns, and his pain tolerance is unbelievable. Trying to stop him is not unlike trying to stop a large, pissed off ursine.

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Even if he can be taken down, it may not stick for long. He also heals exceptionally well, and is very resistant to psychic assaults.

Clevenger came back from death at least once. Though he had been flatlining for a minute or two, seeing his life flash before his eyes inspired such rage that his heart restarted and he got back on his feet.

Psycho killer

Albeit he has no formal training, Clevenger is a vicious, brutal, efficient hand-to-hand fighter. He fights to demolish his opponents, and with his immense strength he can easily maim or kill them. He will often equip his signature pair of brass knuckles so he can hit even harder.

His tactics often rely on unfettered, barbaric force. Clev’s approach to vehicular interception is to rip off a sink from his motel room, hurl it a half-dozen metres away into the car’s windshield and immediately follow up by leaping from the balcony onto the car’s hood and grabbing both gunmen.

In another scene, Clev’s brachial artery is torn open by a bullet and he uses the abundant bleeding to blind a nearby opponent by throwing a handful of blood in his face.

Though of course his speed belies his bulk (doesn’t it always ?) and he’s a murder monster to ordinary opponents, Clev operates on a cinematic level, not an heroic one. A peak human fighter such as Zeiss could run rings around him, and Clev doesn’t have good odds against a metahuman with enhanced speed, coordination and fighting ability.

Bloodhound

His body is but a part of what makes Clevenger so dangerous. He is an experienced police detective with a superb track record, an exceptional manhunter, and has a powerful mix of deductive and intuitive intelligence. Two skills of his stand out.

Profiler
He has cinematic skills at profiling criminals by studying their file (if accurate) and putting himself in their shoes. In particular he will look for childhood traumas and other personality-destroying experiences, and be able to predict extreme behaviour with precision based on these.

This acumen is not directly based on formal studies in psychology or criminology, but rather on intuition as educated by experience, empathy and constant exposure to crime.

Quite often, Clevenger is unable to explain what he is looking for. He just interrogates people and strolls in places related to the case until he sees or hears something – and some pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

However, he is also familiar with formal psychological tools used by police, such as MMPI tests.

Cold reader
Clevenger is also a highly accurate judge of character, employing instinctive cold-reading techniques to guess facts about people he is interacting with. Here again, this is chiefly fed by raw intuition and experience.

Individually, his feats of cold-reading are reasonably explainable as reading general clues and picking an explanation that has good odds of being true. Typical examples include :

• Finding a gunman shifty, noticing his subtly avoidant body language toward his boss, and accusing him of stealing from his boss.
• Noticing Saffron’s subtle tells about children and imprisonment and deducing that she was kidnapped as a child (as the most likely explanation for a person coming from money to be imprisoned as a child).
• Observing a corrections officer’s über-macho overcompensating behaviour and guessing that he is a closeted gay dude.

However, on aggregate, Clevenger’s ability to deduce useful facts from tiny tells has an impossible success rate. It apparently always work, and though he picks high-probability explanations these should not succeed *that* often.

Functionally, this ability of his is superhuman and was modelled in game terms as a mind-probing ability.

Work release program

Clevenger is a Federal prisoner, and is only allowed out at the FBI’s direct request to work as a consultant. There are numerous restrictions as to what he can do outside of the pen :

• He must wear a visible tracking collar at all points – the beefier version of a house arrest device.
• He must be accompanied at all times by a FBI handler (namely Special Agent Saffron Bell).
• He cannot have cash, and must instead use a card for his living expenses. I would assume that this is simply a Georgia EBT card for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), further restricting what he can buy.
• He is not allowed to operate any vehicle or firearm.

Which universe are we in again ?

The original Bloodhound run was firmly set in the DC Universe, with appearances by Firestorm (Jason Rusch) in a crossover between his book and Bloodhound. And later on an appearance by Batman foe Zeiss.

Later stories — almost 10 years later — were published by Dark Horse and thus cannot take place in the DCU. Dark Horse’s reprint of the original books does not include the parts with Firestorm and replaces Zeiss with an expy  (though they missed a Lexcorp handheld video game. Buy the book and see if you can spot it !).

The later stories do not include elements that wouldn’t fit in the DCU, though. So there’s no reason to assume that, in-universe, Bloodhound no longer occurs in the DCU – albeit without any copyrighted character making an appearance.

Though no Bloodhound stories were published for years, one gets the impression that in-universe the stories published in 2004-2005 occur but months before the ones published in 2013.

The simplest solution might be to consider that the 2013 Bloodhound stories occur in 2006 in the DC Universe. The main discrepancy is Agent Bell using an iPad-style tablet, but perhaps a fictional DCU company (such as Digitronix or LexCorp) released tablets in the DCU circa 2005 – or just have her use a laptop instead.

In the Dark Horse reprint of the first Bloodhound run, a reference to Gotham City is amusingly replaced by a mention of Arcadia. And thus implicitly of X, from the Dark Horse Heroes continuity. A case could thus be made that Bloodhound was retconned  into belonging to the Dark Horse Heroes continuity.

History

Travis F. Clevenger grew up on a small farm near Cartersville, Georgia. His constant companion on the farm was his beloved pet cat, Annie.

However, Annie killed three prize birds when Travis was 10 or so. Mr. Clevenger couldn’t afford to lose such expensive poultry. To Travis’ horror he gunned down the cat to prevent further killing.

On the next morning, the shocked Clevengers discovered that the cat, despite having half her head blown off, was still attempting to drag herself to Travis’ room. Mr. Clevenger had to finish her off, and little Travis was traumatized by the incident.

Thick blue line

Clevenger was fairly successful in school, graduated from college and qualified as a police detective with the Atlanta police department, where he apparently spent the bulk of his working career.

He presumably was with the homicide division, and established an impressive track record working the most difficult cases – metahuman killers. For several years Clevenger worked with Detective Jerry Bryce, but Bryce was promoted away and Travis was repartnered.

Detective Vince Crosby was dirty, and he convinced his new partner Clevenger to join. They made a long series of lucrative drugs deal, particularly with Luis “el Rey” Salvador. It is also possible that Crosby and Clevenger covered their history of brutality and other crimes.

Clevenger ended up sleeping with Vince’s wife Patricia as the Crosby marriage was falling apart, and she unexpectedly became pregnant. She put an end to their affair, and the birth of Michelle apparently convinced the Crosbys to stick together.

When Michelle was still an infant, Vince discovered that she wasn’t his daughter. At this point Clevenger sabotaged a massive deal, exposing Salvador and Vince Crosby. Crosby assumed, perhaps correctly, that Travis wanted to get rid of him to adopt his daughters and live with Trish.

Vince attempted to kill Clev with a crowbar, but his partner gunned him down.

“Mitigating circumstances” were mentioned. Presumably, Clevenger was ruled to have killed his corrupt partner in self-defense while attempting to expose him to IA. He received a lengthy federal sentence (perhaps including drugs trafficking charges) and was transferred to a Federal penitentiary.

Ad seg

As can be expected, a cop with a bad history and a violence problem being in the pen led to issues. Clevenger badly mauled a half-dozen inmates – though he was never charged, as most cases were apparently clear self-defense.

Since having him in gen pop  was a disaster, he was transferred to ad seg . Being in solitary suited him, and he spent more than 2 years there.

Among the few who still believed in Clevenger was Jerry Bryce, now with the FBI’s Atlanta office. Known for his positive attitude, Bryce still admired Clev’s ability as a manhunter. Thus, when a depraved metahuman killer-rapist crossed states lines to come to Georgia, Bryce burned political capital to have Clevenger handed over to him.

Part of his motivation was that he still considered himself a friend of both Travis Clevenger and Trish Crosby – and that the metahuman serial killer had targeted Rachel Crosby as his next victim.

Bryce visited along with a younger agent he was mentoring, S.A. Saffron Bell. However, the meeting had to take place in the less heavily secured visitors’ area, and several convicts who had been mauled by Clevenger triggered a riot to kill him there.

A corrupt guard left a shotgun for them to find, and the lead rioters gunned down two guards and Agent Bryce to clear the way to Clevenger.

Wisdom, Justice, Moderation (or maybe not)

Clevenger killed the intruders, and Bell bandaged Bryce. With Bell’s able backup, Clevenger fought his way out. They got Bryce to an ambulance in time to save his life. Agent Bell then convinced Clevenger to take Bryce’s offer, and work with her to stop the metahuman killer threatening Rachel Crosby.

Within an impressively short time, the former Detective Clevenger narrowed down the investigation to an ATM technician. He correctly deduced that this man was a murderous psychopath with electrical and machine telepathy powers.

The murderer slaughtered the FBI agents guarding Trish and Rachel Cosby, wounded Agent Bell and killed Clevenger through electrocution – for a minute or two. Clevenger recovered and mauled his killer. Though he narrowly managed not to kill him outright, the ATM technician later died from internal injuries, resulting in additional charges against Clevenger.

Big house

There had been sweeping management changes at the Red Clay pen after the riot. Clevenger came to suspect that something was afoot.

Hearing that her “partner” had been inexplicably transferred back to gen pop, Agent Bell also investigated. She detected some sort of influential conspiracy to murder Clevenger while he was inside. These interests were apparently the reason why Rachel Crosby had been previously targeted.

After forcing the warden to cooperate, she discovered that the corrections captain was an infiltrator with telepathic powers. The man used these to force Clevenger to relive his childhood trauma with increased intensity and kill himself. This did not work, and in a fit of rage Clev slaughtered the telepath before he could murder Bell and the warden.

Resurgens

Clevenger was remanded into FBI custody. Agents Bell and Bryce cobbled something together – halfway between witness protection, house arrest and work release. Clev became a consultant to the Bureau, and Bell’s de facto partner when investigating metahuman crimes.

When the fire chief of a small Georgia town contacted the Bureau about a suspected metahuman arsonist, Bell and Clevenger swiftly cracked the case. The pyrokinetic  was actually a young man who was subconsciously torching houses associated with his abusive father.

Despite the interference of the deadly enforcer Zeiss and of part of the local law enforcement, the involuntary arsonist was arrested without bloodshed so he could receive therapy.

Clevenger was then briefly transferred to Detroit. There he again ran into drugs kingpin “King” Salvador – who had dreamed of killing Clev for more than 3 years. In complex circumstances Salvador briefly took over the Firestorm gestalt to find and kill Clevenger, but the primary Firestorm component, a young man named Jason Rusch, ejected him from the gestalt.

Clev helped the badly wounded Rusch stay alive and eliminated most of Salvador’s men. Rusch permanently damaged Salvador’s brain so as to avoid killing him.

Powers to the people

Clevenger and Bell later stopped an invisible killer in Atlanta. This inspired Clevenger to agree with Patricia Crosby’s repeated pleas that they get back together for her daughters’ sake. Some weeks later, he helped calm down a man with vibratory powers who involuntarily caused a massacre.

The latter incident was seized by Dr. Bradley Morgenstern. A scientific genius, Morgenstern hated metahumans ever since the death of his son in a superhuman battle. Morgenstern had developed a way to artificially endow people with powers.

His secret plan was to present his tech as a way to defend oneself against super-powered aggressors. Then he’d just have to wait a bit for things to go into the toilet at the hands of untrained, random schmucks with hard-to-control destructive abilities.

It soon worked. An attempt to stop a quarrel using fire powers set much of a mall’s parking area on fire. One adult and a group of 5 children were killed in the conflagration, including Clevenger’s daughter Michelle.

Clevenger, Bell and a young superhuman calling himself Terminus narrowly killed Morgenstern and his enforcers. Having deduced that the project was covertly backed by the US military before Morgenstern went rogue, they also destroyed his research before it could lead to more death.

Bell and Clevenger’s status at this point is unclear, as they ignored direct orders when they raided Morgenstern’s hideout.

Description

As a youth Clev was already quite powerful from hard farming work. However, after he became a cop boredom, hot wings and vodka made him markedly overweight.

After he was imprisoned he threw himself into an aggressive workout program so there would be an aspect of his life he had control over. Clev thus lost 135 pounds and developed an humongous musculature.

In 2013, Clevenger shaved his head as a symbol of mourning, and likely remains bald since.

He presumably has a Georgian accent. Howbeit he’s an Atlantan in his mid-30s, which means it’s significantly lighter than many people’s outdated representation of a “Southern” accent. There’s no special exaggeration about his speech in the comics, so for instance that presumably means he doesn’t do the non-rhotic thing  previous generations did.

The large scar across Clev’s face apparently occurred when Vince Crosby tried to kill him. There are many, many other scars though that one stands out.

Even with ordinary clothing, Clevenger really, really stands out and people will routinely gasp, stare, nervously get out of the way, etc.

Personality

Clevenger is a dour, cynical, sarcastic, pessimistic cop with a marked lack of social grace. Given his own experiences and intelligence, he’s well aware of how corrupt and violent the world is, and can plainly see that he’s at least as much part of the problem than the solution.

His first instinct is that he wants to be left alone, and he will often imply that he feels much more comfortable as a convict than he does outside – though that’s not really true.

However, much like Detective Crosby dragged Clev to his level and made him a bad cop, Special Agent Bell lifts him up. Albeit the pair’s working relationship was rocky at first, they like and trust each other and Bell’s influence makes Clevenger a clean cop who’s serious about serving and protecting.

Clev doesn’t like people with authority, whether legal or illegal, and is keenly aware of how much power corrupts and how quickly large organisations disappear up their figurative rectum.

He also sees super-powers as being super-corrupting — as he and Saffron deal with the worse metahuman rabble, who routinely use their powers to steal, murder and terrify. He doesn’t believe in super-heroes, unless they have a solid track record *and* he can “read” them to assess whether he can trust them (masks being a problem when it comes to that).

Brass knuckles psychology

Clev has an intermittent explosive disorder (IED) issue. It is normally under control, but if he is provoked into a fight it will go real ugly real fast. If provoked badly enough, it is likely that he will leave his opponent(s) dead.

The more his opponent resembles a powerful monster preying on helpless people, the more Clevenger is likely to go psycho during a fight.

He also evidences some symptoms of emotional instability/borderline personality disorder and PTSD, but this is a fuzzy call. These mostly manifests as poor self-image as to his suitably as a parent or lover, the aforementioned IED, a moderate level of impulsiveness, and a subtle self-destructive streak that his mostly visible in his combat tactics.

Clev fights on the front line and takes it on the chin (a tank , in MMORPG parlance), will always volunteer to take the point, delay the enemy or other high-risk pursuits, and usually makes self-sacrificing choices to protect allies or civilians in danger.

Travis Clevenger seems to consider that he belongs to a prison, and to feel more comfortable when he’s locked away from society. His profiling method relying on violent psychological trauma implies that he is, himself, very similar to the criminals he tracks down – though he keeps his maniacal rage under control by focusing it against powerful predators.

Quotes

(Facing FBI agents) “Nine-millimeter pop guns. Nice choice for stopping power. You’d best put those away, boys, ’cause unless your aim is dead on — and I mean *perfect* — they’ll be too little and too late.”

“Come on. Let’s get out there and *do* something.”

Agent Bell (about a shank stuck in Clev’s upper pectoral) “Doesn’t that hurt ?”
Clevenger: “Yeah, but it plugs the hole.”

“I think what we’ve got here is a guy who can project his consciousness into electronic equipment. He creates some kind of sphere of influence in a place, and then any electronics that come in range, he can affect.”

Agent Bell: “How’s your arm ? Stitches ?”
Clevenger: “At least. I don’t know. Maybe a skin graft. It’s getting a little numb.”

Clevenger: “Never had the patience to train in close combat. Plus I never much saw the point. Most martial artists can’t take me anyway.”
Bell: “What happens if you meet one who can ?”
Clevenger: “I shoot him from a distance.”

“The more I think about it, the more that ’violent father as a demon’ scenario seems like a subconscious image. Kid may not realise what he’s doing. Might even happen while he’s asleep.”

(Introducing Det. Whitaker to S.A. Bell) “That’s Whitaker – detective out of the two-six. You know the kind of cop that would ask an M.E. to falsify evidence ? Well, he’s that kind of cop.”

“You hear that sound ? That’s the sound of shit hitting the fan. *All* the shit. Every last chunk, right into the fan, all at once.”

“I need to see Morgenstern’s lab tonight. Now.”

(Stumbling upon a man in a super-hero costume) “Well. You’re either a superhuman, or a dipshit. Got a name ?”

“I never asked to be part of your little team. You know what would help ? If you and the rest of your ass-monkeys just got out of my way, then I might be able to accomplish something.”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Bloodhound comics.

Helper(s): Peter Piispanen, Darci.

Writeup completed on the 22^nd of March, 2015.