Jack Hawksmoor

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Background

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Powers and Abilities

Jack is called the God of Cities because he is tremendously powerful in cities. The scientists that first studied Jack said, “As far as we understand, Jack can draw incredible powers from this and any other city. He eats pollution, talks to buildings and is virtually indestructible.”

In cities, Jack Hawksmoor is super strong, fast, agile, can leap great distances and is practically invulnerable. Though bullets won’t kill him (in a city) he generally dodges them with agility that would give Spider-Man a run for his money.

His wall crawling and acrobatics are more than just improvements in his body however. In a few instances it has been shown that while his body does most of the work in these areas (even including altering his own density), the city allows him to do it even better by affecting the gravity around him.

More powers

Jack also experiences precognition and psychometry when in cities and has superhuman senses. For example he can smell the different substances in an object and easily see and match fingerprints from a distance). In addition to that, Jack can:

• Communicate with cities (buildings, streets, etc.) and ask (or force) them to do what he commands (make buildings explode, have the ground open up and swallow enemies, have the entire city or parts of it reshape itself, form hands out of skyscrapers, etc.).
• Animate parts of the city or the whole thing.
• Renovate entire cities in moments.
• Teleport between cities.
• Have city-wide awareness by knowing what the city “knows”.
• And other things. His powers aren’t restricted to large parts of things like the ground or buildings either, he can control individual objects in the city just as easily.

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This aspect of his powers, the ability to actually control the city as opposed to just communicate with it and be empowered by it, was not present during his days in Stormwatch. Instead they were revealed (in SHotA: Jack Hawksmoor) to be things he did regularly when he was on his own pre-Stormwatch and came back into use again when he was a part of the Authority.

His powers are tremendous but not very well defined for the most part. Some abilities seem to be created on the spot, having no connection to other powers he’s shown in the past.

For example, he’s shown the ability to teleport throughout a city by walking through mirrors or glass as well as use windows and mirrors like security cameras and watching everything that has taken place in front of them. Having the city obey his every request is something he does regularly though.

Even more powers

He also frequently phases  either himself or enemies into the ground or walls. To him (or anyone he’s with) it is painless, but if he wants he can make the experience painful or even fatal to his enemies.

Because of his implants, Jack can feed off of pollution (and also distinguish between different pollutants and radiation) and his feet (and sometimes hands) have treads. His power levels are related to the health, size and population of the city. He once had his spine broken and after dropping into São Paulo he was healed in seconds.

He can also breathe concrete and swim in brick and cement like it’s water. Though he normally only calls on the power of the city he’s in, he’s demonstrated the ability to use the power of all the cities in the world at once, making him exponentially more powerful.

He hasn’t had any formal training, but he’s developed his own style of fighting that mixes in acrobatic moves but doesn’t sacrifice any of his brute force. His technique makes the most of his speed, agility, nearby buildings and his own abnormalities like the hardened surfaces on his hands and feet.

He’s deadly and focused in combat and often takes on groups of enemies at once with ease. His fighting skill has been shown to come close to that of Midnighter allowing him to fight with the Midnighter for a short time without help from a city.

More!

He can also transport between cities. This was originally done inside a “womb”-like construct, though this may have changed. He simply enters a wall or the ground and resurfaces somewhere in the destination city at a later time.

He doesn’t always estimate the time for womb-transport correctly, although it usually takes about one hour between major cities. Travelling by his own power he gets from the US coast to coast in six hours. Because of this, Jack tends to use the artificial transporter mechanisms of his team’s headquarters to facilitate transport from city to city in emergency situations.

Another little-seen power Jack has is the ability to speak any language, probably given to him so he can speak with cities around the world in their native tongues.

He is physically unable to survive outside of an urban environment for long. However, when he is within an urban environment, he has vast, poorly-defined superpowers linked to the city, such as superhuman agility and strength.

He also has telepathic control, such as animation and possession, of infrastructure and architecture, and allowing him to experience precognition and psychometry as if he and the city were one being. In some instances, he has transformed an entire city into a humanoid battlesuit and used it to fight.

Jack does not need to eat, as he can convert air pollution into nourishment.

His powers and weaknesses are entirely symbiotic. The larger or more populous the city, the greater his abilities; and, conversely, if the city is damaged, he becomes less effective or develops an injury. Jack has been shown commanding cities to literally swallow people whole. Sometimes Jack has caused parts of the city to erupt, damaging enemies.

He also has showed to be able to fix damages and renew cities parts. He often orders buildings, bridges and so on around.

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History

Jack Hawksmoor is the King of Cities, the leader of The Authority, and former President of the United States of America.

As a boy, Jack Hawksmoor was frequently abducted by what he thought were aliens. In reality, they were beings from future and they were abducting him in order to prepare him to save the world. During each abduction, Jack’s organs were removed and he was painfully implanted with strange technologies that enabled him to interact with cities in bizarre ways.

The reason for his enhancements became obvious when Kansas City from 70^th century came back in time to destroy the world. Jack was older now and had some experience with his powers. He turned the city of Tōkyō into a giant robot, merged with it, and fought Kansas City, successfully destroying it.

After the battle, Jack slipped away and went to live in New York until, years later, he was approached by Stormwatch.

Secret history

In the years following his first attempt at super-heroics, Jack spent his life as the protector of whatever city he found himself in. He was an urban hero and because of his dependency on cities he felt it only right that he do something for them. To this end, he tasked himself with cleaning up the “parasites” that wandered the streets.

He mostly dealt with more normal threats (gangs, murders, thefts, organized crime) but occasionally had to deal with things on a larger scale (robots, superhuman villains, etc).

Jack was also a detective of sorts, and when he couldn’t stop crimes before or as they happened, he always found out about them and avenged the victims.

Stormwatch Black

Jack Hawksmoor’s first appearance was when he was recruited by then Weatherman, Henry Bendix. He was to work with Jenny Sparks and Swift as part of Stormwatch Black, the covert side of Stormwatch.

Though part of the team, Jack was rarely with the other Stormwatch members for two reasons. One, he generally disliked super heroes, and two, being on Skywatch, the team’s orbiting HQ, made him physically ill if he was there for extended periods of time.

A deal with America

His first mission was a test of his detective skills. An old member of Stormwatch had been killed and Jack worked with Fahrenheit and Hellstrike to find out why. The three of them eventually figured out that the American government was behind the assassination and the revelation had a huge impact on Stormwatch as a whole.

Stormwatch was unofficially cut off from America and no longer allowed to interfere on American soil.

The Weatherman didn’t really care to follow instructions. He sent Jack and the rest of StormWatch Black to take down cops that had been made into SPBs so they could enforce the laws of a corrupt system. After that, Jack was sent to Tōkyō along with the rest of Stormwatch to deal with telekinetic SPBs.

Change or die

Following that, Stormwatch had a confrontation with The Changers. The Changers were a group of SPBs led by The High. Their goal was to change the world into a paradise without the need for any form of authority. While Jack wasn’t really involved for the majority of the conflict, it was very important for his character and his future.

First of all, two members of The Changers would eventually return as members of The Authority, his future team.

The idea behind the team – getting at the reasons behind crime, fixing those problems, and then handing the world back to the people – also interested Jack though he still distrusted the rest of Stormwatch. He would end up trying to do the same thing (though much more violently) when he became leader of The Authority.

When Stormwatch Black was officially brought into the fight, Jack ended up killing Rose Tattoo (a member of Stormwatch at the time and another character who would go on to join The Authority) after she killed a Changer. Killing “the spirit of murder” may actually be what turned Jack Hawksmoor into the violent man he is known to be today.

Curse you Bendix

During the fight with The Changers, Henry Bendix was revealed to be insane. He ran off and was replaced by Jackson King. The command structure for Stormwatch had changed but Jack remained a member of the covert Stormwatch Black team.

When Stormwatch needed to investigate happenings in a small American town but couldn’t since they were still banned from acting on US soil, Stormwatch Black was sent in.

They discovered that I.O. was playing war games with super powered soldiers and dangerous chemicals. On top of that, they learned that Henry Bendix was behind it all. Jack and Stormwatch Black teamed up with Stormwatch Prime to take them all down.

After the “Bleed” storyline (See Alternate Realities), the Aliens attack on Stormwatch and its subsequent destruction, Jack remained with Jenny Sparks and Swift. They felt that since there was no one left, it was up to them to save the world, and according to Jack (which showed the effect meeting The Changers had on him) they should take action.

The Authority

After Stormwatch, Jack went on to be a part of The Authority. The team was made up mostly of people he had worked with in Stormwatch and their base, The Carrier, this time allowed him to actually be with his team as opposed to being in a city somewhere.

The first threat The Authority had to deal with was Kaizen Gamorra, the evil dictator. Gamorra sent hundreds of super powered soldiers to different cities on Earth with orders to destroy everything in sight which would allow Gamorra to leave his mark on the world.

The Authority, at this time led by Jenny Sparks, was the only team with a hope of doing anything to stop Gamorra’s plans. During this first adventure (which included several battles in cities that The Children Of Kaizen Gamorra attacked and then a battle with Gamorra himself) the team was just getting together but Jack had already expressed his interest in Angela Spica, The Engineer.

The relationship started then would carry on for the entirety of The Authority’s existence.

Invasions

When Sliding Albion attacked The Authority was there to stop them. Just stopping them wasn’t enough though, and the team was forced to go to their universe and kill Regis, their leader. That job was left to Jack and Midnighter. Midnighter got beaten down but Jack was able to rip Regis apart.

In doing so he showed that he was able to connect with and draw power from every city on a planet at once, something he hadn’t ever done before.

Earth faced another invasion in December of 1999, right at the end of the millennium (and the end of the 20^th century, which had an affect on Jenny Sparks). This time the invaders weren’t from another world, they were the owners of the Earth.

The Authority learned that the beings attacking Earth were heralds of something larger, something that had originally made Earth. It was sending things to attack it because over millions of years the Earth had changed and become uninhabitable for it (but perfect for humans), so it had to clear it of life and change it back.

To prevent it from killing everything on the planet The Authority had to drive The Carrier into its body (the thing was enormous, much bigger than the moon) where Jenny could electrocute its brain. That killed the creature but also resulted in Jenny’s death (which would have happened anyway since her century was coming to an end).

The Authority’s authority

With the death of the team’s leader, Jack Hawksmoor stepped up and took control.

The Authority took a turn when Jack took over. Instead of fighting the bad guys after they attack, they started dealing with the causes of the problems, namely, corrupt governments, rulers and the people behind the scenes. They did whatever they could do to truly make the world a better place.

They forcefully went in and stopped genocides, dethroned dictators and ended evil where it started. They also used The Carrier to provide political asylum for those who needed it and a safe place to live for entire cities.

The Authority became much more public under Jack’s leadership, doing TV interviews, being in magazines and basically becoming celebrities. There were those who disagreed with their heavy-handed approach, but they never apologized for saving human lives.

Spirit of the century

The first real problem Jack had to handle as leader of The Authority was a reincarnated Jenny. With the death of the Spirit of the 20^th Century came the birth of the Spirit of the 21^st. Unfortunately, Dr. Krigstein, an evil scientist working for the American government, was trying to find the child so he could control or destroy the 21^st Century.

He eventually got his hands on her. When The Authority tried to stop him he sent armies of SPBs (classified as “extinction level”) out to face them in battles all over the world. The fighting only stopped when The Authority decided to have Krigstein work for them creating good things to make the world a better place instead of destroying it. He accepted the offer and handed over Jenny Quantum.

Things didn’t get much better though and The Authority next had to deal with the Earth revolting. It seems that after “god” tried to come back and remake Earth, the planet was very scared and reacted with extreme version of natural disasters.

Tidal waves bigger than had ever been seen crashed through New York, tectonic plates ripped apart, volcanoes sprung from nowhere and spewed lava all over, swarms of bugs filled the sky, hurricanes and tornadoes just appeared, and that was just the beginning.

Trust him. He’s a doctor.

The only person that knew why this was happening was the previous Doctor, a man so evil that once he had been stopped he had to be imprisoned in a facility 20 million years in the past. The Authority found him though and he claimed he could fix the Earth if his powers were given back to him for an hour.

The current Doctor was suffering from many drug problems at the time and couldn’t do anything himself so The Authority really didn’t have a choice. They decided to do it but Jack took some precautions first.

He spoke with an alternate version of himself (who was him in every way but she was female and pregnant) and had his Earth evacuated to Earths of other realities. Once that was done the other Doctor got his powers back and fixed the planet. But of course, there was more to it than that.

The evil Doctor (who could have easily unmade reality or done any number of things) took pleasure in beating up The Authority. The fight was really one-sided and only ended when all of the Doctor’s powers actually caught up to him and he started to empathize with every living creature in existence. At that moment when he was weak and vulnerable, The Authority killed him.

Jack got everyone back from the other realities and things went back to normal. For a while.

Fame and wealth

The way Jack had been leading The Authority had never been popular with everyone, but things really got bad after their trouble with the planet and the other Doctor. First Jack got into a fight with Jackson King. King said that Jack’s methods were frightening people and that he was in danger of doing real damage to the world.

The fight went from verbal to physical but before anyone got really hurt, Jackson left.

Things didn’t get better though, and in a short time Jack was having similar conversations with reporters. They claimed he was becoming just as bad as the forces The Authority had once protected against.

Jack maintained that what he was doing was saving millions of lives. When the American president came up in conversation, Jack expressed his negative feelings for him and the corporations that were really in charge.

Jack was right though and soon enough the people with the real money and power decided to do something about him and his team. The seven richest countries in the world got together and sent Seth to take down The Authority.

Bouncing back

He almost succeeded, capturing everyone but Midnighter (who rescued Jenny Quantum before he got away). The captured members of the team each suffered their own unique punishment while replacements handpicked and controlled by the same people who made Seth took over as the new Authority.

Jack’s fate was to walk the streets of New York knowing full well who he was and what he could do but not having the intelligence to use his powers or convince anyone else who he was. He was eventually rescued by Swift (who had been released from her own torture when Midnighter killed a certain member of the new Authority) and had his intelligence restored.

Every member of the team made it back to The Carrier and they beat their replacements and Seth. After doing that they found out that Seth had damaged reality when he had crashed The Carrier in their first fight.

The team was all set to fix the problem when Jack ordered them not to, saying that humanity could fix the problem on their own since it was their own fault. The world governments got together and came up with a solution and were able to save themselves but afterwards The Authority killed the POTUS just to make a point.

Road toward the coup

Apparently the point was heard. Jack told Angie that other superheroes, even those that hadn’t agreed with his methods, were starting to follow his lead and take action when they needed to even if it upset the people in charge.

In the second volume of Authority the team took down:

• An interdimensional gambling ring that bet on things like world takeovers and superhuman wars.
• A multiversal alien empire/corporation that had exterminated or enslaved dozens of worlds.
• A 9-year-old-turned-city-sized-monster.
• A man called Godhead who spread a psychic virus that gave him control over (and the power of) almost every human on the planet.

Even with all this world-saving, cries once again went out against the way The Authority did business. If the people of the world had known what was coming though, they would have been happy with Jack’s harsh tactics and unforgiving nature, but they had to find out the hard way.

Phase engine, part 1

Some time after The Authority defeated Godhead, a bigger threat appeared. Tao, an old member (and then enemy) and one of the most powerful men in the world, had somehow found himself with a phase engine, an alien device powered by a black hole.

Tao’s purposes and goals had always been sinister, but what he did with the engine was something not even his own people could have predicted. He staged an elaborate attack on a secret American base all as a cover to get the engine into government hands without them knowing it.

Once they did, they realized that the engine could be used to travel into the Bleed, something that until then, only The Authority could do with any measure of success. As soon as they realized this they put together a probe driven by the engine and launched it into the Bleed. Somehow Tao had known what was coming next.

When the engine made it into the bleed it exploded, but the destruction was more than any normal thing. The black hole in the engine had ripped a hole in the Bleed and also destroyed an enormous alien ship (5 or 6 times the size of the Carrier) that had been nearby.

The effects were disastrous and in moments burning pieces of the ship and its passengers (members of a race of giant beings called the Vigil) were falling on Florida. The Authority arrived to help but there was basically nothing they could do but teleport away the people who were still alive. The ship fell and much of Florida was destroyed.

Phase engine, part 2

After the dust had settled, Jack tried to learn all he could about the Vigil and what had happened. The Vigil were the first beings to ever use the Bleed and they had given themselves the job of recording everything that happened in the multiverse.

The destruction of their ship was especially bad because it had been a return trip to their home planet, bringing with it a millennium of information to be added to their main database.

After finding this out, and the fact that this loss of information might drive the Vigil to a full scale war against Earth, Jack discovered whose fault it was. He learned that Tao had provided the engine but that the US government had gone ahead and used it without assessing the situation in a way that would have shown that Tao was behind it and that it was not a good idea.

Jack felt that this was the last straw. After a discussion with the rest of the team, Jack Hawksmoor took over America.

Coup d’État, part 1

Jack’s announcement that The Authority now ran America was not accepted willingly. The President said he’d send other SPBs to stop them if he had to, but the government wasn’t the only group that opposed the idea of The Authority being in charge.

Stormwatch: Team Achilles leader Ben Santini had always had a problem with SPBs who thought their power entitled them to everything they wanted, and to him, that’s what The Authority looked like. He was determined to stop them from taking over. The Authority realized this immediately of course and went to deal with them.

Their first attempt almost got Apollo and Midnighter killed so on their second try the whole team went. They were too slow though and Team Achilles got away, leaving an injured man (who was actually a super villain, though the Authority didn’t know it) behind. When Jack found the man’s body he declared war on Stormwatch.

More problems came from the Wildcats. Grifter procured a bomb capable of destroying the Authority and their carrier and wanted Spartan to teleport it there. Spartan wouldn’t, but went to talk with Jack on his own. Since they both wanted to change the world from how it was, their disagreement was mostly about method.

Jack preferred taking the straight forward approach and just taking charge whereas Spartan wanted to do it in a different, less obvious way. He couldn’t change Jack’s mind though and he just left him to do what he was doing.

Coup d’État, part 2

By this point, the American government had actually started to fight back, however feebly. The Authority easily shut down their communications, destroyed their satellites, stopped their tanks, ships, planes and armies, and destroyed all their super human soldiers. America could do nothing to stop them and no one else in the world would try.

Trouble only really started once the Vigil came. Negotiations that Swift had been carrying on failed and the Vigil declared war. Jack was able to call them off though when he trapped some of them in the ground.

With the Vigil no longer attacking and the American military machine crushed (almost bloodlessly, The Authority made it a point not to kill human soldiers), The Authority had successfully taken over and other nations even recognized and endorsed their position.

Though the Vigil had stopped attacking, they were still around. To get rid of them Hawksmoor offered up the former President and killed him in front of the Vigil. They claimed that he had been the one behind the phase engine and all the following destruction so that the Vigil would feel like justice was served and wouldn’t decide to attack again.

President Hawksmoor

With the aliens gone and the country theirs, Jack appointed himself President of the United States.

Of course, things got bad as soon as The Authority took over. In the middle of instituting a bunch of policies aimed at fixing the world (socially, economically and ecologically) news came out that Jenny Quantum’s mother was alive and looking to get her child back.

It was eventually revealed that Jenny’s mother wasn’t actually her mother but her twin sister who had survived Krigstein’s attacks unnoticed.

She had been taken by her government and pumped full of all the evil in the world. The purpose of that was to make her a weapon, but it drove her insane and once she got aboard the Carrier (the reason she was pretending to be Jenny’s mother) she started bringing reality down.

She fought Quantum and killed her, but The Doctor saved her spirit and sent Midnighter back in time to kill Jenny Fractal as she was born. He did it and The Doctor was able to bring Quantum back to life and restore order to The Bleed.

Katherine

After this near-disaster, Jack had a problem he needed to deal with on his own. In Hell’s Kitchen, Katherine Bradshaw was found dead in her apartment. Katherine had been an old friend of Jack’s and, as Jack put it, the closest thing to a real relationship he ever had. They grew up together and she was the only one who never treated him as if he were a freak.

They fell in love, had sex and she wound up pregnant. Jack, at that time still coming to terms with what he was and afraid of what kind of monster his child might be, convinced her to have an abortion. Their relationship was strained after that and one night Jack just left.

Now, finding out she had been murdered, Jack wanted to deal with whoever had caused her death. He went down to Hell’s Kitchen and after finding out from her apartment what had happened, he went on a hunt for Katherine’s killer.

The man was a major drug dealer named Tyler King. Jack found him and before killing him, asked him why he killed Katherine. It turned out that she had been trying to get some of his girls help, trying to get them off drugs and off the streets. He didn’t like that, so he killed her.

Jack realized that although he was president and changing things on a large scale, he’d forgotten about stuff on the street. After killing King, Jack completely renovated the city with a touch and talked to the people in the area about keeping the place clean.

Armageddon

Captain Atom then got stuck in the Wildstorm Universe. The reaction of most of the native teams was violence when they figured out that if left unchecked he would destroy their universe. The Authority attempted to help him at first, with Jack personally taking him on a tour of every reality the Carrier’s Doors could reach.

When that failed he had the Engineer try to cure him but that was unsuccessful as well. At that point Jack changed tactics and had The Authority try to kill Captain Atom.

The Engineer was unable to kill him because of interference from Grifter so Jack sent the Midnighter and Apollo. They were able to bring Atom back to the Carrier (and kill Grifter) where they would kill him. By that time Mr. Majestic had realized that killing Captain Atom would be just as bad and tried to reason with Jack, but Hawksmoor wouldn’t hear it.

When Atom was brought to the Carrier he flared up and started destroying the Authority and reality itself. Jack realized he should have listened to Majestic but by then it was too late.

Luckily though the Void showed up and took the piece of herself that had lodged itself in Captain Atom when he landed in the WSU and was causing the problems. The damage he had already done was too great though so Void had to alter reality to fix it.

Worldstorm – the lost year

In the aftermath of Armageddon, The Authority somehow find themselves in the real world, our world, where there are no other heroes and the reality they know are just comics.

The story has yet to be revealed in full, and is currently being published as the Lost Year. Apparently, they eventually returned to their normal universe.

World’s end

The Authority then had to fight Stormwatch over the resurfaced threat of Henry Bendix. Bendix was defeated, but shortly after that, however, the world ended due to causes unknown. Billions of people died, nature went awry, epidemics flourished, supernatural threats surfaced, societies fell and civilization was destroyed.

Midnighter and Swift were mostly unharmed, but the rest of the team were drastically affected.

Jenny Quantum and The Doctor disappeared, Apollo was not able to leave the sun for very long since he got depowered very fast in Earth’s heavily polluted atmosphere, the Engineer lost most of the use of her technology.

Jack Hawksmoor was horribly disfigured and powerless because the only city nearby was the horrible mess that was Unlondon, the result of the Carrier crashing and fusing with London. Jack was also damaged emotionally and has for the most part given up on trying to save the world. He believed that they had failed and that there was nothing left to do but try and stay alive.

What remains

Hawksmoor was still seen as the leader, but other members of the team like Angie and Midnighter began to assert themselves more and stand apart from him. Things looked like they might change for him when Stormwatch came down and suggested they put aside their old differences and work together with the Authority taking in more refugees and Stormwatch giving the dead Carrier power.

Jack agreed when Jackson King told him that bringing the Carrier to life could improve Jack’s situation. The two teams faced off against Eidolon and his army of The Mad, but were able to defeat him and get the Carrier charged, however no change in Jack was seen.

After the fight all the members of the Authority left to investigate a problem elsewhere. Jack was left alone where he was attacked by a monster that was roaming the halls of the Carrier. Jack somehow beat the creature and when the rest of the team returned his body seemed greatly healed, though still not perfect. Some time later, a beam from space struck the Carrier and rejuvenated it completely.

Earth’s remaining superhuman population were gathered and alerted to the situation. The Carrier flew off in autopilot to destinations unknown, and the Authority members were split between those remaining behind on Earth and those flying away with the Carrier, in the hope that help for Earth could be found.

The superhuman community on the Carrier became the new Authority although Jack’s leadership has since not been firm. The World’s ultimate fate hangs in the balance, and Jack is no doubt a key figure in the events to unfold.

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Description

Jack Hawksmoor is one of the superheroes without costumes, although he is usually dressed in a stylish black suit with a white shirt, but no tie. He has rather short-cut black hair and wears no visible symbols. His eyes sometimes glow red in the dark.

The alien alterations made to Jack’s body are more inward than outward, but there are some changes visible on the surface. The most obvious of these changes are the treads on Jack’s feet (and sometimes hands depending on the artist). The treads are metal and sometimes resemble the soles of sneakers and other times look like tank treads.

They are for more than just looks though. The treads aid in scaling buildings and running.

Jack’s eyes are also altered, the irises are red instead of their natural color, and his left eye glows red. The left eye is not a result of the alien tampering, but something left over from when he killed Rose Tattoo, who had a completely white left eye.

Jack’s last and least obvious physical abnormality is reputed to be his genitals area which no longer looks as it should. Jack’s face has also been said to be “a little too small for his facial area” but this has never really been portrayed.

After the events in World’s End, he was initially horribly disfigured. After healing up, his face bears clear marks of slightly protruding metal implants. He now wears a stylized suit resembling a military uniform and which is more in tradition with standard superhero looks.

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Personality

Jack’s life has really shaped who he is today. For most of his life he was a loner and preferred not to work or even associate with anyone other than his cities. Even when he worked with Stormwatch he was more of an outsider. He connects with cities much better than he does with people and he sometimes comes across as cold or uncaring.

His time with The Authority hasn’t changed him too much in that area, but he’s less of a loner now, probably because his team has become a sort of family to him.

Jack is often seen killing his opponents and though he’s good at dishing out pain, he originally didn’t like to kill. During his days at Stormwatch he showed that he would rather cripple enemies than kill them outright, but he would take lives if necessary.

Along the way, something changed. It seems to be connected to his battle with The Changers when he was forced to kill Rose Tattoo, the Spirit of Murder. Jack has gotten over his feelings and now rather enjoys killing when in battle. He’s still calm and casual when not in the midst of combat though.

Cities

As part of his connection with cities, Jack considers himself their agent. According to him, he cleans the parasites from their concrete scalps and they let him dance in their hair. To find and stop the “parasites” Jack has become an accomplished detective and uses his intuition and the information provided by the city to solve crimes.

He always worked alone with only cities being his friends until he joined the Authority. He was built to change the world and so most of his actions do come very naturally to him. Jack treats cities as individual beings because to him they are, and cities never lie, only people do. Cities are, in fact, actually living entities that speak a simple languages and have wills and preferences of their own.

Power

Another aspect of Jack’s personality is his general dislike of modern heroes. There are some he likes (a few of his old teammates from Stormwatch like Winter), but he doesn’t like anything about the superhero community as a whole.

His biggest problem is the way other heroes look down on the general populace, which may seem strange considering that he puts himself in a position to look down on others and even took over the world because he didn’t think the people of the world could take care of themselves.

It’s not because he thinks he’s better than “normal” people, he just knows where others have failed because of all his experience dealing with the consequences of having the wrong people in power.

Even though he takes over and makes people do what he says, he’s a reluctant leader. He doesn’t really want to be in charge, but he knows that the competition (corrupt governments and scheming politicians) shouldn’t be either.

Team dynamics

He is on relatively good terms with most of the Authority members. While he used to be in a sort of relationship with Angie, the Engineer, their relationship nowadays has become rather indifferent or type of accepted mutual co-existence thing. While they don’t exactly dislike each other, they barely ever speak other than to argue command decisions, although they will help each other if there is grave danger.

As to Jenny Sparks, Hawksmoor had a great deal of respect for her. Jenny gave him an opportunity to really make a better world, which is what Jack had been waiting for, and perhaps he also felt a sort of totemic kinship with her being the spirit of the century and him being the god of cities.

When she passed away, Jack, who neither is nor wants to be a leader, took control of the Authority and later the USA because he though he was the best man for the job and he wanted to fulfill the dream.

While he doesn’t like the Midnighter very much. They have butted heads on more than one occasion (and even killed each other in parallel realities). But he seems to appreciate the Midnighter’s often violent and proactive intents, and sometimes has urged him to kill an already surrendered enemy who was about to leave in defeat.

In fact, Hawksmoor, as presented by Mark Millar, seemed to have the Anti-Heroic Seeking Justice Motivation and the Minor Rage Drawback.

Apollo is ok in his book and considered very useful to have in the team, plus he is a follower – an asset to be sure. Any version of the Doctor is odd and freaking him out to some degree, while they are also greatly powerful characters to have on the team. Lastly, Hawksmoor and Swift are old friends; Swift and Jenny Sparks were his best friends in the team.

Ch-ch-changes

He gets a lot of his inspiration from a brief interaction with The Changers. Their dream was to take the world, change it into a place where no one need be “in charge”, and give that world back to the people, but the way they were going about this didn’t mesh with Henry Bendix’s (and therefore Stormwatch’s) ideas, so they were stopped.

Jack took from his meeting with the Changers the idea that the world could be a better place if the causes of the world’s problems (and not just the problems themselves) were addressed.

His way of addressing these causes – mostly violence and dictatorial rule guided by the idea that the ends justify the means – generally goes against what’s commonly accepted as “good” in modern society, but his methods usually show their merit in the long run, and when they don’t he’s willing to admit his mistakes.

In principle, the solution to a problem is acceptable if it saves more lives than it kills. He does take his time to participate in talk shows (where he wears glasses) to clarify the Authority’s view of their actions and the state of the world. He had very ambitious plans as he became the President, was very matter-of-fact and had a no bullshit attitude.

He genuinely seems to have no interest in personal gains.

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Quotes

“This is Jack Hawksmoor of the Authority. We believe in freedom. We believe everyone has the right to enjoy themselves and indulge their vices — unless those vices endanger innocent people. When they do, especially on our world, we tend to get a little pissed. We’ve primed warheads to explode throughout Viceworld within the next three minutes, so you better start running for the teleport bays. You might argue that we’re being heavy-handed, that you weren’t involved, but you were willing to bet on whether we lived or died. And if any of you do make it back to whatever reality you come from, tell them one thing… The Authority always plays to win.”

“I was built for cities ; built to live in them, built to move between them.”

“I brought you here because Mexico City is the largest city in the world and since I was surgically modified to thrive in urban environments… well, I guess a guy with your education can figure out the rest.”

“Listen, San Francisco and I don’t get along. And I can’t forgive it for what it did [thinking that it did not want to warn him of the earthquake that killed his family]. There’s nothing else to do here now, so I’m getting out.”

“I’ve been waiting to punch someone in the brains all goddamn day.”

“It’s payback time. Tōkyō Tower is an amplifier of TV Asahi. He’s so focused on me that he’s not paying attention to the higher levels of the electromagnetic spectrum. And how Tōkyō boosted them for me by 5000 %”. [picks up the tower antennae] “She doesn’t much like getting stomped by giant monsters. Greetings from Tōkyō — here’s your complimentary handmade E.M.P. .” [impales giant on antennae]

(After he saved the world from a living sun) “Sorry. Nikolas Karamov — Winter — was the closest thing to a real hero I ever met. A better human being than about everybody back there. And we just condemned him to burn in hell for fuck knows how many billion years. This is the shittiest job in the world.”

“I am going with [the Carrier]. Whoever sent this… astral umbilical could have the tech to put our world back together. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try. But just so we’re clear, and once again for the cheap seats. Destination: unknown. Purpose: unknown. Return date: unknown. Choose wisely… but choose fast.”

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DC Universe History

Jack Hawksmoor and the urban version of the Question would make an interesting team-up. That is, whether or not the city would make one or the other of the two characters knowledgeable of the other.

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By Dr. Peter S Piispanen.

Source of Character: The Authority v1-v5, The Authority one-shots and related miniseries including The Secret History of the Authority: Hawksmoor 1-6.

Helper(s): www.comicvine.com , Darci, Tiago Quintana, Frank Murdock, Roger Cormez, Azrael, Ethan Roe.

Writeup completed on the 25 of March, 2010.