Colonel Steve Trevor

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Col. Trevor is :

• A war hero.
• A highly proficient combat pilot.
• A qualified aerospace engineer.

Though he’s now a Man Of A Certain Age, he’s still a redoubtable opponent once he sits in the canopy of a jet fighter. His reflexes, in particular, remain those of a much younger man.

While he’s retired, the Colonel stays current. He can still pilot pretty much anything with fixed wings. He has flown a cutting-edge Waynetech stealth jet fighter in combat despite having been retired for years, and performed an extremely difficult landing with a Boeing 747.

Trevor is an intelligent and principled man, and is unusually courageous. He’s still capable in a brawl, perceptive, and an excellent shot (especially with older American weapons). His background, accomplishments and moral clarity give him a distinct authority.

He also has a small degree of narrative immunity. In DC Heroes RPG terms his Evasion Skill makes him difficult to hit by ordinary mooks and soldiers in a firefight. And he has a surprising number of Hero Points .

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History

Steve Trevor, a former USAF ace, is the son of two noted aviators — then-Lt. ”U.S.” Trevor of the U.S. Army Air Corps (born in 1915, and who fought during WWII) and barnstormer pilot Diana Rockwell (born in 1920). Rockwell was inspired to become a pilot in the 1930s, after seeing the 1927 movie Wings .

Parents

Rockwell was still a teenager when she started barnstorming  with PT-19s, at the close of the 1930s. In 1940, she was approached by Lt. Trevor who wanted to buy her planes. The Air Corps needed new pilots, and Fairchild PT-19s  are primarily trainer aircrafts.

The two were married within months. Soon after that, Pearl Harbor was attacked. Weeks later Stephen Rockwell-Trevor was born.

Once she recovered from the birth, Diana Rockwell-Trevor served by training military pilots. She joined the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron as soon as it was created, in late 1942. One of her role models was wartime super-heroine Wonder Woman (Queen Hippolyta), who famously flew an invisible fighter.

(For more women pilots in the U.S. military during the XX^th century, the WAFS, the WAF, etc. see our first Carol Danvers profile).

After the war, Mrs. Rockwell-Trevor joined the newly-formed Women in the Air Force corps. As a former WAFS pilot she was authorised to ferry airplanes. She also became an unofficial test pilot for the USAF.

In 1948, she was seen flying a late variant prototype of a Northern American F-86 Sabre  jet fighter. She thus likely set the world speed record for a woman until Jackie Cochran  broke the wall of sound 5 years later.

Like paradise (part 1)

However, this experimental flight was also Diana Trevor’s last. Her Sabre was hit by lightning while crossing very strange weather. It crashed at sea near the hidden island of Themyscira. The nearby nereids took Trevor ashore and saved her life, presumably because of her gender.

When Mrs. Rockwell-Trevor set foot on Themyscira — the first mortal to do so in untold ages — the situation was critical. The hecatoncheire Cottus had broken through the Seal of Doom’s Doorway, the great magical gate guarded day and night by the Amazons.

The fight against the one-hundred-handed monster was not going well. But the American pilot heroically intervened.

She discharged her .45 at point-blank into the monster, apparently hitting something important before being slain. This and the flash and report of her Colt forced the surprised hecatoncheire to retreat. This saved Captain Phillipus, the Amazons, and perhaps the world.

Like paradise (part 2)

Mrs. Rockwell-Trevor ascended as an honoured dead to the Elysean Fields. Both Queen Hippolyte and Princess Diana would later have occasions to confer with her spirit.

The Amazons honoured Diana as a great warrior. A coat of arms was created based on her insignia.

It would later inspire the heraldry of the Wonder Woman costume, though the interplay of influences was complex. In the DCU parts of the US heraldry, particularly the white stars on a blue field, were inspired by Amazons heraldry. It would also seem that the DCU’s WAF insignia was inspired by the wartime Wonder Woman.

Trevor’s .45 was kept in the arsenal of the Amazon’s military leader Philippus after she taught herself to shoot it.

And finally, the daughter of Themyscira would be named Diana to honour Mrs. Rockwell-Trevor’s memory and sacrifice.

1990s retelling

A slightly different version of the tale of Diana Rockwell-Trevor was chronicled in the 1990s, though this retcon  didn’t stick. In this version, Rockwell-Trevor was flying weapons to unspecified Republican forces in Spain .

This means that the incident occurred 10 years earlier. And that the aviatrix presumably had strong ties with Leftist activists – most likely the Communist Party USA, one of the few American political organisations opposing Franco.

In this version the war on Themyscira wasn’t an intrusion of the hecantoncheire, but a full scale invasion from Tartarus through the Seal. The Amazons assumed that Diana and her plane full of guns had been sent by Aphrodite. They quickly learned to use the modern weapons to contain the hordes.

In this version, the aviatrix loaded her plane with explosives and did a kamikaze run on the Seal, closing it with an explosion.

A goddamn war hero

When his mother went missing and was declared dead, her only child Stephen was 8. Despite this loss, Steve also wanted to be a pilot. He wished to join the US Air Force as a commissioned officer. As a boy he thought that guns and planes were macho and wanted to have some ; it was also important to him to make his father proud.

Steve was raised by his aunt and uncle from 1940 on, until his father obtained post allowing him to be there for his son. The two were very close.

Steve Trevor studied aerospace engineering, presumably to prepare for joining the USAF after graduating. During the Việt Nam conflict, Trevor distinguished himself as a top-notch combat pilot. He was widely considered a war hero.

The shine wore off as time wore on

He also became disillusioned with some aspects of the military. More specifically, he was taken aback by the irresponsible behaviour of certain senior officers resulting in unnecessary deaths. Though he did not know it at the time, many such officers were secretly worshippers of Ares.

During the early 1980s, as a Colonel with quite a bit of junk on his dress uniform, Trevor continued to denounce the “lunatics” (his term) occupying certain key positions in the US military. He was even interviewed by a Congressional investigation committee.

Another witness before Congress, Lt. Etta Candy, worried about Trevor’s career. She then came to worry for his life as he specifically named General Gerard Kohler before Congress.

Lt. Candy was right, as often.

Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb

Furious, Kohler had Trevor transferred to a desk job, and Candy soon joined him to be his attaché. Kohler was one of the Ares cultists, and three years later the god of war ordered Kohler and his men to drop an atomic bomb on Themyscira.

Knowing that the chaotic stormclouds protecting Themyscira were very difficult to traverse, Kohler reasoned that a veteran pilot was his best chance. He gleefully chose Trevor for this suicide mission. Another Ares cultist, Captain Slade, was to kill Trevor and crash the plane once the bomb was dropped.

Ares’s plan did not work. Though Trevor did manage to reach Themyscira without crashing, one Amazon could now fly and intercepted the bomb. Captain Slade turned into a war zombie and tried to kill Trevor, but the Colonel survived.

The son of Ulysses meets Themis

After their uncontrolled Phantom  crashed at sea, he was saved by minor sea divinity Themis, sent by Poseidon. She handed the unconscious Trevor over to the flying Amazon – Princess Diana, aka Wonder Woman.

Trevor was thus the first man to set foot on Themyscira, though he was unconscious the whole time. Amazon physicians took care of him. Meanwhile Athena ordered Princess Diana to leave for the Patriarch’s World to stop Ares’s plan.

Athena had Hermes guide Wonder Woman. They took the sleeping Trevor with them so Hermes could read his mind and lead Wonder Woman to whence he came.

Back to life

Trevor was discreetly slipped into a random hospital bed, though at that point he did not need much medical care. When the hospital reported to the USAF that a sleeping Colonel had somehow appeared in one of their rooms, USAF security secured the floor and Trevor was placed under arrest.

General Kohler had been found dead from spontaneous combustion, and Trevor was the prime suspect. Further, the mission he and Slade had been sent on was completely off the records. And a nuclear warhead was now missing.

More Ares cultists — including General Tolliver of the USAF — tried to kill Trevor in his hospital room. Trevor escaped, but became a wanted man. He was accused of the murder of a sergeant shot by Tolliver to eliminate witnesses.

Looking for somebody he could trust, he approached Lt. Candy. His attaché immediately agreed to help him. Especially after her spying on records confirmed that there was some sort of conspiracy within the USAF.

War ! What is it good for ?

The Ares cultists, led by Gen. Tolliver, continued to hunt Trevor down. Photos of the Colonel started appearing on TV as suspicions that he was a traitor and a Soviet spy became hot news. However, another face appeared on TV – Wonder Woman has just started her heroic career in the Patriarch’s World.

Steve recognised her from his fuzzy memories of the events above Themyscira, and tracked her down. He was joined by his best friend, Colonel Michaelis of the USAF. Like Lt. Candy, Col. Michaelis did not believe in Trevor’s guilt.

When Wonder Woman launched a sortie into Hades to stop the sons of Ares, the three USAF officers and Wonder Woman’s friend Julia Kapatelis volunteered to accompany her.

They armed themselves with WWII weaponry from Michaelis’s collection, helped the Amazon fight Deimos and Phobos, and ended up in a firefight with Ares cultists at a nuclear launch silo commandeered by Tolliver.

To prevent a nuclear apocalypse, Trevor chased Tolliver and was forced to gun down the fanatic. Col. Matthew Michaelis was killed in the fight, and Mrs. Kapatelis wounded, but the nuclear launch was prevented as Wonder Woman’s won her fight with Ares.

Cleared

Col. Michaelis was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honour. The accusations of treason against Trevor were lifted. Trevor was promoted out of his desk job and returned to a more active service. However, the near-apocalypse had further eroded his faith in the military.

Shortly after this return in grace, Col. Trevor was sent to train one Cpt. Scott in piloting a new stealth airplane. Trevor did the job and left, unaware of the irony. He had unwillingly advanced the agenda of another aggressive conspiracy within the military.

”Scott” was actually Cpt. Nathaniel Adams from the Captain Atom project. Adams was struggling against the plots of Gen. Wade Eiling, the head of that project. During this intensive training course, “Scott” and Trevor became friends.

Some weeks later, Col. Trevor learned that his father was dying. He returned to his Oklahoma childhood home. Lt. Candy insisted on joining him. Mr. Trevor died while they were en route, leaving Trevor very much alone after losing his best friend and father in short succession.

As the distraught Col. Rockwell-Trevor ruminated over his life and the loss of his parents, he and Lt. Candy came to realise that they loved each other. They started a relationship. Shortly after that, Col. Trevor resigned his commission.

Col. Trevor (Ret.)

Trevor took a sabbatical. The vagaries of the USAF soon resulted in Lt. Candy being sent to work on an Air Force facility in Denver, whereas Steve had established himself in Boston. Etta would move farther still after she qualified to work as an Air Force Intelligence cryptographer.

During Wonder Woman’s first clash with the Silver Swan, Trevor saved the lives of two bystanders. In the aftermath of the incident, Wonder Woman explained that she had recently met the spirit of Diana Rockwell-Trevor in the underworld. She told Steve about the role of his mother in Amazon history.

After his sabbatical, Col. Trevor established himself as an engineering and safety consultant, specialising in military aircrafts.

During the Invasion , Col. Trevor reenlisted to serve his country and help defend the Earth. His services were almost immediately required by his former pupil, Captain Atom, who was coordinating a large chunk of Earth’s defence efforts.

We fight for Earth

Atom wanted a superior pilot for a key mission, to fly an experimental shuttle and cripple a strategic objective in space.

However, Trevor was replaced en route by a Durlan  shapeshifting spy. Gen. Eiling and Cpt. Atom detected and killed the spy and Atom flew the shuttle, completing his mission. Captain Atom and Wonder Woman later determined where the real Trevor was being held.

The Durlans had tortured the Colonel for military secrets, but Trevor held long enough for his friends to find him alive.

Trevor, accompanied by Candy, was taken to Themyscira to be healed. He made a full recovery despite the serious damage inflicted by Durlan torture. For the second time a mortal man stood on Amazon soil – though this time he was conscious. Trevor and Candy were also shown the Amazons’s statue of Diana Rockwell-Trevor.

Jack of speed

Months later, Air Force prototypes started inexplicably crashing. Lt. Candy lobbied to have Steve called in as a consultant – to help establish his firm. Steve and Etta discovered what was going on. With some help from Wonder Woman they arrested the saboteurs and salvaged the prototyping program.

This presumably put Trevor on the preferred contractors list of the USAF.

Trevor then ended up with the god Hermes as a room-mate. The curious Hermes wanted to experience life in the modern world. He also knew that his friend Wonder Woman greatly trusted the former colonel. Though Trevor initially hoped it was but a godly whim, Hermes became increasingly sick and vulnerable, and Trevor had to care for him for months.

This marked a low point in his relationship with Etta. Hermes’s presence made it difficult to have private time with her. Furthermore, Lt. Candy was being harassed at work by Gen. Yedziniak, an enemy of Trevor still serving with the USAF.

Hermes eventually became a mortal. He transferred his portfolio to Wonder Woman. He then left Trevor to deal with the consequences of a bout of destructive madness he experienced while losing his divinity.

Hermes then came back – no longer divine, but still superhuman. He dragged Trevor into further trouble and causing him to lose contact with Etta. Hermes later renounced his role as a champion and super-hero of sorts, reclaiming his divinity and leaving for Olympus. By this point, however, Etta and Steve were practically estranged.

War of the Gulf, War of the Gods

During the early 1990s, Steve and Etta tried to patch things up, through communication remained difficult. Feeling guilty, Trevor re-upped during the Gulf War, irrationally feeling that he needed to protect Candy.

One year later, during the War of the Gods , a conspiracy brought Themyscira and the United States to a state of war. Gen. Yedziniak saw an excellent opportunity to keep grinding Trevor and Candy down, and had Trevor arrested as a known collaborator with the Amazons.

The prisoner was transferred to Yedziniak’s base. The General ordered Lt. Candy to be present during the interrogation.

Saving paradise

Seeing that Yedziniak was fanning an escalation of the situation and had obtained the authorisation to bomb Themyscira, Lt. Candy was forced to betray the USAF. She sent a distress signal to several super-heroes to stop the bombing mission.

Hawkman, Hawkwoman and Starman responded. With Superman’s help prevented the bombing run.

When the U.N. cleared Themyscira of all allegations of state terrorism, the USAF hurriedly covered up its own warmongering activities. Yedziniak, who was responsible for most of those, was arrested. Gen. Hillary, Lt. Candy’s former boss, also had Yedziniak sign a paper affirming that he had ordered sending the distress signal.

This made any accusation of treason against Candy moot. Both Candy and Trevor were cleared of all charges and reinstated. However, the USAF tactic of making Yedziniak the universal scapegoat did not sit well with them. While Trevor and Candy were shaken by this crisis, it brought them closer than they had been in years, and Steve proposed.

How instructive

After discussing some more, Etta and Steve decided not to marry right away. Etta left the USAF for a while, and became the administrative manager of Steve’s business. However, said business gradually tanked.

Etta and Steve started hiring themselves out as flight instructors in order to bring some cash in. Presumably Steve had previously trained Etta as a pilot. Drawing from their USAF air navigation training, they also ran surveying work. They eventually landed surveying contracts that considerably eased their financial difficulties.

A summoned magical creature briefly tried to kidnap them during a plot by one of Wonder Woman’s enemies. But they fought it off long enough for Diana to foil the kidnapping.

Once more unto the breach

Wonder Woman’s adventures and responsibilities resulted in several years without contact with Etta and Steve. There was one important exception – when they got married. Diana was present as a bridesmaid. Six months later, the Trevors were summoned to Olympus to testify about Diana, though that took the form of a soul reading.

Some months later, during the Genesis crisis , a wave of despair and depression struck Earth. This led to a sharp spike in suicide rates. The flight crew of the 747 the Trevors were flying in all committed suicide.

The chief stewardess tried to find a way to save the plane for hours. She spotted Trevor’s name in the list of passengers and discreetly requested his aid. At that point, there was but 16 minutes of fuel left. But Steve (with his wife as co-pilot) managed to land a large airliner on a small country road, saving hundreds.

Etta later re-upped, perhaps for financial reasons. Steve had been considering retiring in Enid, Oklahoma, to be close to his family. But Etta was once again assigned to Hanscomb. Steve continued to do some freelance consulting, presumably to help pay their Boston-area rent.

Our worlds at war

The Trevors and Wonder Woman didn’t get to see each other much due to Diana’s schedule. Most such reunions just left them with enough time to catch up with the news.

During the Imperiex War , the Amazon fighting force decided to engage the alien invaders in space. They sacrificed Themyscira to block the planet-shearing weaponry employed by Imperiex. Wonder Woman requested Steve Trevor’s help, since the Amazon military had no experience with air-to-air combat.

Trevor was about the only military aviation specialist the Amazons would trust, if only out of respect for his mother.

With Etta’s support, Steve physically fused with the alien Wonderdome and flew into orbit. He hooked up with the flight computers of the other Wonderdome fragments carrying the Amazon troops and acting as a one-man Command, Control & Communications centre for the force.

Trevor coordinated the effort to hold the line until Wonder Woman decided to switch to a completely different strategy — an alliance with Darkseid.

Themyscira was later restored by an alliance of Mediterranean goddesses, and the Amazons prepared to rebuild. Wanting something more multicultural than before, Wonder Woman requested the collaboration of various allies from Patriarch’s World. These included Steve Trevor, now wearing his engineer hat.

The Trevors were then presumably invited to all the main social events taking place on the restored Themyscira.

Into the Pentagon

During the Luthor presidency, Trevor was named Deputy Secretary of Defence. This was presumably thanks to his role during the Imperiex War, where Luthor had also brilliantly illustrated himself as a commander.

Next to nothing is known about Trevor’s time as a Deputy Secretary. Luthor’s mandate only lasted three years before he was removed from office.

However, Trevor resumed this position during the Obama administration. He may have been the most senior official to have worked under both these Presidents.

DMA

Meanwhile, his wife (now a Lieutenant-Colonel after many years without any promotion) started working for a complex cocktail of intelligence agencies. The elite espionage and enforcement agency Checkmate made her a field agent.

Etta (who rebuilt herself mentally and physically) was sent to infiltrate one of the agencies under Steve’s responsibility, the Department of Metahuman Affairs. Steve presumably knew of this, and likely shared Checkmate’s suspicions that something was not quite right with the DMA.

In 2009, the DMA headquarters in Washington was attacked by Society forces — chiefly the immensely powerful monster Genocide. Most of the agents were killed and the headquarters was razed. Fearing for Etta, Steve rushed to the DMA headquarters, saw the disaster and took direct command of the agency.

He immediately relieved Director Sarge Steel, the commander of the DMA. A brief conversation had led Trevor to think he was unfit for duty.

As it turned out, Steel had been possessed by Doctor Psycho. Within seconds of taking charge Trevor thus had unwittingly put an end to a catastrophic security risk. Steel would later be rescued by Wonder Woman and Black Canary.

More metahuman affairs

Meanwhile, Mrs. Candy-Trevor had been kidnapped by Genocide in order to get at Wonder Woman. In a frightful state of cold rage, Wonder Woman recovered Etta, but her friend had been badly tortured, physically and psychically. Steve remained at Etta’s bedside whenever possible for months, until his wife emerged from her coma.

During this time, Trevor rescinded Steel’s orders to hunt down Wonder Woman as a suspected enemy of the state. He put what remained of the DMA on a holding pattern while his Department of Defence investigators did their job and the surviving DMA agents received medical care.

Steve was keeping company to his wife at the hospital when a child of Ares came after them as part of another campaign of terror and revenge against Wonder Woman.

The demonspawn magically forced them to shoot each other. But before they could pull the trigger the simian bodyguard Wonder Woman had placed at the hospital came in. They smashed the menace unconscious, breaking the spell.

Silver Serpent invasion

Trevor decided to have the DMA rebuilt as an international agency operating under UN mandate, like his wife’s agency Checkmate. He offered to hire “Diana Prince” (Wonder Woman’s undercover identity) to resume her DMA career.

However, while Trevor and “Prince” were discussing this, the Silver Serpent alien forces attacked Washington, sealing the town.

The Trevors took charge of whatever they could muster to defend the population – about a dozen DMA agents, many of them wounded, and some small arms. While Etta was commanding the ground force, Steve managed to get the last DMA stealth jet in the air, and fought the alien forces along with Achilles.

When Achilles had to leave, Trevor suddenly lost the cover of his ad-hoc wingman and was shot down. He managed to eject in time. A relief force of Amazon and Gargarean warriors soon came in and saved Washington and the Trevors.

Steve likely still is with the government, though what happened to his plans with the DMA remains unrevealed.

Description

Steve seems to be in his early 60s, though that varies a lot depending upon the artist.

Personality

Trevor is an ageing, disillusioned cowboy. He’s a straight-shooter, hands-on type who never hesitates to fight for a good cause, even if the odds are poor. One can imagine that in his youth he was an idealised WWII American soldier, like Sergeant Rock or Captain Midnight.

However, Trevor is also burnt out on the military and institutions, seeing them as gung-ho and warlike. In brief, irresponsible. This stems in large part from self-reflection, since Trevor also used to be the gun-go hard-charging soldier in his youth, before wisdom set in and he distanced himself from that.

Straight cold player

In his job, he has the whiff of a martinet to him. He’s a bit cranky when people don’t do everything on the double and don’t understand everything right on the first iteration. But he doesn’t overdo it and it often helps his subordinates perform harder and smarter.

Still, being yelled at by an angry Col. Trevor is not a pleasant experience.

Trevor is a man of rare decency and honour, which has caused him no end of trouble in his life. He can be relied upon to do the right thing even if that has terrible consequences for him, and like his friend Wonder Woman he doesn’t equivocate or do things half-heartedly.

Quotes

(Punching out an USAF guard) “Sorry I have to do this — but people are trying to kill me — and it’s time I found out why !”

“I’m here because my planet needs me, sir.”

“This is Steve Trevor on open channel, to Earth Alliance. Artemis, we need the Bana squads to attack hard right. Philippus — get your warriors up and around the tendril.”

“My name’s Deputy Secretary of Defence Steve Trevor, and as of this moment, I’m taking command of this sorry operation and you are relieved of duty pending a full investigation. One more thing, Mr. Steel… where the hell is my wife ?”

(Preparing to defend Washington against aliens, and talking to his wife) “Sweetie, I love you more than anything.” (puts on his old flight jacket) “Now get me to something that flies.”

“Come on. Let’s show them who the sky belongs to.”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Post-Crisis DC Universe.

Helper(s): Darci, Chris Cottingham, Capita_Senyera.

Writeup completed on the 11^th of January, 2011.