Origin
Jenny Quantum is the reincarnation of Jenny Sparks and is the Spirit of the 21st Century. She was born on January 1st 2000 in Singapore. After her birth she was taken by Dr. Kirgstein. Kirgstein used his intellect to build SPB for the American government. He hoped by controlling Jenny he could shape the world as he saw fit. He sent his super beings against the Authority who were after Jenny. The Authority made a deal with the Doctor. He was allowed to live on the Carrier and help the Authority change the world for Jenny. Baby Jenny was around for many of the team’s battles, but due to being a baby she couldn’t do much in battle.
When the G7 nations sent Seth to defeat the team and replace them with the New Authority, Jenny and Midnighter escaped the assault and capture. Soon Midnighter was able to rescue Apollo and each member slowly worked to free the rest, killing their replacements till only Seth was left, but Swift had found his off code and Jenny spoke it (“Welcome to the Oval Office, President Gore”) turning him human and powerless. After Apollo and Midnighter wed, she was raised by the two as their daughter. Still she was sidelined for much of the team’s actions even when they conquered America.
Creation
Jenny Quantum was created by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely and first appeared in The Authority #13 in May 2000.
Character Evolution
Wildstorm Universe
Jenny was born with a twin sister Jenny Fractal who was brought up as a psychotic sociopath by the Chinese government. Jenny went one-on-one with her twin sister Jenny Fractal at the age of 5 and died but her consciousness and spirit were saved by the doctor and she took her sister’s body when the Midnighter was sent back in time to their birth and killed Jenny Fractal in her sleep as a baby. Jenny is raised by Apollo and The Midnighter and though she was pretty much sheltered and loved, she has said she gained her skills by being raised by gods and monsters.
Jenny is actually 8-years old, but has accelerated her age to that of a 14-year old. Jenny Quantum’s lineage extends to the earliest accounts of human history, which include Jenny Stone and Jenny Fire, the first two “Century Spirits”. Her direct ancestors before Jenny Sparks are Jenny Steam, Jenny Revolution, Jenny Plague and Jenny Inquisition. It has been suggested that, like Jenny Sparks, Jenny Quantum and the human race are linked for the current century and in Jenny Quantum’s case, until the end of 2099. Meaning during a great depression, Jenny would be in a state of personal depression, though it is unknown if one causes the other or how. It has also been theorized that if she were raised with, for example, Nazi beliefs then humanity would fall under similar philosophies, though this has yet to be determined.
Post-Flashpoint: Earth-0
After the events of Flashpoint, Jennifer Emily Quantum is 11 years old and a member of a new version of Stormwatch. This version is a super-secret organization that researches and defeats alien threats to Earth. Jenny Q. is currently being mentored by Adam One (he mentions that Jenny is among his top 18 favorite Century Babies that he has personally mentored). Jenny was the adopted daughter of Apollo and Midnighter in the Wildstorm universe. Since she is already 11 years old and Apollo and Midnighter have only just met in the DCnU, it would appear that she is no longer related to them. It remains to be seen whether she will eventually develop a similar foster parent-child relationship with either or both of the two. The reset, however, makes them a totally new question.
Major Story Arcs
Wildstorm Universe
Jenny Fractal
In the ‘Fractured World’ story line (issues #10-#13 of the second volume of The Authority), it is revealed that Jenny Quantum had a twin sister. It was believed that there were no other survivors. Jenny’s twin sister had been found unharmed in the ruins of the Singapore hospital by the Chinese government, who recognized the potential weapon that she could become. She was immersed in a cruel assassination program that involved hyper-learning, as well as ways to kill and wage war. She was named Jenny Fractal after it was realized that she could tear reality apart at the seams.
Fractal escaped, causing a series of fractures in the fabric of reality. She forced the government to help her, on pain of total annihilation; she was able to convince the Authority that she was Jenny Quantum’s biological mother. She was on the Carrier when another series of fractures led to the near-destruction of many cities. The two Jennys battled it out; Apollo was nearly killed while the others were trying to control the damage on Earth. Fractal was able to seize control of the Carrier after killing Jenny.
In a bid to bring her back to life, the Doctor captured her spirit at the moment she died, temporarily placing her in the Garden of Ancestral Memory. The Authority went back in time to the birth of the twins, where Midnighter was sent to kill baby Fractal. The Authority took on Fractal, who had followed them back in time, to distract her. After the baby’s death, the Doctor helped Jenny’s spirit return to the other body. Because both of them were the reincarnation of Jenny Sparks and identical twins, when one died, the other would have become the sole spirit of the 21st century. Since Fractal’s consciousness was not captured at the time of her death, Jenny’s was able to transfer to her body.
Revolution
After the Authority took America, a group called the Sons of Liberty made of old American super heroes caused the American people to revolt. After a member of their group with nuclear powers caused an explosion, the Authority gave up their power and broke up. 3 years later – now eight – Jenny was being raised by Apollo alone while Midnighter went across the planet fighting evil. Jenny took a trip to the Garden of Ancestral Memory despite not being a Doctor to see the previous one now dead. However he was not there. She came back to her plan and met an older form of herself and was taken to the Infinite City where the Century Spirits go when they die, much like the Garden. After talking with Jenny Sparks, Henry Bendix was revealed to have been behind all the trouble.
Jenny aged herself to 14 and brought the group back together to overthrow Bendix. Bendix now had an army of alien beings as well as the new Rose Tattoo. He had also been keeping the Doctor’s spirit prisoner as well as the new one: Habib Ben Hassan. She freed both and soon the group attacked Bendix. However he revealed he had implanted nanobots in Midnighter and forced him to fight and almost destroy the team. However Jenny and the Engineer freed him and he ripped Bendix’s head off as revenge.
Worldstorm
Jenny was a part of the struggle to return the unstable Captain Atom back to his universe after he joined the group. She died after trying to stop his unstable energy output but was brought back when the world was reset by Void.
Number of the Beast and World’s End
The destruction of the Earth heralded the resurrection of Jenny Sparks’ ally,The High of The Changers. Jenny Quarx sacrificed herself by using her body as a containment device to prevent the Carrier’s miniature universe engine from overwriting the Wildstorm universe when the damaged Carrier crashed to earth’s London, England. Before absorbing the universe she kissed goodbye to The Doctor, telling him that she would return. What happened to Jenny after this is unknown as of yet.
Post-Flashpoint: Earth-0
The Dark Side
On the team’s first mission in the new reality, she accompanies the Engineer to the moon to investigate Harry Tanner‘s disappearance while confronting the Scourge of Worlds. After finding Tanner, they return to Earth to protect it from the meteorite entities the Scourge starts bombarding it with. One of them, supposedly containing a lost city within it, acquires sentience, and despite the warnings of Midnighter Jenny and the rest of the team are absorbed into it. After Midnighter gets the Projectionist to beam concentrated sunlight to Apollo, he is able to fly through the antibody and free Jenny and the rest of the Stormwatch team. Later, when the lost city of Alba Umbra arises from the ground after being awakened by Hawksmoor, Jenny uses her powers to transmute the rampaging antibody into glass.
Upon returning to the Eye and meeting a representative of the Shadow Cabinet, a bit of Jenny’s past is revealed: she is the daughter of a high-ranking military general who believes she was killed in a terrorist attack years ago. When the Eye is blown up by Harry Tanner, Jenny quickly creates a force-field to save the team from the conditions of hyperspace while Jack and the Engineer manage to persuade the Daemonite program that runs the Eye to reform the structure. Since Adam had been taken away by the Shadow Lords and Projectionist had been kidnapped by Tanner, the team meets to elect a new leader, deciding on Angie by unanimous consensus. The Engineer takes up the position of team leader, but mentions that this is a temporary situation until Jenny comes of age and assumes the mantle from her as all Century Babies before her have done.
The Gravity Miners & The Vitruvian Man
When beings from 5-space called the “Chryszy-rr” (the Daemonite translation of the phrase “gravity miners”) enter Earth’s dimension and attempt to steal it’s gravity and destroy it as they did to countless galaxies before (including the Daemonite galaxy), Apollo is pulled into their dimension. Jenny and Midnighter enter their dimension to rescue him. They find him and Jenny sets out to place a bomb inside their dimension to destroy it completely. Before she can make it back to the point where she can teleport back to Earth’s dimension, Midnighter betrays her and leaves her trapped inside the doomed dimension, reasoning that Jenny is far too powerful a threat to be allowed to exist; being potentially capable of wiping out galaxies with a mere thought. Midnighter teleports back to the Eye and tells the rest of Stormwatch that he could not save Jenny before the dimension collapsed, and is then astonished when the Engineer tells him that Jenny teleported back to the Eye five minutes before Midnighter arrived.
Later, the duo have a conversation about what happened in 5-space, and Jenny tells Midnighter that although she understands his reasons for attempting to kill her, she does not agree with them, and that whether she is socially maladjusted or not is her decision to make, not his.
Some time later, Jenny, Jack and Martian Manhunter travel to Rome to take down a rogue metahuman called Piero Rosci, aka V-Man. Jenny traps him inside a force-field to nullify his telekinetic powers and then uses her control over dark matter to teleport back to the Eye, where Rosci tells Stormwatch that he was a member of an earlier incarnation of their team, 500 years in the past, before he revolted against the Shadow Lords.
Powers and Abilities
The Laws of Quantum
Being the newest century’s Spirit, Jenny has the ability to manipulate the laws of quantum dynamics, which allows her to create pocket universes (where the previous “Jennys” currently reside), manipulate ambient energies, and accelerate her own age. Her father Apollo once described her as having the ability to do “basically anything”. Upon her birth, Jeroen Thorne, the previous Doctor, told Jack Hawksmoor that Jenny Quantum’s level of power would make Jenny Sparks “look like a spastic with a guide dog”. Jenny has displayed the ability to summon alternate reality versions of herself from throughout the multiverse to aid her in conflicts. She can create imaginary universes at will, as shown when she created a universe run by fascist rabbits so she could see what the Easter Bunny looked like. As a Century Baby, her moods are connected to the general state of mind of the century at the point. She will die at midnight on January 1st, 2100, and be reincarnated once more as the spirit of the 22nd century. In Captain Atom: Armageddon, the Doctor explained that Jenny’s existence is essential to the century she lives in; if she somehow dies before her allotted life span of a hundred years is up, then the century and everyone living in it dies as well.
Reality Manipulation
In the new 52, Adam One attempted a more precise explanation of Jenny’s powers; he stated that they are related to 21st century physics and could thus be practically unlimited in scope. However, a representative from the Shadow Cabinet that governs Stormwatch’s activities claimed that this was a lie that Adam told everyone, and there is little clarity over what Jenny’s powers really are. So far Jenny has displayed teleportation, molecular manipulation, force-field generation and the manipulation of dark energy among her powers. It appears that her powers depend on her understanding the principles of physics involved in energy manipulation and reality bending, and so she is being tutored by the Martian Manhunter on quantum physics and its associated fields.
Immortal
As she is a Century Baby she has a century long lifespan and once she reached a certain age the aging process stopped. Her moods are connected to the world and are a reflection of what is going on in the world.