Background
Apollo is a character created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch for the title StormWatch for the WildStorm Universe, published by Image Comics. When DC bough Wildstorm the editorial continued existing for several years independent of the main DCU.
Eventually the character has been integrated to the DC universe landscape among others Wildstorm characters.
Origin
Formerly a U.S. soldier, Apollo was a member of a secret experimental academy team created by the insane former Stormwatch Weatherman, Henry Bendix. Bendix’s extensive alterations made Apollo almost a Sun God, with flight, superhuman strength and invulnerability, and heat vision. However, he needs frequent exposure to full sunlight to recharge his powers and his health. Unlike his lover, the Midnighter, Apollo may have volunteered willingly for the implant procedures that gave him his powers. Apollo has also lost all memory of who he was before his recruitment into the team. Apollo, alongside Midnighter, Lamplight, Crow Jane, Amaze, Impetus, and Stalker, formed the ill-fated team that would be sent to their deaths by Bendix on their first mission. Apollo served as team leader, but proved ineffective when he witnessed the death of his peers and became paralyzed with traumatic shock, leaving Midnighter to get them both out alive. However, when Midnighter and Apollo sought extraction, it was only to discover that Bendix had no intention of wasting time or resources to save them when he could so easily replace them with more “super soldiers.”
Betrayed, Apollo and Midnighter used their abilities to escape with their lives, but would spend the next five years hiding on the streets, attempting to remain invisible to the Weatherman’s ever-watchful eye from the Stormwatch headquarters orbiting the Earth. During this time, the team members fought to better the world on a smaller scale, and came together as lovers. Because of their self imposed exile, both Midnighter and Apollo were ignorant of Stormwatch’s battle against Henry Bendix, and of his supposed death at the hands of Jenny Sparks. Only when Jackson King, the new Weatherman, discovered them on radar and brought them in for questioning (ultimately testing their loyalties by sending them on a mission) did the pair realize they were free to live in the open again as normal human beings. All files related to whom both Midnighter and Apollo were before their introduction into the team were believed to be lost, and since neither man could remember, Jackson King instead gave them new identities with which to retire from the super soldier business.
Character Evolution
Wildstorm Universe
A member of The Authority, Apollo is one of the most powerful metahumans in the Wildstorm Universe.
Apollo is married to Midnighter, and they have adopted Jenny Quantum.
Post-Flashpoint: Earth-0
Apollo appears in the New DC Universe. In this universe he appears to have had no previous association with any super-powered team, seeming to be a normal citizen, albeit a super-powered one, with the exception that he has occasionally saved others from dangerous situations. He does not do this frequently though, and he abhors the idea of being called a “superhero”. However, some photos of him in action were posted on the internet, and one of the people he saved dubbed him “Apollo.” He is approached by Stormwatch as a potential member.
Major Story Arcs
Wildstorm Universe
The Authority
Apollo’s brief vacation into normalcy was to be short-lived. Less than a year after Apollo and Midnighter’s retirement, the majority of the Stormwatch team was slaughtered in an Aliens/Stormwatch Crossover. Jenny Sparks used her vision for a new team, known as The Authority and she approached Apollo and Midnighter about joining. Jenny originally only asked Apollo to join because she knew that Midnighter would reluctantly accompany Apollo anywhere (part of the reason they were nicknamed “Bert” and “Ernie”). Apollo would then take the place of “The Sun God,” on a team consisting of Midnighter, Swift, Jack Hawksmoor, Engineer, Doctor, and Jenny Sparks. His relationship with the Midnighter would only be hinted at until the Sliding Albion Story Arc, in which it was confirmed they were a couple.
Violation
The Authority battled for possession of Baby Jenny, the reincarnation of Jenny Sparks who would eventually grow up to be Jenny Quantum. During this battle, Apollo faces off with a character known as The Commander, an overly-macho testosterone driven meta-human who sexually assaults innocent people in the hospitals that he searches. Apollo is beaten badly by The Commander and his two companions, with the implication that he was also raped. His badly beaten body was left for Midnighter to discover. However, the next time Apollo came face to face with The Commander, his enemy suggested that he wouldn’t kill him as he gave Apollo pleasurable feelings. Unfortunately for The Commander, he was next seen with Midnighter standing over his paraplegic body, holding a large jackhammer.
The political powers of Earth attempted to overpower The Authority and replace them with The New Authority (consisting of Surgeon, Teuton, Machine, Last Call, Rush, Street, and Union Jack), they captured Apollo and gave him to Last Call, who kept him chained in a dark lower level of the Carrier. During his time in captivity, Apollo’s powers were reduced to that of a regular human being, though he still did not require food or water to survive. Last Call beat him severely, breaking his nose and many of his bones, as well as burning him with cigarettes and drawing blood from his weakened skin. During Apollo’s imprisonment, his would-be replacement, Teuton, expressed an interest in exploring his sexuality with Apollo’s bound body. He is unable to go through with his contemplation of rape, however, due to the Midnighter’s timely arrival and murder of the character. After gaining some strength, Apollo then killed Last Call and Machine. Once the rest of the members were freed, Apollo and Midnighter decided to get married and adopt Jenny.
Soon the Authority would take over the American government after they caused the deaths of an alien group traveling through the Bleed. The team was able to take power without out any trouble. Keeping that power was far more troublesome, however. Enemies such as Stormwatch: Team Achilles did not approve of the takeover and Midnighter and Apollo were sent on a mission to raid their base which ended with them almost losing their lives in the process. They were then given the task of dismantling the American training camp for SPBs. Soon Midnighter was visited by a future Apollo, warning him that he would become a tyrant and he needed to break up the team to stop this from coming to pass. Meanwhile, a group of former heroes called the Sons of Liberty had caused Americans to become upset with the team’s rule and decided to riot. This eventually ended with a nuclear explosion in Washington and the team ultimately disbanded. Midnighter left Apollo to raise Jenny on his own. After three years, however, Jenny decided to speed up her age going from 8 to 14. She then rebuilt the team and discovered this was all a plot made by Henry Bendix and a revived Rose Tattoo. Bendix revealed he had secretly taken control of Midnighter using nanites and forced him to attack and beat the team–including Apollo. He was also able to gain slight control of Apollo, asking him to take his life, but Jenny and Engineer were able to free Apollo, who then in revenge killed Bendix himself.
Utopian
Along with the rest of the team, he was trapped in an alternate dimension where there were no superheroes or any major power sources. While flying over Afghanistan attempting to recharge, he was shot down. Midnighter showed up and attempted to defeat the soldiers responsible.
World’s End
After the events taking place with the High’s clones, the planet had been covered in a smog cloud. The cloud prevented Apollo from absorbing any sunlight and he was forced to remain in the planet’s photosphere in order to survive. He was recently seen saving Midnighter from a group of crazed super beings, however he was only able to remain for a few seconds before his body began to wither and develop what Midnighter described as a “heroin chic” look. During a fight with Incubites, Apollo was infected with the disease known as the Warhol virus. It provided a person with a deformed giant body and super strength but they died 15 minutes later and caused the virus to spread. Apollo went back to the sun in hopes of purging it out of him, but the disease strength was increased by the heat. It become so powerful that it became self aware and took over Apollo. The disease renamed itself The Burn and attacked the carrier, hoping to get into the Bleed to spread. The team couldn’t kill Apollo so Engineer froze him fully aware, but with The Burn still active inside him.
Midnighter had a dream where a little girl named Gaia told him to find and help her, and that she knew how to save Apollo. When he traveled to the island, he found that Gaia (one of the Century Babies, much like Jenny) was under attack by a rampaging monster called the Green Man. It was later revealed that the Green Man was actually the former Doctor, Habib, driven insane by the planetary destruction caused by the events of World’s End. With the help of the remaining members of the Authority, the Green Man was defeated and Gaia handed Midnighter a magical apple. When he fed a slice of the apple to the frozen Apollo, he was healed of the Burn and restored to full health.
Post-Flashpoint: Earth 0
The Dark Side
Following the events of Flashpoint, the Wildstorm universe has been merged with the DC universe, rebooting almost the entirety of Apollo’s history. A team of Stormwatch members containing Martian Manhunter, Jack Hawksmoor, and the Projectionist try to convince Apollo to join them and use his powers for good. Apollo had no desire to be part of the superhero community in any way and thus declined their “invitation,” which soon turned out to be less voluntary than it had originally seemed. However, Midnighter soon appeared and dispatched the Stormwatch team in an ambush and offered Apollo a partnership, with the latter being surprised and having no knowledge of who the former was. It should also be noted that since Jenny Quantum was already grown up, neither of the two men will have been her adopted parents, with Adam-One being the one that had taken care of Jenny and the previous Century Babies instead.
When the Scourge of Worlds sent meteors to earth’s atmosphere, Apollo tried to destroy all of them before they could cause any damage. He was almost completely successful, but one meteor was too big for him to destroy and landed in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Colorado. The meteor turned out to be a monster that then threatened the team. Apollo helped Midnighter deal with the monster after the latter had absorbed most of Stormwatch. Apollo managed to successfully save the team and then the team split into two. Apollo is part of the team that stayed to fight off the monster while the rest of the team followed Jack Hawksmoor into an old city to find a stone with the power of alchemy. Jenny managed to power up the stone and turn the monster into glass, thus defeating it.
Following the defeat of the monster, the team was teleported back to Stormwatch HQ, where they arrived to the sight of a Stormwatch Shadow Cabinet representative. The representative proceeded to kill Adam One, seeing him as unfit to lead the team. The killing was actually to enable Adam to join the representative and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet, where the realm they exist in requires death for entry. While Adam was gone, the representative went through its members one by one to deduce who should lead the team. As he was doing so, Apollo snuck off with Midnighter, who was looking for a way off the ship. Apollo asked Midnighter to convince him why he should go with him. Midnighter proceeded to take off his mask, telling Apollo that they are two of a kind, and to call him Lucas. Together they came across a map of all the alien threats to Earth that Stormwatch had dealt with. Midnighter told Apollo that he has a feeling that they’re going to be working together, and that he doesn’t feel the same about Stormwatch, unless something about the team changes.
Hearing a proximity alarm, Apollo entered hyperspace to check out what was happening. When he noticed Tanner’s explosion tearing apart the Stormwatch HQ, Apollo rescued Midnighter from suffocating in the vacuum of space. Apollo then brought Midnighter back to the area of the ship where the team was. Jack Hawksmoor spoke to the city that was the ship, and convinced it to restore itself, setting the area back to normal. With Midnighter officially joining the team, Apollo agreed to join as well. The team unanimously voted in Engineer as the leader of Stormwatch in Adam’s absence and devised a plan to catch the traitor Harry Tanner, who stole many cached copies of data, one of which included a map marking Stormwatch security caches.
Supercritical
Now official members of Stormwatch, Apollo and Midnighter spotted an odd energy fluctuation around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor on one of the monitors. Midnighter pointed out that the readings of the subatomic particles were far too exotic to be a product of a standard core meltdown, and decided that maybe they should go take a look, to which Apollo responded that he would go check it out. After touching down in Pripyat, Apollo immediately noticed the weird energy, and was attacked by some sort of alien entity. The entity was incredibly hostile and highly adaptive, which prompted Apollo to ask the Stormwatch team for assistance on getting an escape route. Martian Manhunter and Jenny Quantum came down to help, and saved Apollo’s life. Now back onboard the ship, the team made sure that Apollo was okay. Later, a part of the entity that Jenny contained began to be attacked by the ship’s A.I., and in response, the entity leapt onto Apollo, vaporizing him, thus making him vanish into thin air.
Powers and Abilities
Solar Energy
Apollo’s abilities are powered by solar energy, which he absorbs from the Sun’s UV rays, which he is also able to store limited quantities inside his body. The way in which Apollo absorbs sunlight is similar to photosynthesis. However, with no exposure to sunlight, he will quickly lose his powers, starting with his ability to fly. Apollo is able to quickly regain this ability with about 20 seconds of sunlight exposure, and will be fully charged in 2 hours. When at full power, Apollo can withstand the molten heat of the Earth’s core, destroy entire spaceships by flying through them at imperceptible speeds, and practically level entire city blocks. He is also able to survive in the vacuum of space by simply not breathing, and he does not require food or drink to survive, although he enjoys both. Apollo has also demonstrated that he is capable of circling the globe in approximately sixty seconds. While the full range and extent of his powers are astounding, it is possible for his energy stores to become depleted if kept out of the sun long enough. Apollo’s main abilities include:
- Vast superhuman strength
- Self propelled flight
- Invulnerability to harm
- Solar blasts which shoot from his eyes
After the events of World’s End, Apollo’s powers and physiology have changed dramatically. His solar charge now depletes at a much faster rate and leaves him weaker than it ever did before. For this very reason, he constantly stays in the sun, only coming down to Earth when necessary. Because of this, Apollo is only capable of fighting for short periods of time before needing a recharge. His recharging, however, seems much more effective as it has been shown that he can reform bone by basking in the rays of the sun.
Other Versions
Wildstorm Universe:
Pluto
Pluto is an alternate version of Apollo from another universe. He and Daylighter travel to the Wildstorm Universe to stop an idea plague from killing everyone in the world.
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is a member of an alternate team called the Meritocracy.
Kid Apollo
Member of the Authoriteens, Kid Apollo was a teenage version of the Authority from a parallel dimension.
Lost Year alternate Apollo
During the year the Authority was lost in the Bleed, they found alternate versions of the team than included their own versions of Apollo. However most of the Authorities had lost their Apollos except for one: An Apollo who was in the closet and had a womanizer life.
The Wild Storm
In the selfcontained series The Wild Storm Apollo was re-imaginated as one of the subjects experimented by Skywatch and set on earth as part of an advance inasion team in the secret war between IO and SkyWatch. However, along with Midnighter, Apollo, called himself Alex Petrakis in this encarnation, had set himself free of the control of Skywatch and joined the forces of Jenny Sparks as free agents against those two enemies.