Origin
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 70th 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 Tokyo 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.
Creation
Jack Hawksmoor was created by Warren Ellis and Tom Raney to appear in DC Comics, and his first appearance is in Stormwatch #37.
Character Evolution
Wildstorm Universe
The idea for Jack Hawksmoor reportedly came from the realization that most modern heroes live and fight in cities. The concept of Hawksmoor plays with this truth by making the city the source of his powers and giving him abilities that tie him to cities and are also directly related to them. Some of his powers (like his super strength, agility, and “wallcrawling”) are seemingly based on the Marvel superhero Spider-Man, the classic urban hero. According to Warren Ellis, Trashman was one of the inspirations of Jack Hawksmoor. Similarities can be seen in their powers (Trashman could receive warnings from things like trash or cracks in the sidewalk), their roles (both defended the “working-class” from governments and others in power) and even their looks (all black and no costumes). Jack Hawksmoor doesn’t wear a costume. Like Jenny Sparks, Jack wears normal clothes instead of a costume or any kind of symbol. His usual outfit is a black suit (no tie), white shirt and no shoes. The only variation to this is that he sometimes doesn’t wear the suit jacket and he’s been spotted in shorts on at least one occasion.
The alien alterations were 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 his genitals. His “equipment” still works (just ask the Engineer) but it no longer looks as it should. There’s no description of what’s going on down there, but it once prompted a woman to throw up. According to Frank Quitely, Jack’s face is “a little too small for his facial area” but this has never really been portrayed.
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, but Jack has gotten over his feelings and now enjoys killing when in battle. He’s still calm and casual when not in the midst of combat though.
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 and all of The Authority members) 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 Jack takes over and makes people do what he says, he’s a reluctant leader.
Jack doesn’t want to be in charge but he knows that the competition (corrupt governments and scheming politicians) shouldn’t be either. 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.
Post-Flashpoint: Earth-0
In the new DC Universe, Jack Hawksmoor is very similar to his Wildstorm self. He is a member of a secret group of super-powered beings (they don’t like the term “superheroes”) with several of the same teammates he had in The Authority, and insists on calling himself a “professional”.
Major Story Arcs
Wildstorm Universe
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 âparasitesâ 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 couldnât 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 in Stormwatch #37 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. The first reason was that he generally disliked super heroes, and the second was that being on Skywatch, the team’s orbiting HQ, made him physically ill if he was there for extended periods of time (as he was away from they city). 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 eventually figured out that the American governement 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 so 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 Tokyo along with the rest of Stormwatch to deal with telekinetic SPBs. 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 be reincarnated 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 instead of instilling distrust in him like it did with 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 (the last part of the three issue story), 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 Smoke. Killing “the spirit of murder” may actually be what turned Jack Hawksmoor into the violent man he is known to be today. During the fight with The Changers, Henry Bendix was revealed to be insane. He ran off and was replaced by Jackson King. Although the command structure for Stormwatch had changed, Jack remained a member of the covert Stormwatch Black team. When Stormwatch was called upon to investigate happenings in a small American town but couldn’t since they were still banned from acting on U.S. 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.
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 of a country named after himself. 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, so they did. 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.
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 20th 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). With the death of the team’s leader, Jack Hawksmoor stepped up and took control.
The Authority took a turn when Jack took over, and instead of fighting the bad guys only when they attacked first, 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.
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 20th Century came the birth of the Spirit of the 21st. Unfortunately, Dr. Krigstein, an evil scientist working for the American government, was trying to find the child so he could control or destroy the 21st Century. He eventually got his hands on her and 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 was 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. 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.
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 and when the American president came up in conversation, Jack expressed his negative feelings for him and the corporations that are 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. 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 president just to make a point. Apparently the point was heard and 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 inter-dimensional 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, and 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 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.
Coup D’état: President Hawksmoor
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. Taoâs 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.
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.
Jackâs announcement that The Authority now ran America was not accepted willingly. The President said heâd send other SPBs to stop them if he had to, but the government wasnât 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, thatâs what The Authority looked like. He was determined to stop them from taking over. The Authority realized this immediately of course and when 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 didnât know it) behind. When Jack found the manâs 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 wouldnât, 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 couldnât change Jackâs mind though and he just left him to do what he was doing.
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 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 wouldnât decide to attack again. 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.
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 sort of 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.
Captain Atom: Armageddon
When Captain Atom 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. Engineer was unable to him because of interference from Grifter so Jack sent 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.
World’s End
Sometime after The Authority fought Stormwatch, the world ended. 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, Engineer lost most of the use of her technology, and 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. He 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 help 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 and 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.
When Kaizen Gamorra and Cybernary came to take over the Carrier, Jack attempted to fight them off but was taken prisoner. He was tortured for a while but at some point his powers came back thanks to being held in Gamorra’s tower in the middle of the city. Jack broke free of his bonds, used the city to fight against Gamorra, ripped the middle of the city out, flew it out over an ocean, and dropped it to the bottom. He moved the rest of the city to where the Carrier was so the innocent people who lived there could be saved.
Lost in Space
Literally out of nowhere a beam of energy struck the Carrier and brought it back to life. Hawksmoor used the Doors to bring every hero that he could to him in order to offer them a chance to come on the Carrier, go to space, and see if they could find a way to fix the world, out there. Before much thought could go into it, the fight Stormwatch had been having with the Sebastian and the Red Blade became a global event. In the chaos of the battle and the Carrier taking off on its own, lots of things happened. Some heroes chose to stay and fight, some chose to go on the ship, and some just got caught up in the confusion and had the choice made for them when the Carrier took off. Everyone stuck on the Carrier when it left became the new Authority. Jack stayed on the Carrier, but among the people who stayed was Christine Trelane, and she challenged Jack for leadership of The Authority.
Post-Flashpoint: Earth-0
The Dark Side
Jack accompanies the Martian Manhunter and the Projectionist on a mission to Moscow to recruit Apollo to become a member of Stormwatch. Jack demonstrates his abilities to Apollo by initially creating a seat out of bricks and subsequently by asking the city to confuse Apollo’s sense of gravity when he attempted to flee. Shortly thereafter, Hawksmoor and the Projectionist were rendered unconscious by the Midnighter. The Midnighter then recruits Apollo himself. After recovering, Jack became incredibly concerned as every city on earth became terrified. Projectiles fired by the Scourge of Worlds were launched from the surface of the moon, heading straight for these cities. Curiously, the first city struck the middle of nowhere, although Jack believed that there was still a city located there. By communing with the cities of Paris, Metropolis, and Gotham in his mind, Jack was able to confirm this suspicion, as the cities recount that their was an ancient city filled with madness that might aid them in defeating the alien threat.
Upon reaching the location of the city, Jack attempted to get in touch with the essence of the city as the rest of the team protected him. The city, however, believed that Jack was attempting to harm him and activated some form of electrical feedback while Jack pleaded for the city to wake and save itself. The city continued to attack Jack until the alien threat rushed the team members and absorbed the team and their abilities, including Jack.
Powers and Abilities
The Power of The City
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. 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). 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 although 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. 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.
Jack’s power levels are related to the health, size and population of the city. He once had his spine broken and after dropping into San 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.
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 own intuition and information provided by the city to solve crimes. Not only is he a detective, he’s also a good fighter. 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 Night’s Bringer of War for a short time without help from a city.
Jack’s powers only work in the city, in fact originally, as a side-effect of all his implants, he couldn’t even survive outside a city for more than several minutes. This seems to have changed over the years though and he can now survive outside cities without sustaining damage, but as a trade off he doesn’t have his superhuman abilities (since there would be no cities nearby to control) and even his physical attributes are reduced greatly, though not totally removed. Most “city” environments that can maintain Jack are obviously cities. They are places like New York, Mexico City, San Paulo, etc. However, there are places that wouldn’t normally be considered cities that Jack can survive in. While he was a member of Stormwatch, Jack was sent on a mission to an underground complex beneath a jungle. He could survive there because the complex was so large that Jack’s body recognized it as a city. He has also been able to function normally on large space stations and alien hive ships.
Similarly, Jack can survive indefinitely on The Carrier with no ill effects. He says Carrier feels like a city to him, so while he can’t manipulate it like he would a normal city of concrete, steel and brick, he can live there without having his physical abilities reduced as much as he would in like a desert or jungle. The Carrier isn’t perfect though, and he isn’t as strong or durable there as he is in “real” city. Jack has also been shown fighting near cities or settlements so it’s assumed that being close to one can power him at least for a time if he can’t get into it or needs to do something outside of it.
Since he could originally only survive in cities, to get from one city to another, Jack can create something called a transit womb. The exact specifics of how the womb works are unknown, but basically, Jack leaves one city and appears in another a few hours later (time depends on distance of the cities and their size; for major cities it’s only an hour) by coming out of what looks like a concrete egg. That’s how he traveled when he was a member of Stormwatch, but now, as leader of The Authority, he can use The Carrier’s Doors to get him from place to place instantly. Despite the option though, he still uses his transit womb unless he’s in a rush. Another little-seen power Jack has is the ability to speak any language, probably given to him so he can speak cities around the world in their native tongues.
Other Versions
Weatherman
In the story entitled “Bleed”, an alternate universe’s version of Jack Hawksmoor was shown that was markedly different from our own. The two major differences were that the alternate Jack was his universe’s Weatherman (the head of Stormwatch) and he was in the process of having all alien organs and technology removed from his body. When he was nearing the end the series of procedures, his world came under attack by an alien species. This caused a lot of confusion because that Earth didn’t really know about aliens, and Jack recognized the invading ship’s technology as belonging to the creatures that operated on him. Immediately knowing something was wrong, he gathered all of Stormwatch and as many SPBs as he could find, and prepared to fight. Meanwhile, in the normal Wildstorm Universe, Jack Hawksmoor told his Stormwatch that the aliens in the other universe weren’t the same as the ones who made him who he is.
Jackson King figured out that a different race had tampered with the Jack Hawksmoor of the alternate universe, and that race was the Kherans, aliens known for creating the fiercest warriors among the stars, people like Mr. Majestic, Zealot and the WildC.A.T.s. King sent this information to the other Jack and they were able to save their world. Unfortunately, Jack Hawksmoor and the rest of Stormwatch died in the process.
Authoriteens
Another alternate version of Jack showed up in the latest Gen 13 series as a member of a team called The Authoriteens. The Authoriteens were from a universe where everyone was a teenager. In that reality, the young Jack Hawksmoor went by the name Jack Hatfield and was the “spirit of small towns”.
Midnighter: Armageddon
In the Midnighter: Armageddon one shot, most of the world’s cities had been destroyed and Hawksmoor had undergone bizarre transformation as a result. His face had been disfigured and his artificial parts seemed to have taken over his body.
Other Media
Relationships
Family
Jack grew up with a normal family. He had both his parents and a younger sister named Katy. Jack’s dad left his family when he was a teenager but the rest of them did okay. His mother and sister were very supportive throughout all of Jack’s abductions and even kept the government from taking him away. Once the abductions stopped and Jack was complete, he made sure that he paid his family back and made them proud with his heroics. His mother loved him and his sister was always excited for him so his life was good until October 17th, 1989. He had been traveling with his family in their car (which was strange for him) and they were driving over the Golden Gate Bridge when the city called Jack away for something. He left his family in the car and when he was some distance away when a quake hit that damaged the bridge and killed his mother and sister.