Origin and History
Born to alien warrior Zealot and John Colt, Nikolas was raised in a foster home in Serbia to protect him from his parent’s enemies. He becamed a gifted gymnast, evantually earning a spot on the soviet Olympics Team. This lead to his forced “recruitment” to russian Elite Forces called Spetznaz, the feared russian equivalent of America’s Delta Force.
One winter in Norway, he saw his comrades eat Fjord villagers to survive. A chechen winter saw them make a campfire out of dissidents. He will never forget that winter is for horror.
He was stationed in Afghanistan and was in active fighting. He was wounded there and this made him deeply resentful and bitter of the Russian Goverment. He was activated by the United Nations and placed in Stormwatch.
The man wears the name Winter like a scar, the worst things always happened in winter.
He became a loyal and competent member; even becoming field leader of Stormwatch Prime. He was supposedly murdered by Aliens (from the Aliens movie) in the WildC.A.T.s/Aliens crossover. This happened when he flew an alien infested Skywatch into the sun to keep the Aliens from infiltrating Earth. Later in the Wildstorm event, Nikolas was revealed to be alive but trapped in the sun. Being in the sun was like Hell for him, and he went insane. He was brought back by the Doctor and “placed” into a younger, cloned body.
Powers
The ability to absorb energy and channel it into many different ways, as well as identify and track different energy types (and their users). He has proven he could absorb kinetic energy, psychic energy, radiation and heat (magic as well, though it causes him pain). It seems that a lot of the energy is absorbed without actually hitting him because physical attacks that should kill him (like punches from the High) only hurt and the energy from it becomes available to him.
This energy absorption enables him to increase his durability, to move at superspeed, fly and heal himself. Winter did seem to have limitations, such as ability “peaking”, and cut-offs, such as he was unable to heal his mangled hand in WildC.A.T.s/Aliens, this was probably due to exhaustion. Though there may be a limit to how much he can improve his body with stored energy, there may be no limit to how much energy he can assimilate. It made him crazy because of the pain, but Winter was able to absorb the energy of the sun when he flew skywatch station into it.
Additionally, it seems that despite his being released from the sun, he can still tap into its power but only under extreme duress. Winter doesn’t absorb and emit the same energy. All energy he absorbs is flipped (positive to negative and vice versa) so that it can be used against whomever he originally got it from and have it still hurt them even if they should be able to absorb the energy right back.