Jack Hawksmoor (bio)This is a featured page

The Hawksmoor family
The Hawksmoor Family
Jack Hawksmoor
Young Jack Hawksmoor
Jack Hawksmoor
Jack Hawksmoor in a Tokyo battle suit
Jack Hawksmoor
Pre-StormWatch
Jack Hawksmoor
StormWatch
Jack Hawksmoor
The Authority
Jack Hawksmoor
World's End

Real Name: John Cooper Hawksmoor
First Appearance: StormWatch Vol 1 #37
Affiliation: The Authority
Former Affiliation: StormWatch

Vital Stats
Species: Human/SPB
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 120 lbs.
Year of birth: 1967
Birthplace: New York City, NY, USA
Known Family:
  • Sister: Katy Hawksmoor (Secret History of the Authority: Hawksmoor #3)

Powers/Abilities:
All of Hawksmoor's powers are predicated on his location within a city. Upon entering a city, Hawksmoor becomes linked to and can communicate with it. Outside urban environments, Hawksmoor goes into seizures which can kill him. In cities, Hawksmoor does not need to eat or sleep, he feeds on city pollution and produces no waste. His strength is approximately three times greater than a normal humans. He can see the recent past and near future inside windows. Jack Hawksmoor is capable of travelling from city to city through the ground by having a city "give birth" to him out of a womb like growth.


SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT!
Bio:
Alien Abduction
From the age of 5, Jack Hawksmoor was abducted by aliens and had various implants placed in his body resulting in him being remade into a being specifically designed to live in cities. There are two hypothese about the alterations that Hawksmoor recieved:
  1. The aliens turned out to be human beings from the future, (who used Jack as a tool to fight a doomsday weapon from the future that appeared in the 1970s: a gestalt being that was the entire city of Kansas City from the 70th century. Hawksmoor defeated the being by merging with -- and transforming -- the city of Tokyo into a being, destroying it.)
  2. They were drunks aliens altering young Jack and having a laugh

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 “parasites” 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 couldn’t stop crimes before or as they happened, he always found out about them and avenged the victims.

StormWatch Black
Jack roamed the streets of New York before being recruited into the United Nations crisis intervention unit StormWatch by Weatherman Henry Bendix. He was placed on the urban warfare squad StormWatch Black, the covert operations team, with Jenny Sparks and Swift.

Hakwsmoor helped remove power-mad, super-powered cops, stop biological warfare in a small American city, solve the murder of ex-Stormwatch member Undertow and he personally fought and killed the insane, murderous, illegimate son of a revered American President.Jack had a tough time with Stormwatch, as the orginization's flying fortress was simply not large enough in order to support his unique biological systems. Medical assistance was not very helpful.

Hawksmoor was part of the mission against the Changers, a super-powered group out to change the world. During this mission, he was forced to kill fellow teammate Rose Tattoo in order to stop her from murdering. The peace failed, as all the Changers ended up murdered or dead.

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 Circle
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.

Shiftships
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.

Outer Dark
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 Nativity
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.

Earth Inferno
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.

Brave New World
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.

Eye of the Storm
In the second volume of Authority the team took down an interdimensional 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'Etat
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. Tao’s 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.

Jack’s announcement that The Authority now ran America was not accepted willingly. The President said he’d send other SPBs to stop them if he had to, but the government wasn’t 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, that’s 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 didn’t know it) behind. When Jack found the man’s 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 wouldn’t, 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 couldn’t change Jack’s 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 wouldn’t decide to attack again. With the aliens gone and the country theirs, Jack appointed himself President of the United States.

Fractured Worlds
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.

Man on the Street
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.

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.

WorldStorm
In the aftermath of Armageddon The Authority somehow find themselves in the real world, our world, where there are no othe heroes and the reality they know are just comics.

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.



Alternate Versions:
  • Alternative 838: In this gender-reversed universe, Jackie Hawksmoor led the Meritocracy, and was six months pregnant. Jack Hawksmoor actually met this version.
  • The Bleed Universe: In a parallel universe, Jack Hawksmoor's implants were given to him by the Kherubim race. He underwent several surgical procedures to become a normal human again. He rose up the ranks of StormWatch to become Weatherman. When the Kherubim arrived to invade Earth, he led StormWatch into a final battle in which both sides were lost, but the Earth was saved.
  • World War 3: In this Marvel/WildStorm amalgamated universe, Jack Hawksmoor is still a member of StormWatch, fighting against the combined evil of Dr. Doom, the Skrulls, and the Daemonites.

Trivia:
  • Jack Hawksmoor is named after Spring Heeled Jack and the baroque architect Nicholas Hawksmoor.

Appearances:

Sources:

Categories:

List of Authority CharactersList of StormWatch Characters


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