Jenny Sparks (bio)This is a featured page


Jenny Sparks sketch by Jim LeeReal Name: Colonel Jennifer Sparks
First Appearance: StormWatch Vol 1 #37
Affiliation: The Authority, British Space Group
Former Affiliation: StormWatch

Vital Stats
Species: Human Being/Century Baby
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 120 lbs
Date of Birth: 01 January 1900
Birthplace: London, England
Known Family:
  • Ex-husband: Lorenzo

Powers/Abilities:
Jenny is a being made of electricity. As such, she can manipulate electrical energy in a variety of ways including, but not limited to, siphoning electrical energy to enhance her size, traveling via electrical current, becoming and/or summoning destructive electrical force, and interfering with electrical neural activity in a person's brain. Though not a power, she is also the embodiment of the spirit of the 20th century.


SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT
Bio:
Jennifer Sparks was born in England on January 1, 1900. Her family possessed quite a fortune, and she was sent to an all-girls school in Vienna. Her family had died on the Titanic in 1912, and her father's arch-nemesis took over their fortune.

Left penniless, young Jenny was invited by her godfather, Albert Einstein, to Zurich, where he offered to finish her education. Before leaving she recommended that a young painter, whose art was quite abysmal, leave it behind and take a career in politics as he had a certain charisma and talent for speeches.

Between 1913 and 1919 her powers started to manifest. Jenny Sparks had absolute control of electricity, including travel through power lines, shooting bolts of lightning and shaping electricitiy. With age her control and power increased. By 1919 Jenny had also stopped aging.

Her adventures from 1919 to the early thirties were marked by the mindset of the era - Scientific Romance. In this period the Wildstorm universe had the first contact with Sliding Albion, an alternate Earth where humanity encountered aliens in the Renaissance, and where the blue-skinned aliens and humans intermixed through the ages. In 1919 she married prince Lorenzo of Albion to help him to take power against his father's tyrannical reign. Unfortunately Lorenzo was using the British of Jenny's reality to help him take over from his father... who he considered too soft. She continued with traveling the multiple realities, visiting alien worlds, entering fast relationships with supermen and people of the era. During this time she earned the rank of Colonel in British Army Intelligence. A reporter named Clarence Cornwall became part of her life.

In the early thirties she went to America and spent most of that time as an adventurer and pulp hero. During this period she was the girlfriend of a certain Dr. Jones. In 1939 she met Elijah Snow and after a one-night-stand they both agreed that it never happened.

During World War II she was working as an allied operative against the Nazi superbeings and preventing the Nazis from obtaining valuable artifacts and ancient weapons. In 1943 she was rescuing a Tibetan egg from the Nazis. The egg was prophesied to open and bring forth a being that will usher a new age. Inside it was a small, curled up woman. (This appears to be Swift, Shen Li Min, but since the origin of her powers is known, it is likely another being that simply bears a striking resemblance). She was captured and the only thing that prevented her from being sent to a camp, where she would be dissected for creating German supermen, was her childhood friend, who remembered her and upon accidentally noticing her being dragged away ordered her to be released and sent to England with the egg.

Jenny returned to America after the war. The world no longer believed in heroes. She didn't either and her darkening turned her into a noiresque private eye who dealt her own brutal justice. With the end of the forties she decided to head home.

In the fifties she got involved with the British Space Group - The biggest clandestine stunt ever pulled on the British public, an organisation involved with alien and crossdimensional interaction and exploration. Even their banquets were held under maximum security. During one of those, in 1953, the Sliding Albion reality entered its first World War, and bacterium weapons were unleashed on their London. In a final act of contempt and spite, Sliding Albion vented the bacterial fallout over Britain. However, this agent changed while traversing The Bleed and caused the first surge of superhuman powers in Britain. Jenny didn't notice, she only felt the world losing a great opportunity to become a better place. After a while she tried to write a book about her life... but that got quashed.

The Sixties were a new age of exploration and freedom. Not only that but, the first British heroes started to band together, and quite easily took Jenny as their leader for her experience and spirit. For the first time Jenny actually felt she belonged somewhere, and with her companions was set on making the world a better place. In the late sixties, Jenny and her friends were participating in a large festival on the Isle of Wight. Tragedy struck when one of the heros, Abel Eternity, overdosed on drugs in an attempt to prove his masculinity. Abel went into a homicidal rampage, forcing Jenny to slay him. The group disbanded and Jenny decided to go to bed until 1982.

Removing herself from it didn't go so well, as she encountered a brutal and horrifying baby-snatching plot.

Years later, she was contacted by Henry Bendix to join Stormwatch. She declined, but, ten years later, Bendix managed to convince her to join the Stormwatch Black team alongside Swift (with whom she had a brief relationship) and Jack Hawksmoor. She was given command of the team against her will. Stormwatch Black was a covert insertion team, specially built for urban environments.

After a few missions, an old friend of hers, the former superhero known as The High, reappeared after decades of self exile, leading a group that wanted to change the world by removing the structure of society itself. It would be no more laws, no authoritarian structures, no crime and no war. Bendix didn't want her to know, but The High appeared on the TV news and Jenny saw him. Around this time, Jenny survived an assasination attempt by a needle-armed adversary. When Jenny confronted Bendix about The High, and about the fact that Bendix had given orders to Stormwatch to kill The High and his group, he revealed the depths of his insanity. Jenny was forced to strike him down, but he escaped. In the ensuing chase, Jenny saw that he had killed all of the facillity's cyrogenically frozen prisoners. Afterwards, an enraged The High flew right to the Skywatch platform. Being temporarily in command, Jenny was forced, crying, to order the staff to raise the Storm Door forcefield to protect the hundreds of people on board. The High vaporized upon impacting against it. Some time later, Jenny finally tracked Bendix down and killed him, or so she thought.

When Stormwatch disbanded after the Aliens attack that took the lives of half the team, she created the Authority alongside her Stormwatch Black teammates, with the goal to change the world, no matter what it takes. Old friends Batallion and Synergy assisted her in the beginning.
During her leadership, Jenny and her team faced many threats, including multuple attacks by Sliding Albion forces on Los Angeles and super-powered terrorists attacking many cities, including London and Moscow.

On December 31st, 1999, Jenny Sparks knew that she would die at midnight as the 20th century ended (the end of the 20th century according to consensus reality, at least), a fact known only by her teammate the Doctor. She electrocuted the brain of an enormous alien creature, the "God" that had originally created Earth and which was planning to wipe the planet clean of all life. This was her final act as humanity's defense mechanism. She died moments later in her teammates' arms. Her dying words and last will were: "Save the world. They deserve it. Be better. Or I'll come back and kick your heads in."

At the moment of her death, a new entity was born, Jenny Quantum. Though not, in fact, a reincarnation of Jenny Sparks, she is actually her successor. Just as Jenny Sparks was the spirit of the 20th Century, Jenny Quantum is the spirit of the 21st century.


Alternate Versions:
  • Alternative 838: In this gender-reversed universe, a male named John Sparks led The Meritocracy until his death. John Sparks never appeared in any comics, but was referenced by The Meritocracy's new leader, Jackie Hawksmoor.
  • World War 3: In this Marvel/WildStorm amalgamated universe, Jenny Sparks is still a member of StormWatch, fighting against the combined evil of Dr. Doom, the Skrulls, and the Daemonites.

Trivia:
Appearances
  • The Authority Vol 1 #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12
  • The Authority: Revolution #7, #12
  • The Authority Vol 5 World's End #10,
  • The Avengers Vol 2 #13
  • The Fantastic Four Vol 2 #13
  • Jenny Sparks: The Secret History of the Authority #1, #2, #3, #4, #5
  • Number of the Beast #7,
  • Planetary/The Authority: Ruling the World
  • StormWatch Vol 1 #37, #38, #39
  • StormWatch Vol 2 #11
  • StormWatch PHD #15,
  • Wildcats Vol 4 WorldStorm #1,

Sources



WildStormResource
WildStormResource
Latest page update: made by WildStormResource , Aug 17 2009, 6:15 PM EDT (about this update About This Update WildStormResource Edited by WildStormResource

3 words added
2 words deleted

view changes

- complete history)
More Info: links to this page

Anonymous  (Get credit for your thread)


There are no threads for this page.  Be the first to start a new thread.

Related Content

  (what's this?Related ContentThanks to keyword tags, links to related pages and threads are added to the bottom of your pages. Up to 15 links are shown, determined by matching tags and by how recently the content was updated; keeping the most current at the top. Share your feedback on Wetpaint Central.)