The Captain (comics)
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The Captain (formerly Captain ☠☠☠☠, where ☠☠☠☠ is an unknown expletive) is a fictional character, a satiric Marvel Comics superhero appearing in the book Nextwave. He was created by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen and first appeared in Nextwave #1 (January 2006).
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[edit] Fictional character biography
[edit] Nextwave
Little is known about The Captain's past before he joined H.A.T.E., the organization which assembled Nextwave. One of the few facts known are when he was a child, his mother hanged his favorite teddy bear, Special Bear; due to this, he dislikes teddy bears even in adulthood. By his own admission, he used to go by Captain ☠☠☠☠, a moniker so offensive that when he met Captain America, the Avenger beat him severely and left him in a dumpster with a bar of soap in his mouth.
The Captain gained his powers from "The Heartstar of the space between the galaxies",[1] also referred to as the "Messianic Siddhe-complex," which was bestowed upon him by a pair of small, green, altruistic extraterrestrials named Spa-Fon and Squa-Tront (both named after comics fanzines from the 1970's) in order to make Brooklyn a better place. As The Captain was incredibly drunk at the time, it is unknown if he remembers this event exactly, as he immediately attacked both aliens, believing them to be gold-bearing leprechauns (an apparent reference to a bit from comedian Patton Oswalt: "If you hit a midget on the head with a stick, he turns into 40 gold coins").
The Captain continues to use his codename in the Nextwave group while the other members have dropped them; according to Aaron Stack, this is due to an inability to remember his real name. Whether this memory loss is caused by his powers, a specific past event, or simply overindulgence of alcohol is not yet known. (Of course, it could simply be Aaron Stack's commentary on the Captain's drunkenness.) He has had a lot of codenames, all of them starting with 'Captain', and had to abandon them all because someone else was already using them. He mentions having to pay the original Captain America (who once went by "The Captain") to use his current codename.
Similar to the rest of Nextwave, The Captain dresses in civilian clothes - specifically sneakers, camouflage pants, a trenchcoat, and a white T-shirt with a black star which resembles the Heartstar - despite becoming a superhero "for the mask," as he stated in issue one.
The Captain is extremely cynical, foul-mouthed, and hard-drinking. His age is as yet undetermined, but his mother conceived him while listening to Roxy Music's 1982 album Avalon which would make him at most 23 years old.
Note: He is not actually the captain of anything.
[edit] Avengers
The Captain and other Nextwave members appear on the solicited cover to Avengers: The Initiative.
[edit] Powers and abilities
The Captain has, as of issue five, displayed superhuman strength, durability, the ability to fly unaided, and enhanced vision. He is strong enough to break one of the digits of the giant dragon Fin Fang Foom, and survived being at the epicenter of an explosion that did considerable damage to an entire city block. The Captain's powers apparently are not hindered by alcohol, as he once drunkenly drove a man's spine through his chest merely by patting him on the back.
According to dialogue by the aliens, his powers are magical in origin.
He has referred to his powers as "My generic set of super-hero abilities", alluding to both the satiric nature of his design and his own cynical personality. Whether or not this joke alludes to other "generic" powers (superspeed, energy projection and other enhanced senses) is yet to be seen.
[edit] Uni-Power?
In Nextwave #10, Forbush Man makes the entire team experience life through 'Forbush Vision', showing each team member's life as if they had had a depressing, mundane, or cliched existence. The Captain's personal nightmare turned out to be an existence in which he had accepted the burden of 'Captain Universe' and ruined his life thereof. The idea of the Uni-Power (the force responsible for creating the various Captain Universes) giving The Captain his powers is logical - it would account not only for the star t-shirt that he wears as a symbol of cosmic abilities, but also for his generic superpowers. However, The Captain is freed from his nightmare, and it is unrevealed whether it had any element of truth in it.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Nextwave #4
