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greenygalA few days ago, I commented elsewhere about my bitterness about the death of the Manhunter of POWER COMPANY (yeah, I know, no one but me cares; I'm still bitter). And it got me thinking, again, about how much of my version of the character I'd just made up, or extrapolated from what bits of canon I had, and for some reason it started to arrange myself in my head in the form of that "My ____ is" meme--which I've never done before, and I have no idea why I'm starting here. But apparently I am, and here it is, just to get it out of my head.
So these nine geniuses founded an organization called the Council in order to quietly meddle in the affairs of humanity and do whatever was necessary to save us from ourselves. To this end they recruited the superhero Manhunter, aka Paul Kirk, and trained and genetically enhanced him and created an army of mindless clones of him that he was supposed to lead for them. But Manhunter realized that the Council had become corrupt and murderous and became their enemy; eventually he destroyed them, dying in the process. Paul was assisted in his fight by Asano Nitobe, the Council's master martial artist who defected to join Paul, and Christine St. Clair, Interpol agent, who wrote a book about Paul afterwards; these two attempted to honor Paul by tracking down and killing all the surviving clones. (I know, I know, although in their defense Paul really did hate the clones.) But they missed one: an inexplicably independent-minded clone (with a healing factor, which the clones also weren't supposed to have) who ran away from the whole mess and used his skills to become a mercenary in Africa using the Manhunter name and costume and calling himself, um, Kirk DePaul. Years later, he signed up with The Power Company, a San Francisco-based superhero-for-hire company, headed by ex-lawyer Josiah Power and led in the field by Skyrocket, a straight-arrow Silver-Age-style superheroine who really does not care for Manhunter's coldblooded money-is-everything style. *pauses for breath* Right. I think that's the important stuff.
--My Manhunter really, truly does not want to be Paul Kirk (and doesn't want to spend a lot of effort proving that he's not Paul Kirk, either), and finds people who expect him to care about whether he's living up to Paul Kirk's standards to be terribly irritating. Although he doesn't actually run into all that many of them, especially in the circles in which he tends to operate; I like the idea that Paul Kirk has a mild degree of notoriety in the DCU, but he's not exactly Superman either. Kirk's ghost lives in DePaul's head to perhaps a greater degree than he usually admits, but it's not a conscious or a constant thing.
--My Manhunter particularly does not want to be Paul Kirk because Paul Kirk killed himself (somebody else would read the situation as "he nobly sacrificed his life," but in this case I think DePaul's assessment is at least as accurate, although he's mainly concerned with the end result in any case), and why on earth would he want to emulate that?
--My Manhunter uses Paul Kirk's codename and costume because they carry a certain rep and he's going to take what he can get out of the situation, or at least that's what he tells himself. He uses a version of Paul Kirk's real name because...uh...I have no idea, really. (I really think that was a misstep by Busiek--it's one thing for DePaul to be claiming he doesn't want anything to do with Paul Kirk and maybe it's true and maybe it isn't, and another for him to be saying that while doing something that gives him no plausible deniability on the subject whatsoever. Plus it's irritating when trying to discuss them.)
--My Manhunter likes getting paid, he likes getting paid a great deal of money, and he doesn't mind if he has to lie, cheat, or steal in order to do so. (This kind of goes without saying if you've ever read anything with the character, actually, but just to be clear.) He finds the concept of getting paid a great deal of money and not having to worry about law-enforcement authorities in the process to be pleasant, however, which is one reason he joined up with the Power Company.
--My Manhunter also does good deeds when he feels like it and is unembarrassed by them; as far as he's concerned he doesn't have to answer to anyone else's code of how he should behave, and if he wants to do the right thing without prompting then he will. But don't hold your breath waiting for him to keep doing it.
--My Manhunter is very, very arrogant; he thinks he's, ahem, the best there is at what he does, and enjoys proving that point to himself and others. He isn't above taking a job because he wants the challenge, although it goes without saying that it had better be a paying job. He gets away with it because he is, in general, just that good, although he's certainly capable of overestimating himself.
--My Manhunter will go to some lengths to complete any job which he agrees to, but it's more because he wants to protect his professional reputation--and get paid!--than because he puts an inherent value on his given word. (Also because he doesn't like to fail at anything.)
--My Manhunter was force-grown to mental and physical maturity in the Council's labs. Chronologically he's probably around eighteen; while he is, in most ways, an experienced adult, occasionally when he opens his mouth his actual age starts to show.
--My Manhunter was brainwashed by the Council, both physically and ideologically. All the clones were; the Council used all the means at hand to make them believe in the glorious cause of the Council and how the clones could have no higher (or other) desires than to serve that cause in whatever way the Council saw fit. He was protected to some degree from the literal brainwashing, possibly by his healing factor, possibly by something else that made him unique; the propaganda he had to shake off himself. Even now, he isn't entirely sure what would happen if he somehow had to confront the Council again. He tries not to think about it much, or indeed at all.
--My Manhunter is also still much angrier at--and more afraid of--the Council than he generally allows himself to realize.
--My Manhunter is grateful to Paul Kirk for killing the Council; this doesn't mean he considers himself to owe Kirk or Kirk's memory in any fashion. If somebody called him on this hard enough, he might find himself participating in something because it's what Kirk would have wanted, but it would be a difficult sell.
--My Manhunter didn't want to read Paul Kirk's biography, because he didn't really want to know how much they might have in common. But he did it anyway, because he needed to know how much of his personal history had just been made into public information. (Josiah Power and Skyrocket have both read it as well, because they believe in doing their homework, although it didn't tell them much that was useful--the book doesn't go into much detail about the clones, and much of what it does say is inapplicable to present-day DePaul.)
--My Manhunter suspects, because he also does his homework, that in addition to her other reasons for disliking him, Skyrocket associates him with the mercenaries who murdered her (civilian, scientist) parents. One day he may call her on this, but it's not an argument he's all that anxious to start.
--My Manhunter does not consider being a clone to be a shameful secret, although he doesn't particularly want to go into the details, and for obvious reasons it's not going to come up much in casual conversation.
--My Manhunter is not angry at Asano Nitobe and Christine St. Clair for tracking down and killing all the other surviving clones. It hurts--more than he's comfortable admitting--to know that they did so, but he doesn't think that they had any better choices, or that the other clones could have had any meaningful life without the Council.
--My Manhunter is somewhat bitter at Nitobe for having come to these realizations only after years and years of training clones for the Council and doing anything else they asked of him, because of a point of honor that doesn't mean anything to DePaul. He remembers Nitobe with some fondness from their training days, but doesn't think he has any moral high ground at all in this situation (although he's much less concerned with who's right about what than about whether they'll just stop trying to shoot him).
--My Manhunter has a fundamental mistrust of people who claim to want to save the world (in addition to it being an exercise he has absolutely no interest in engaging in himself). This colors his attitude towards Skyrocket, although the fact that she doesn't like him at all and wants to work on jobs that don't get him any money also has a good bit to do with it.
--My Manhunter has numerous friendly acquaintances, and a number of people that he feels he can trust or rely on to some degree, but no one (at least, no one still alive) that he considers a friend, the entirety of the Power Company presently included. And he prefers it that way.
--My Manhunter will not sell out, run out on, or try to kill any members of the Power Company unless he sees absolutely no other way out of a situation, and for preference he won't lie to them either (that, as much out of practical concerns than ethical ones). This has not always been true of his relationship with his associates in the past, but it's the way he prefers to operate, and he appreciates knowing that it works in reverse as well--he doesn't entirely trust them, Skyrocket in particular, but he's sure they won't shoot him in the back.
--My Manhunter will take advantage of the others or manipulate them if it seems expedient, however, and will have no shame about it.
--My Manhunter would not ask for help from the Power Company if someone was trying to come after him personally (at least, if it wasn't definitely going to spill over into company operations). It wouldn't even get as far as the question of whether or not they'd help; it's his problem and he'd deal with it himself.
--My Manhunter believes that there is nothing that could ever make him take a job from which he did not expect to return alive. He may one day find himself badly surprised on the subject (and shaken, if he survives), but it hasn't happened yet.
--My Manhunter generally dislikes killing people who are not trying to kill him (although if they are trying to kill him, he's not going to be particularly discriminating about why they're doing it or what he does to make them stop) and while he has taken assassination jobs in the past and might do so again in the right situation, it's really not how he wants to make a living. (To some degree this is because the Council used the clones primarily as assassins.)
--My Manhunter does not go looking for people to help, but if he's confronted with an endangered innocent he'll step in unless he has a good reason. (What he considers to be a good reason might not be what someone else would, but he will have one.) This has not always been true--it's not very practical for a criminal and mercenary--and increasing discomfort with those situations is another reason he joined up with the Power Company.
--My Manhunter thinks that his money is for spending. He saves a certain amount, but in general he's terribly spendthrift; he loves walking into a store and buying something expensive for himself, just because he can.
--My Manhunter used to have random sex with his fellow clones, because they all did that; there were few or no women at the Council base, and the clones weren't regarded as human by anyone there anyway. He has no particular issues about having sex with non-clone men (and has done so more than once), but prefers women if available.
--My Manhunter has been in love once, during his first year or so after escaping from the Council. It didn't end well, and he considers it a painful and embarrassing mistake, born of inexperience, that he's not looking to repeat.
--My Manhunter much prefers to take attractive, charming women out on expensive dates after which there may be sex than to buy prostitutes or pick women up in bars, although he's done both of those too. "Intelligent" isn't that high up on the list of qualities he's looking for, but he does want partners who can carry on some semblance of a conversation.
--My Manhunter thinks that Skyrocket is an attractive woman, but for any number of good reasons he has no intention of ever saying so, much less doing anything about it. (Of course, sometimes good intentions do go astray...)
--My Manhunter does not gloat about having a healing factor when he's at a disadvantage; he knows full well that he can still be killed if someone tries hard enough, and he's not stupid enough to let them know they have to try that hard. (Why, yes, I'm still grouchy about MANHUNTER #11.)
--My Manhunter would have come to L.A. to find Kate Spencer, the latest Manhunter, and determine that she was not using that name to frame him for anything or otherwise set him up (and he would only bother because they're both operating in California; given any more distance he would have dismissed it entirely.) Once he had established this, he would leave, since he could care less if she murders super-villains, or what name she might use while doing so.
So these nine geniuses founded an organization called the Council in order to quietly meddle in the affairs of humanity and do whatever was necessary to save us from ourselves. To this end they recruited the superhero Manhunter, aka Paul Kirk, and trained and genetically enhanced him and created an army of mindless clones of him that he was supposed to lead for them. But Manhunter realized that the Council had become corrupt and murderous and became their enemy; eventually he destroyed them, dying in the process. Paul was assisted in his fight by Asano Nitobe, the Council's master martial artist who defected to join Paul, and Christine St. Clair, Interpol agent, who wrote a book about Paul afterwards; these two attempted to honor Paul by tracking down and killing all the surviving clones. (I know, I know, although in their defense Paul really did hate the clones.) But they missed one: an inexplicably independent-minded clone (with a healing factor, which the clones also weren't supposed to have) who ran away from the whole mess and used his skills to become a mercenary in Africa using the Manhunter name and costume and calling himself, um, Kirk DePaul. Years later, he signed up with The Power Company, a San Francisco-based superhero-for-hire company, headed by ex-lawyer Josiah Power and led in the field by Skyrocket, a straight-arrow Silver-Age-style superheroine who really does not care for Manhunter's coldblooded money-is-everything style. *pauses for breath* Right. I think that's the important stuff.
--My Manhunter really, truly does not want to be Paul Kirk (and doesn't want to spend a lot of effort proving that he's not Paul Kirk, either), and finds people who expect him to care about whether he's living up to Paul Kirk's standards to be terribly irritating. Although he doesn't actually run into all that many of them, especially in the circles in which he tends to operate; I like the idea that Paul Kirk has a mild degree of notoriety in the DCU, but he's not exactly Superman either. Kirk's ghost lives in DePaul's head to perhaps a greater degree than he usually admits, but it's not a conscious or a constant thing.
--My Manhunter particularly does not want to be Paul Kirk because Paul Kirk killed himself (somebody else would read the situation as "he nobly sacrificed his life," but in this case I think DePaul's assessment is at least as accurate, although he's mainly concerned with the end result in any case), and why on earth would he want to emulate that?
--My Manhunter uses Paul Kirk's codename and costume because they carry a certain rep and he's going to take what he can get out of the situation, or at least that's what he tells himself. He uses a version of Paul Kirk's real name because...uh...I have no idea, really. (I really think that was a misstep by Busiek--it's one thing for DePaul to be claiming he doesn't want anything to do with Paul Kirk and maybe it's true and maybe it isn't, and another for him to be saying that while doing something that gives him no plausible deniability on the subject whatsoever. Plus it's irritating when trying to discuss them.)
--My Manhunter likes getting paid, he likes getting paid a great deal of money, and he doesn't mind if he has to lie, cheat, or steal in order to do so. (This kind of goes without saying if you've ever read anything with the character, actually, but just to be clear.) He finds the concept of getting paid a great deal of money and not having to worry about law-enforcement authorities in the process to be pleasant, however, which is one reason he joined up with the Power Company.
--My Manhunter also does good deeds when he feels like it and is unembarrassed by them; as far as he's concerned he doesn't have to answer to anyone else's code of how he should behave, and if he wants to do the right thing without prompting then he will. But don't hold your breath waiting for him to keep doing it.
--My Manhunter is very, very arrogant; he thinks he's, ahem, the best there is at what he does, and enjoys proving that point to himself and others. He isn't above taking a job because he wants the challenge, although it goes without saying that it had better be a paying job. He gets away with it because he is, in general, just that good, although he's certainly capable of overestimating himself.
--My Manhunter will go to some lengths to complete any job which he agrees to, but it's more because he wants to protect his professional reputation--and get paid!--than because he puts an inherent value on his given word. (Also because he doesn't like to fail at anything.)
--My Manhunter was force-grown to mental and physical maturity in the Council's labs. Chronologically he's probably around eighteen; while he is, in most ways, an experienced adult, occasionally when he opens his mouth his actual age starts to show.
--My Manhunter was brainwashed by the Council, both physically and ideologically. All the clones were; the Council used all the means at hand to make them believe in the glorious cause of the Council and how the clones could have no higher (or other) desires than to serve that cause in whatever way the Council saw fit. He was protected to some degree from the literal brainwashing, possibly by his healing factor, possibly by something else that made him unique; the propaganda he had to shake off himself. Even now, he isn't entirely sure what would happen if he somehow had to confront the Council again. He tries not to think about it much, or indeed at all.
--My Manhunter is also still much angrier at--and more afraid of--the Council than he generally allows himself to realize.
--My Manhunter is grateful to Paul Kirk for killing the Council; this doesn't mean he considers himself to owe Kirk or Kirk's memory in any fashion. If somebody called him on this hard enough, he might find himself participating in something because it's what Kirk would have wanted, but it would be a difficult sell.
--My Manhunter didn't want to read Paul Kirk's biography, because he didn't really want to know how much they might have in common. But he did it anyway, because he needed to know how much of his personal history had just been made into public information. (Josiah Power and Skyrocket have both read it as well, because they believe in doing their homework, although it didn't tell them much that was useful--the book doesn't go into much detail about the clones, and much of what it does say is inapplicable to present-day DePaul.)
--My Manhunter suspects, because he also does his homework, that in addition to her other reasons for disliking him, Skyrocket associates him with the mercenaries who murdered her (civilian, scientist) parents. One day he may call her on this, but it's not an argument he's all that anxious to start.
--My Manhunter does not consider being a clone to be a shameful secret, although he doesn't particularly want to go into the details, and for obvious reasons it's not going to come up much in casual conversation.
--My Manhunter is not angry at Asano Nitobe and Christine St. Clair for tracking down and killing all the other surviving clones. It hurts--more than he's comfortable admitting--to know that they did so, but he doesn't think that they had any better choices, or that the other clones could have had any meaningful life without the Council.
--My Manhunter is somewhat bitter at Nitobe for having come to these realizations only after years and years of training clones for the Council and doing anything else they asked of him, because of a point of honor that doesn't mean anything to DePaul. He remembers Nitobe with some fondness from their training days, but doesn't think he has any moral high ground at all in this situation (although he's much less concerned with who's right about what than about whether they'll just stop trying to shoot him).
--My Manhunter has a fundamental mistrust of people who claim to want to save the world (in addition to it being an exercise he has absolutely no interest in engaging in himself). This colors his attitude towards Skyrocket, although the fact that she doesn't like him at all and wants to work on jobs that don't get him any money also has a good bit to do with it.
--My Manhunter has numerous friendly acquaintances, and a number of people that he feels he can trust or rely on to some degree, but no one (at least, no one still alive) that he considers a friend, the entirety of the Power Company presently included. And he prefers it that way.
--My Manhunter will not sell out, run out on, or try to kill any members of the Power Company unless he sees absolutely no other way out of a situation, and for preference he won't lie to them either (that, as much out of practical concerns than ethical ones). This has not always been true of his relationship with his associates in the past, but it's the way he prefers to operate, and he appreciates knowing that it works in reverse as well--he doesn't entirely trust them, Skyrocket in particular, but he's sure they won't shoot him in the back.
--My Manhunter will take advantage of the others or manipulate them if it seems expedient, however, and will have no shame about it.
--My Manhunter would not ask for help from the Power Company if someone was trying to come after him personally (at least, if it wasn't definitely going to spill over into company operations). It wouldn't even get as far as the question of whether or not they'd help; it's his problem and he'd deal with it himself.
--My Manhunter believes that there is nothing that could ever make him take a job from which he did not expect to return alive. He may one day find himself badly surprised on the subject (and shaken, if he survives), but it hasn't happened yet.
--My Manhunter generally dislikes killing people who are not trying to kill him (although if they are trying to kill him, he's not going to be particularly discriminating about why they're doing it or what he does to make them stop) and while he has taken assassination jobs in the past and might do so again in the right situation, it's really not how he wants to make a living. (To some degree this is because the Council used the clones primarily as assassins.)
--My Manhunter does not go looking for people to help, but if he's confronted with an endangered innocent he'll step in unless he has a good reason. (What he considers to be a good reason might not be what someone else would, but he will have one.) This has not always been true--it's not very practical for a criminal and mercenary--and increasing discomfort with those situations is another reason he joined up with the Power Company.
--My Manhunter thinks that his money is for spending. He saves a certain amount, but in general he's terribly spendthrift; he loves walking into a store and buying something expensive for himself, just because he can.
--My Manhunter used to have random sex with his fellow clones, because they all did that; there were few or no women at the Council base, and the clones weren't regarded as human by anyone there anyway. He has no particular issues about having sex with non-clone men (and has done so more than once), but prefers women if available.
--My Manhunter has been in love once, during his first year or so after escaping from the Council. It didn't end well, and he considers it a painful and embarrassing mistake, born of inexperience, that he's not looking to repeat.
--My Manhunter much prefers to take attractive, charming women out on expensive dates after which there may be sex than to buy prostitutes or pick women up in bars, although he's done both of those too. "Intelligent" isn't that high up on the list of qualities he's looking for, but he does want partners who can carry on some semblance of a conversation.
--My Manhunter thinks that Skyrocket is an attractive woman, but for any number of good reasons he has no intention of ever saying so, much less doing anything about it. (Of course, sometimes good intentions do go astray...)
--My Manhunter does not gloat about having a healing factor when he's at a disadvantage; he knows full well that he can still be killed if someone tries hard enough, and he's not stupid enough to let them know they have to try that hard. (Why, yes, I'm still grouchy about MANHUNTER #11.)
--My Manhunter would have come to L.A. to find Kate Spencer, the latest Manhunter, and determine that she was not using that name to frame him for anything or otherwise set him up (and he would only bother because they're both operating in California; given any more distance he would have dismissed it entirely.) Once he had established this, he would leave, since he could care less if she murders super-villains, or what name she might use while doing so.
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-19 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-19 02:47 am (UTC)His first romantic experience could have gone badly in any number of ways, and I haven't given it that much thought, but I suspect that he fell for his lady fair much harder than she fell for him, and got badly burned when that fact became clear--she, of course, would have expected a level of experience and an understanding of the rules that he just didn't have.
Fic? Well, you never know...
no subject
Date: 2005-07-19 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-20 01:20 am (UTC)That said, as you may have gathered, I was passionately obsessed with DePaul, and far be it from me to discourage anyone from wanting to read about him! *g* And Christine and Asano really do show up wanting to kill him (here (http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?action=fullsize&issue=63065424397%205), although sadly that plot didn't get as much of the issue as that cover would suggest) and hung around for a bit afterwards looking for evidence that--well, that they'd be justified in shooting him, basically. Which they never come close to getting--DePaul is not a nice person, and has certainly committed a variety of criminal acts in his past, but there's absolutely no justification for killing him out of hand except that he's a brainwashed minion of the Council, and he isn't. I always desperately wanted to see Skyrocket made aware of that situation, since she couldn't stand DePaul either but would have had to defend him from people she very probably had been thinking of as heroic (it's not canon that she read Christine's book, but she did acquire knowledge about and an opinion on Paul Kirk from somewhere). Alas, they never try anything when she's around.
*thinks* Oh, right--and Ollie shows up to make trouble at one point. If you needed incentive. *g*
no subject
Date: 2005-07-20 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-20 12:09 pm (UTC)