Hardware (comics)

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Hardware

Hardware #1

Publisher	Milestone Comics
First appearance	Hardware #1 (1993)
Created by	Dwayne McDuffie

Characteristics
Alter ego	Curtis "Curt" Metcalf
Affiliations	Icon, Barraki Young
Abilities	Uses a suit with a variety of high-tech gadgets

Hardware (real name Curt Metcalf) is a Milestone Comics superhero. Created by Dwayne McDuffie, he first appeared in Hardware #1 (1993). Hardware was the first of Milestone's titles to be published, and (along with Blood Syndicate, Icon, and Static) was one of the company's flagship titles.

Curtis "Curt" Metcalf is a genius inventor who, in his Hardware identity, uses a variety of high-tech gadgets to fight organised crime. A central irony of the series (of which Metcalf is fully aware) is that Metcalf's employer, respected businessman Edwin Alva - who provides the resources Metcalf uses to create Hardware's hardware - is secretly the crime boss who Hardware is trying to bring down.

[edit] The Origin

Curtis "Curt" Metcalf was a working class child prodigy who was discovered aged 12/13 by a big-time businessman, Edwin Alva (Sr), who with the blessing of Curt's parents, enrolled Curt in "A Better Chance" - "a program intended to get minority students into elite prep schools". Curt proved to be much smarter than all the other prep school students, graduating aged 14, and earning his first college degree aged 15. Edwin Alva Sr paid for Curt's whole college tuition up to six or seven college degrees, in exchange for Curt coming to work for Alva Industries (in the "Inspiration Factory") after graduation, with his "own lab, entirely too big a salary, and mandate to indulge (his) curiosity by investigating whatever struck (his) fancy"; and Curt's inventions made Edwin Alva Sr millions of dollars.

After a few years, Curt, wanting a share of profits earned by his inventions, asked Edwin Alva for a "royalty point or two". Edwin Alva's answer was, "Curtis let us dispense with any misconceptions you may be labouring under. You are not 'family'. You are an employee. Neither are you 'Heir apparent'. You are a cog in the machine. My machine. You are not 'respected', Curtis. You are merely 'useful'. You may go now." Curt's first thought was to quit, but it was in his contract that he could not work for a competitor: "If (he wanted) to work in (his) field (of expertise), (he) had to do it for Alva."

Curt thought that maybe, with some advanced hacking, he could find something on Alva Sr to use as leverage, but found that almost everything about Edwin Alva was "Stone Cold Crooked":

Curt: "It took me weeks to put it all together, but the evidence was clear and incontrovertible. Edwin Alva is at the center of an incredibly complex web of corruption. My benefactor and role model, the economic saviour and humanitarian piller of the city of Dakota has connections to organized crime. He launders tens of millions of dollars in drug money, he has most of the city and state government in is his pocket, he illegally manufactures weapons and sells them to foreign governments."

Curt decided to stop Alva first by anonymously sending "copies of evidence to the FBI, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the state and local police, several newspapers and, just for fun, Hard Copy and A Current Affair." Then he waited a while for the fireworks, but learned that Alva was too big, beyond the reach of the law, so Curtis Metcalf then decided that maybe Alva wasn't beyond his reach; so with Alva's own equipment and resources, Curt created "Hardware - the High Tech Creature of the Night, who's been checkmating Alva's illegal operations for the last ten months is, in a way Alva's own creation."

So just about every night Curt dons a selection of his many high tech gadgets - (which he hides away in an abandoned basement/bomb shelter, connected to Curt's private lab by an old, sealed-off elevator shaft hidden behind a huge bank of machinery that can be swung away from the wall like a door) to track down and destroy all of Alva's illegal business operations and Alva's factories where weapons of war are manufactured. "This used to be a bomb shelter. Now it's where I keep all the stuff I've scammed from Alva. He's turned the city upside down looking for Hardware. I live in his basement."

[edit] Characters (Heroes, Allies and Enemies)

Curtis "Curt" Metcalf/Hardware -
Edwin Alva. Sr - owner of Alva Industries and is the leader of the Indigo Cell in the S.Y.S.T.E.M. organization.
Reprise - a super-human mercenary with the power to make duplicates of himself
Barraki Young - Curtis's girlfriend
Deacon "Phreaky Deak" Stuart - a hardcore computer hacker, a friend of Curtis Metcalf's; Deacon "Phreaky Deak" Stuart was first introduced in issue 5.
Augustus Freeman IV/Icon - Another character from the Dakotaverse. Alien, Grew up during Civil War era as a "By Your Bootstraps" type, was later convinced to use his powers actively for good.
Deathwish - a psychotic vigilante obsessed with sex related crimes, he was the victim of a brutal family raping of which only he survived. Deathwish was first introduced in issue 5 going up against Hardware; Deathwish appeared in Hardware 6 times and got his own spin-off in December, 1994 - which lasted for 4 issues, Deathwish appeared in a total of 10 comicbook appearances.
Tiffany Evans/Technique - a phenom, introduced in issue 9, who under Alva's orders became Technique to stop Hardware; in the resulting battle Technique beats up on Hardware badly, teaching him a lesson in humility.
Harm - a super-human mob inforcer who is actually an undercover cop, introduced in issue 10.
Transit - a teleporting superhuman villain.
Headmaster - the leader of the Star Chamber.
Holocaust - A pyrotechnic, member of the Blood Syndicate; later takes up the name Pyre and leaves the Syndicate to pursue organized crime on his own.
Iron Butterfly - guest-starring from the Shadow Cabinet.
Cornelius - a mob leader, by faking the death of Hardware at the hands of Harm, Harm was left in control of Cornelius's mob sector in Dakota.