Monarch (comics)
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Monarch is the name of a DC Comics supervillain created by Archie Goodwin, Denny O'Neil and Dan Jurgens. Hank Hall the character who first became Monarch was created by Steve Ditko. Monarch first appears in the one-shot, Armageddon 2001 #1, cover dated October (1991), and becomes Extant for the Zero Hour crossover. The second Monarch is Nathaniel Adam, reflecting the controversy surrounding the last minute change to Hank Hall of the original Monarch.
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[edit] Hank Hall
Monarch is an oppressive tyrant from a bleak, dystopian Earth fifty years in the future. The people were unhappy with his rule, particularly a scientist named Matthew Ryder, an expert on temporal studies, who was convinced he could use his technology to travel back in time and prevent the maniacal ruler from ever coming to power. He learned that forty years ago, one of Earth's heroes would eventually turn evil and become Monarch, and ten years from that he would conquer the world.
[edit] Armageddon 2001
Chosen by Monarch to take part in a time-travel experiment, Matthew Ryder traveled back to the DC Universe equivalent of 1991; Ryder was determined to find out who the Monarch really was and, if possible, kill him before he could rise to power. As he travelled through the rift, his body mutated into a form of living temporal energy, and upon arriving at his destination, he took the name Waverider.
Although Waverider used his abilities to look into the future of various characters, he could not pinpoint who would become Monarch. Eventually, Waverider accidentally came in physical contact with Captain Atom, unleashing a storm of temporal energy that opened a gate to the future through which Monarch emerged. Monarch, it seems, had been monitoring Waverider's every move in the past ever since he left the future, and merely waited for the perfect time to travel back and stop him from erasing his existence.
In a subsequent battle with the Justice League, Monarch retreated, taking Dawn Granger, the current Dove, with him. Hank Hall followed, and caught up to him just in time to see Dawn killed in front of his eyes. Being created as two beings whose natures were supposed to be in balance, Hank became enraged when his partner's pacifist nature could no longer contain his warlike spirit. He beat the Monarch to death, only to learn the horrible truth: he was the one who would be the Monarch of the future. Upon seeing Monarch's dead body and the device he was building to enslave humanity, he mused that the Earth would need someone to keep the balance, so he put on Monarch's armor and continued building his machine. The reveal of Hank Hall as Monarch led to some controversy amongst the fan community.
Eventually, the Justice League found him, and Captain Atom feeling guilty that he let Monarch slip through the timestream in the first place, decided to fight him one-on-one. The battle caused Atom's suit and Monarch's energy to clash, creating a portal that sent them both back in time to the age of the dinosaurs.
[edit] Armageddon: The Alien Agenda
After being thrown back to the middle of the Triassic, Monarch and Captain Atom encounter hostile aliens who attempt to enlist each one separately and without the other's knowledge, to assist them in creating a wormhole. The wormhole's creation would destroy the Milky Way Galaxy of which Earth was a part, but would allow the aliens to travel freely.
[edit] Extant
[edit] Zero Hour
Monarch joins forces with renegade Green Lantern Hal Jordan, now known as Parallax and becomes Extant during Zero Hour, eventually confronting Waverider and absorbing him and most of his time-warping abilities, giving him the power to travel through time as he pleased.
Some time after Zero Hour, Extant is killed while facing the JSA.
[edit] Nathaniel Adam
[edit] Extreme Justice
In the Justice League spinoff, Extreme Justice, a new version of Monarch was introduced, but he now had the identity of Nathaniel Adam, better known as Captain Atom. He revealed that Captain Atom was actually a copy of him, created as a side-effect of the process that trapped him in the timestream.
He was housed in a shell of alien metal, under which an atomic bomb was detonated, propelling him into the quantum field. There, the metal fused with Adam, allowing him to survive in the void, and giving him a connection to the 'quantum field'. The excess metal formed into a clone of him, which re-entered the timestream in the mid 1980's as Captain Atom, unaware that it was a clone.
Adam escaped the quantum field when Monarch (Hank Hall) was trapped there after the events of Armageddon The Alien Agenda. Adam trained Hall in how to manipulate the quantum field, enough to allow him to gain his Extant powers of time travel, allowing him to escape back into the timestream. In return, Hall sent the Monarch armor back to Nathaniel Adam, allowing him to escape to the 1990's.
[edit] Infinite Crisis and Beyond
After some time trapped in a parallel universe, Captain Atom managed to return to the DC Universe. One Year Later, he is revealed to be contained inside a secret S.H.A.D.E. facility in Blüdhaven and used to administer radiation treatments to metahumans. Apparently, his voyage back to DC Universe caused multiple damages on his radiation-shielding skin, leaving him comatose and unable to keep down his body radiations to safe levels, forcing the modern day Atomic Knights to keep him constantly contained.
The Knights fitted Atom with an updated version of the Monarch armor in order to contain the radiation leaking from his breached skin. Captain Atom awakens, and breaks free of the facility. He then apparently kills the rampaging Major Force by absorbing his energy, and, after the city has been evacuated, triggers a vast explosion, completely obliterating what was left of Blüdhaven. His mental condition is unknown at this time.
Note that Captain Atom has not been referred to as Monarch in the comics, but Dan DiDio refers to him as Monarch in Wizard Magazine.[1]
[edit] Equipment
- The original Monarch's armor was crafted using advanced technology from an alternate future, it was highly durable and had various uncatalogued functions.
- The updated Monarch armor currently worn by Captain Atom, contains a "nanoweave" designed to contain radiation leaking from a breach in his chest. It also contained instruments for monitoring his vital signs, through a direct neural interface.
[edit] References
- ^ "One of the things we want to do with Captain Atom, and what comes about with Monarch, is to see what the differences between the Wildstorm and the DC Universe are. You see the difference in attitude, and how the characters act and behave. And some of those behavioral patterns that Captain Atom picked up in the Wildstorm Universe, will affect how he behaves as Monarch."
Dan Didio as interviewed by Dylan Brucie. Wizard Magazine #179, page 46 July 27th 2006.
