Abner Jenkins
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MACH-IV (Abner Ronald Jenkins), formerly known as the Beetle and MACH-1, 2 and 3 ) is a fictional character, a former supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe.
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[edit] Fictional character biography
Abner Jenkins was born in Baltimore, Maryland.
[edit] Criminal career
Abner Jenkins was a master mechanic at an aircraft parts factory who became dissatisfied with his boring, low paying job. Using his considerable mechanical knowledge, Jenkins built an armor-plated, strength-augmenting suit, a pair of gravity-defying wings, suction-fingered gloves, and a cybernetic control helmet. Calling himself the Beetle, Jenkins decided to use his battlesuit for fame, wealth, and adventure. Believing a victory over half the Fantastic Four would make him an overnight sensation, the Beetle chose to lure the Human Torch and the Thing into battle. Unfortunately, the Thing and the Torch defeated him, and he was sent to prison.
Paroled a short time later, he sought revenge on the Torch, but found himself in battle with Spider-Man instead. Once again, he was defeated. Upon his release, he decided to forego petty revenge and concentrated on the acquisition of wealth. At one point the Beetle was recruited by the Collector to serve as his unwilling agent. Under the Collector's domination, the Beetle faced the Avengers. He battled Spider-Man and Daredevil separately on various occasions.
He later became a member of the group of supervillains who briefly posed as the Defenders in order to confuse the authorities and earn a bit of public trust.[1]
Losing every battle against costumed crimefighters and failing to accumulate very much wealth, the Beetle offered his services to underworld financier Justin Hammer, who kept various superhuman criminals on retainers. His offer accepted, the Beetle was dispatched against the original Iron Man, as part of a battalion of costumed criminals. His Beetle armor was severely damaged by Iron Man during the fight.
Jenkins then invested all of the capital he could acquire into the modification and refinement of his Beetle armor. With the assistance of the Thinker, he produced a new battlesuit with far greater capacities than his old one. Before launching his comeback, the Beetle recruited the criminal Ringer to put Spider-Man through his paces. The Beetle wished to study Spider-Man's fighting style and program it into a computer system so he could anticipate his opponent's moves. Despite his preparations and new battlesuit, the Beetle was again defeated by Spider-Man. He was later freed from prison by Egghead who recruited him for his Masters of Evil organization. The Beetle and other Masters of Evil were defeated by the Avengers and arrested. The Beetle organized his own team of super-villainous mercenaries called the Sinister Syndicate. The team ran afoul of Spider-Man and Silver Sable, and later imploded due to internal conflicts.
[edit] As a member of the Thunderbolts
When most of Earth's costumed adventurers, including the then-core membership of the Avengers and Fantastic Four, seemingly died battling Onslaught, Baron (Helmut) Zemo recruited Jenkins and a number of other villains to trick the world into believing they were heroes called the Thunderbolts. Jenkins adopted the guise of MACH-1. Zemo's plan ultimately failed, but Jenkins and other members decided to try making the Thunderbolts a legitimate team. When Hawkeye took over the group's leadership, he convinced Jenkins to serve out the remainder of his prison term as a show of good faith to the public, but another criminal used the guise of the Beetle to frame him. While at Seagate, Jenkins coped with resentment and occasional assaults from other super-criminals and refused a chance to participate in a mass escape organized by his old employer Justin Hammer. Instead, Jenkins foiled the breakout, an act which brought him to the attention of the government's Commission on Superhuman Activities (CSA). They recruited Jenkins to participate in a sting operation aimed at Hammer. Jenkins agreed, using a newly-designed armor to operate as the Beetle once more. The activities of the new Beetle attracted the attention of the Thunderbolts. Fearing the CSA might not honor the terms of their bargain, Jenkins fled CSA custody after completing the operation and rejoined the Thunderbolts. Hawkeye blackmailed the CSA into allowing Jenkins to remain free, even though the government's records would list Jenkins as still being in prison, in exchange for keeping the CSA's exploitation of Jenkins' secret.
Jenkins created the MACH-2 battlesuit after modifying his MACH-1 armor with the aid of Techno (a robot based on the Fixer, who was then posing as Thunderbolts' machinesmith Ogre). Techno also altered Jenkins' physical appearance using "dermaplasty" technology since the public was not supposed to know MACH-2 was Abner Jenkins, and the mischievous Techno had some fun at Jenkins' expense by giving him the features of an African American. While this change made his girlfriend Songbird uneasy for a time, Jenkins himself adjusted quickly and reestablished himself as one of the team's most confident and capable members.
When the Thunderbolts uncovered and thwarted a CSA-connected conspiracy to exterminate all superhumans, Hawkeye blackmailed the CSA into giving the Thunderbolts full pardons in exchange for the group's silence; however, CSA agent Henry Peter Gyrich insisted that he would not go along with the deal unless Hawkeye went to prison for his technically illegal vigilante activities as a member of the Thunderbolts. Hawkeye agreed, despite the protests of his teammates, and surrendered to federal custody. Most of the rest of the Thunderbolts, including MACH-2 and Songbird, were pardoned and released. However, as part of the terms of their deal, they were forbidden from public use of superhuman powers or costumed identities. MACH-2 and Songbird turned their equipment over to the authorities and started new civilian lives in the town of Burton Canyon, Colorado as Abe Jenkins and Melissa Gold.
Ironically, Jenkins found himself employment with the Burton Canyon police department as a tech support specialist. Unfortunately, their quiet lives were shattered when the super-criminal Graviton launched his latest attempt at world conquest in Burton Canyon, imprisoning the world's superheroes and reshaping the planet in his own image. Despite their reluctance to risk their newfound freedom, Jenkins and Songbird agreed to join Citizen V (secretly Baron Zemo controlling Citizen V's body) in attacking Graviton as part of a new team of Thunderbolts. Jenkins was given new armor provided by Citizen V's financiers, the V-Battalion, and called himself MACH-3. Graviton was defeated and the world was saved, but MACH-3 and the other Thunderbolts disappeared in an implosion created by the dying Graviton's power, with the exception of Songbird, who appeared left behind as the sole survivor.
[edit] On Counter-Earth
On Counter-Earth, the team continued to band together, searching for a way to return to their own world and beginning to establish themselves as the leading superheroes of the troubled Counter-Earth.
After a failed attempt to escape to the real Earth, the team entered into an uneasy alliance with their original leader, Baron Zemo, in an ongoing effort to save Counter-Earth from the various ills plaguing that alternate world. The Thunderbolts went on to revive the flying city of Attilan and populate it with refugees and survivors of the war-torn and nearly-destroyed world. The Thunderbolts became renowned for their heroism and efforts to solve the world's problems. They were hailed by many to be the world's saviors. Nevertheless, Jenkins appeared to be going through the motions; his heart being elsewhere as his relationship with Songbird was thought to be lost.
On Counter-Earth, Zemo's Thunderbolts had encountered the effects of a white hole spawned from an abandoned spacecraft, as its engine's radiation began eating Earth from the inside. The Thunderbolts embarked on a plan to combine their powers to punt the alien ship off the Earth and sever the link between the worlds. However, in order to complete this plan, the Thunderbolts needed to be inside the engine-spawned void in order to keep it clear of the real Earth as it closed. By so doing, they would reemerge from the void on the real Earth, forfeiting their roles and place on Counter-Earth. Emerging from the void, the Thunderbolts encountered their former teammates Hawkeye and Songbird, who had formed their own version of the Thunderbolts, who were similarly engaged with the void from the real Earth's counterpart of the spaceship. The two teams of Thunderbolts combined forces to plug the void and shunt the alien ship from Earth. Jenkins' reunion with Songbird was short-lived. Despite their feelings for each other, Jenkins left Songbird, once more remanding himself to police custody to serve the remainder of his sentence.
[edit] Back on Earth
For six months, Jenkins had been a model prisoner at Parsons Minimum Security prison in Illinois. He has since had his skin and face changed back to his original appearance, and has resumed contact with Songbird. Abe was recently approached by the Avengers on finding if they had been staying legit despite their suspicions. Abe told them they would have to stop Baron Zemo before he launched Project: Liberation, but that Moonstone was the one to really worry about. After Moonstone revealed her plans, Abe had Jolt contacted to help the Avengers and Thunderbolts stop her.
Following the conclusion to the battle, Abe was finally paroled from jail and made an announcement that he was reforming the Thunderbolts and that any former villains or superpowered individuals who wanted a second chance would be allowed to join. He found himself the group's leader and lover to Songbird. Things continued to go crazy when the Thunderbolts kept being put into tough situations as Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker threw new challenges to keep them busy, including adding Speed Demon to the team as a spy and allowing Fathom Five to attack New York City. Things finally came together when Abe revealed he always intended to take down Strucker. They succeeded in defeating HYDRA's scheme to destroy all of Manhattan, but Strucker managed to escape. Currently, Abe is dealing with the status of his team being city heroes again.
[edit] Team Beetle
Working with Zemo again, as Hero Hunters during Marvel's Civil War storyline, it has been revealed that Abe oversees a small team of three college students, each of whom wears one of the three previous Beetle armors (the classic beetle-esque original, its streamlined update, and Leila Davis' massive tank-like exoskeleton). Leila briefly used the Beetle identity as a member of the Redeemers.
[edit] Depictions in other media
[edit] Television
He also appeared in the 1980s Saturday morning animated series Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends voiced by Christopher Collins. The Beetle stole a crime-detection computer and the Power Booster invented by Tony Stark to increase his power. He was the first villain that the Spider-Friends faced together in that origin episode.
The Beetle made a brief appearance in the Iron Man animated series of the mid-1990s, during the "Armor Wars" two-parter, in which he was attacked by Iron Man and had his armor - based on stolen Stark designs - deactivated. He is voiced by John Reilly with a Liverpudlian accent that evokes the similarly-named band.
[edit] Video games
- The Beetle played a minor role in the sequel to the Spider-Man game for the PlayStation, Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro. He only appeared in cutscenes and did not appear as a boss character.
- In the Ultimate Spider-Man video game (released September 23, 2005), the Beetle makes his Ultimate continuity debut, acting as an agent for the Latverians, collecting genetic information from superhumans to allow them to genetically engineer super-soldiers. The notable actions he took in the game were stealing a vial of sand from which it is implied the Ultimate Sandman has a connection, freeing Norman Osborn (also known as the Green Goblin) and capturing Venom who later defeats him. He also battled Spider-Man shortly after freeing the Green Goblin, but escaped by ducking into the nearby Latverian Embassy. It is unknown whether or not there are plans to include him in the ongoing Ultimate Spider-Man comics series. He was voiced by Tucker Smallwood.
[edit] References
- ^ Defenders Vol. 1 #63-65
