Hardware (comics)
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Hardware (real name Curt Metcalf) is a Milestone Comics superhero published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Hardware #1, (April 1993), and was created by Dwayne McDuffie and Denys Cowan.
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[edit] Publication history
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.
[edit] Fictional character biography
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.
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 Sr. for a "royalty point or two". Edwin Alva Sr.'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 Sr. was "Stone Cold Crooked":
Curt: "It took me weeks to put it all together, but the evidence was clear and incontrovertible. Edwin Alva Sr. 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] Supporting characters
- Barraki Young - Curtis's girlfriend
- 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.
- Deacon "Phreaky Deak" Stuart - a hardcore computer hacker, a friend of Curtis Metcalf's; Deacon "Phreaky Deak" Stuart was first introduced in issue 5.
- 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 six times and got his own 4 issue spinoff mini-series in December, 1994.
- Edwin Alva. Sr - owner of Alva Industries and is the leader of the Indigo Cell in the S.Y.S.T.E.M. organization.
- Harm - a super-human mob inforcer who is actually an undercover cop, introduced in issue 10.
- Reprise - a super-human mercenary with the power to make duplicates of himself
- Technique (Tiffany Evans) - 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.
- Transit - a teleporting superhuman villain.
[edit] External links
- a Hardware Bio page, part of the Milestone section of InternationalHero.co.uk
