Kev Hawkins
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Kev Hawkins is a comic book anti-hero who first appeared in an Authority one shot in 2002. Kev was created by Garth Ennis and Glenn Fabry and is a (former) SAS operative who is forever down on his luck. Despite all his training, Kevin is not very muscular or intelligent and is cursed with probably the worst luck of anybody on the Wildstorm Earth.
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[edit] History
[edit] Life in the army
Kev Hawkins lead a rather uneventful life, with no money, no proper education and no significant other. Wanting to escape Luton, Kev joined up with the British Army. It turned out that Kev was rather good at being a soldier and he enjoyed his time, until one day a man caught Kev in bed with his wife. This man later turned out to be Kev's new commanding officer. After the man made Kev pay by putting him on any humiliating assignment and giving him the blame for everything that went wrong in the camp, Kev had enough and joined up with the SAS, the only place his commanding officer couldn't reach him. Motivated by his desire to escape, Kev finished the SAS training and was assigned to various missions.
During a mission in Northern Ireland, he had to kill both members of the IRA and the Ulster Defense Association, which meant that assassins from both movements wanted revenge for the rest of his life. Every few weeks or so, Kev gets attacked by a former terrorist or terrorist squads, but escapes unscathed because his assassins tend to suffer strokes from bad luck or take each other out. Kev had a relationship of mutual loathing with Froggett, the British Intelligence official who disposes of all the corpses Kev (and others) make.
Kev's regiment was once loaned to the Indian government, and the mission saw his friend Danny killing an elephant. Danny had emotional trouble after this and when they later stumbled upon a baby tiger, Danny couldn't obey the order to kill it (as the mother had died, they thought that the baby had no chance of survival on its own). Instead Danny hid it in his backpack and took it home. A few years later, Kev was promoted and given the command over his first operation: protecting a cabinet minister. The cabinet minister in question blackmailed his SAS bodyguards to find him a prostitute - otherwise he would have them fired - and the group decided to take him to Danny's house, the only suitable location. When suspicious figures (who turned out to be tabloid reporters) were spotted, Kev grabbed the minister and locked him inside the basement... the same basement where Danny had hidden his now full-grown tiger.
Kev helped Danny and his tiger to escape before questioning, but remained behind himself, unable to contemplate dropping out of the army and not following orders, and so took the full blame for the minister being eaten. Kev was fired from the SAS and given to MI5 to do every assignment no one else would do. Any complaints from his part would see his superior officer to mention "the thing with the tiger" and he knew he had no choice but to obey. Meanwhile, it was hinted Danny was now working as an eco-terrorist alongside the very tiger that has caused so much trouble.
[edit] The Authority
In 2002, Kev got assigned the mission to kill the Authority, being handed an old gun and a device that would allow him to teleport to the Carrier. To the complete surprise of the Authority, who thought it was all a joke, the gun turned out to be capable of killing even the invulnerable Apollo and contained more bullets than it should have, and Kev killed the whole team in twelve seconds. Unfortunately, it turned out that he'd been assigned the mission by an alien masquerading as his boss, all to allow an invasion fleet to attack Earth. Kev then had to convince the sentient Carrier to reverse time to before the Authority died so they could handle the invasion, but before he could escape they discovered that he'd killed them. For a moment it seemed like he would escape unscathed (mainly by being completely pathetic), but an ill-timed remark - "what, are they a couple of poofs or something?" - about Apollo and the Midnighter earned him the beating of a life-time and Kev ended up in hospital.
Two years later, Apollo and Midnighter were forced to contact Kevin again: it turned out the cabinet minister that was eaten had actually been an alien fugitive named B'eeef, and the alien Rukalai, who had just neutralised the rest of the Authority, were threatening to destroy the Earth if he wasn't handed over. Kev and his former SAS mates - Tiny, Mick and Bob - took them to the fetid swamp where Froggett dumped all his bodies, where B'eeef had regrown his head. The team captured B'eeef and defeated all the zombies he'd reanimated, but Kev inadvertently made another attempt on the Authority's life when, coming across a nuclear bomb B'eeef had made, he chucked it through the open Door leading to the Carrier. The Midnighter, annoyed at the bomb destroying "all our ****ing stuff", later met with Kev and, after arguing with him, told him that the real reason he was a homophobe was because that's what he thought "tough guys" were like - that all his life, Kev had been letting others tell him how to think.
When a mysterious creature appeared on the Carrier in 2005 and took out the Authority by throwing pies at their faces, a heavily wounded Midnighter escaped the Carrier and landed in Britain, sending a request to British Intelligence to have Kev bring him in. Kev, already dealing with the recent suicide of Tiny, reluctantly went but was double crossed by Mick, who was shadowing him. Midnighter had expected this and gave Kev the password to the file Royal Oak; investigating later on, Kev discovered it was a plot to create superhumans for the British government, using the Midnighter's DNA, by experimenting on children; the attack on the Carrier had been the result of a computer virus planted by MI5 in order to capture one of the Authority. Kev went to save the Midnighter and the children and was confronted by Mick, and was shocked to hear that Mick doesn't care about any of this or even about the recent death of Tiny. Kev killed him in a rage and when his boss entered & commanded him to kill the Midnighter and the children, he shot her too.
Now a wanted man, he left the kids (who were unbearable brats) at an orphanage and returned with the Midnighter to defeat the creature. Midnighter ordered the Carrier to purge the virus from its memory, revealing the creature to have really been Froggett, using the Carrier's own systems to transform himself in a creature capable of defeating the Authority. Midnighter gave Kev the chance to torture Froggett with a spiked baseball bat and afterwards they threw him out of an airlock. Kev returned to London to have a last drink before starting life on the run, with the Midnighter showing some grudging respect for him changing his ways.
[edit] Running jokes and repeated themes
- Each story begins with members of the Provisional IRA or the Ulster Volunteer Force attempting (and failing) to assassinate Kev in order to "avenge (their) noble brothers".
- The start of each story also has a scene in which Kev loses money on a horse-race because the horse becomes incapacitated. This happens in more and more ludicrous ways each time.
- Another running joke sees Kev seemingly commenting on a terrible tragedy in a newspaper, only for it to be revealed that he is reading a sports article.
- The first three stories also featured ongoing arguments between Kev and Froggett, the man assigned to clear up the bodies of everyone that tries to kill Kev.
- Kev often finds out that a friend of his is gay when he goes on a gay-bashing rant.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Individual series
- The Authority: Kev (oneshot) (2002)
- The Authority: More Kev #1-4 (2004)
- The Authority: The Magnificent Kevin #1-5 (2005-2006)
- A Man Called Kev #1-5 (2006)
[edit] Collections
- The Authority: Kev (2005) - Collects The Authority: Kev and The Authority: More Kev #1-4
- The Authority: The Magnificent Kevin (2006) - Collects The Authority: The Magnificent Kevin #1-5.
