Jumpers (Wild Cards)

The Jumpers are a fictional criminal gang in the Wild Cards anthology series, first appearing in One-Eyed Jacks, the eighth book of the series. Various jumpers continue to play a major role in the next three volumes of the series, Jokertown Shuffle, Double Solitaire, and Dealer's Choice. Originally thought to be a lone ace, known to the media as the Jumper, simultaneous jump attacks in different locations eventually revealed that there was more than one of them.

The Jumpers are a group of mostly teenage criminals with the ability to swap bodies with other people. They are created by Edward St. John Latham, a prominent attorney and secretly a major operative of crimelord Kien Phuc. When Latham is exposed to a new strain of Wild Card virus spread by The Sleeper in his "Typhoid Croyd" phase, he becomes the Ace called Prime, the creator of the Jumpers. Possessing no innate powers in and of himself, Latham could, through sexual contact with others, spread a stable mutation of the virus that endowed the recipient with the power to swap bodies with another. With Latham's taste for teenage runaways and prostitutes (male and female), there was soon a small group of wild card criminals all sharing the same power, committing vicious acts of mayhem and robbery in the body of their chosen victim, then jumping away to freedom. The first recipient of Latham's gift was most likely David Butler, an intern with Latham, Strauss.

Thus began the "jumper" arm of the Shadow Fists triune organization (the other two branches composed of Joker gangs like the Werewolves and Asian gangs such as the Immaculate Egrets). Immune to the jumper power he had bestowed on a variety of teenage boys and girls, Latham was content to create as large an army as his criminal accomplices wished. Based on The Rox (Ellis Island), protected by Bloat's Wall, and under the direct control of a deputy leader (first David and, later, Blaise Andrieux) "Prime" let his jumpers do as they wished for the most part, occasionally selecting one or two of his more expendable creations for special missions.

During his brief career as an ace Latham created dozens of jumpers. Some of the more notable jumpers include Molly Bolt, K.C. Strange, Red, Blackhead, Blaise, and Zelda. Molly Bolt stole Mistral's body and wind powers before the Second Battle of the Rox. K.C. Strange had a brief fling with Captain Trips and helped spring his daughter from government custody. Blaise, Dr. Tachyon's grandson, was their leader until he fled to Takis following the First Battle of the Rox. Zelda was the last jumper created, literally minutes prior to Latham's death. Leader of the jumpers after Blaise's departure, Zelda stole Pulse's body and laser powers, eventually dying in combat with Wyungare during the second Battle of the Rox. Two notable characters who wanted to become jumpers, but were unsuccessful, include Kelly Jenkins and Fantasy. Kelly was a jumper wannabe that Blaise eventually terrorized into a bizarre body exchange with the alien Dr. Tachyon. Fantasy was a minor ace that wanted the jumper power, but mistakenly slept with Mr. Nobody, a shapeshifting ace disguised as Latham.

The Jumpers used their powers for petty crimes and cruelty, until the "Jump the Rich" scheme proposed by Bloat, which involved jumping wealthy but old or sickly individuals into young, healthy bodies for a steep price, and then offering the same deal to those formerly young and healthy individuals, until the coffers were empty. Most jumpers were eventually captured by the government and imprisoned in cells lined with one-way mirrors, where they were tricked into jumping into elderly bodies and gassed to death. (The jumpers' power only worked line-of-sight, although one jumper, Zelda, does manage to jump someone during sexual intercourse while blinded.)

The remaining jumpers met their end during the "card sharks" storyline. A group of about a dozen jumpers had been spared from the Rox and imprisonment and were recruited by the anti-Wild Card conspiracy known as the Card Sharks. Overseen by Philip Baron Von Herzenhagen, the jumpers were used to augment the Shark's personal attributes, by jumping them into younger more sexually attractive bodies, as well as their collective political power, by jumping their agents into the bodies of politicians. Herzenhagen was using the jumpers to shepherd anti-wild card legislation through congress. For the coup de grace he intended to jump himself into the body of the President, in order to prevent a veto of said legislation. His plan fell apart when his organization became the target of a revenge scheme by aces Shad (more properly, Black Shadow) and Croyd Crenson (the previously mentioned Sleeper). In an assault on the Shark's safe house, Shad murdered the remaining jumpers by using his darkness power to neutralize their abilities, prompting Herzenhagen to ask "how does someone with a shotgun kill a jumper without getting jumped?"

However, if should be noted that, given the abilities of the jumpers, it is impossible to definitively state whether or not all of them have been accounted for.