Doctor (Wildstorm)

The Doctor is the name of several fictional characters in the Wildstorm Universe.

Doctor lineage

The Doctors are a lineage of humans who have been chosen by the Earth itself to serve as the Earth's shaman and protector since the dawn of humanity. They are granted magical abilities. Each Doctor inherits the position the second his predecessor dies. When a Doctor dies, his soul joins the Garden of Ancestral Memory, a spiritual realm where the current Doctor can commune with his predecessors.

Fictional character biographies

First Doctor

The first of the modern day Doctors, an African-American, was a member of a group called the Changers, who were led by the idealistic superhero the High. The group's plan was to change the world by removing the structure of society itself, eliminating all crime and war in the process. The Doctor's part in the group's plan was to initiate a program of public education about the world's natural resources, such as plants and magic. Stormwatch attacked the group's base with a tailored acid bomb that killed the Doctor and his companions. This Doctor was seen several times afterwards in the Garden of Ancestral Memory and advised Thornedike whenever needed.

Renegade Doctor

In 1966, a heart surgeon became the Doctor.[1] After acquiring his powers, the Doctor slaughtered the entire population of three countries (in alphabetical order) and fell asleep after drinking every bottle of Dom Pérignon in existence at the time.[2] The Doctor was defeated when every active superhero on Earth joined forces to defeat him. The Doctor was stripped of his powers and imprisoned in a pocket dimension 20 million years in the past.[1]

However, the renegade Doctor communicated with the Earth in the present day from his prison and convinced the planet that humanity was killing it, causing mass devastation to places such as New York City and the Vatican.[3] Jeroen Thornedike, the then-current Doctor, was forced to give his powers back to his predecessor for an hour in order to fix the damage to the Earth.[4]

After regaining his powers, the renegade Doctor was brought into the present where he fought the Authority. During the fight, he travelled into the past and retroactively molested the Engineer as a teenager. As he was about to win the fight, the Doctor developed fifteen extra senses, including empathy with every living creature on the planet, which overwhelmed him. Apollo and the Engineer then used the distraction from the enhanced sensory input to behead the Doctor.[2]

Jeroen Thornedike

The Doctor
Publication information
Publisher Wildstorm
First appearance The Authority (vol. 1) #1 (May 1999)
Created by Warren Ellis
Bryan Hitch
In-story information
Alter ego Jeroen Thornedike
Team affiliations The Authority
Abilities Vast magical abilities that amount to reality warping granted by the Earth.

Jeroen Thornedike was a Dutch former dot-com billionaire who became the Doctor when his predecessor died. At first, Jeroen refused to accept the responsibility and spent his days shooting heroin, watching pornographic videos of horses having sex with women and playing Sonic the Hedgehog.[5] Jenny Sparks and Swift attempted to recruit him into the Authority. However, Jeroen refused and teleported them away; Sparks again attempted to recruit him, shooting herself in the head to force Jeroen to use his powers to heal her. Jeroen then joined the Authority.[5]

Jeroen married Courtney, a rock star, and overdosed on heroin while on his honeymoon, causing him to fall into a trance while disasters struck around the world. Jeroen was cured of his heroin addiction when Midnighter gave him a transfusion of his blood.[1] Jeroen was later forced to relinquish his powers to the renegade Doctor in order to save the Earth[4] and regained them when the renegade Doctor was killed.[2]

Soon afterwards, Jeroen was defeated and stripped of his powers, which were then given to The Surgeon, a modern-day French alchemist[6] The Surgeon turned Jeroen into a doll and carried him in his pockets, using him to scrub out stains from the Surgeon's underpants.[6] The Surgeon brought corporate contractors into the Garden of Ancestral Memory, who murdered the entities living there and later supervised the creation of a corporate religion called "Religimon". The Surgeon was later killed by Midnighter and Jeroen instantly recovered his powers.

Thornedike died from a drug overdose given to him by Rose Tattoo and his soul was captured by Henry Bendix to locate the next Doctor, Habib Ben Hassan.[7] Jeroen’s soul was later freed by Jenny Quantum, where it then moved on and joined his predecessors in the Garden of Ancestral Memory.[8]

Habib ben Hassan

The Doctor

Habib ben Hassan as the Doctor. Art by Gene Ha.
Publication information
Publisher Wildstorm
First appearance The Authority: Revolution #9 (June 2005)
Created by Ed Brubaker
Dustin Nguyen
In-story information
Alter ego Habib Ben Hassan
Team affiliations The Authority
Notable aliases The Green Man
Abilities Vast magical abilities that amount to reality warping granted by the Earth.

Habib ben Hassan was a young Palestinian suicide bomber. Within the first 24 hours of inheriting his powers after Thornedike's death, Habib engineered a peace in the Middle East that actually had a chance of succeeding until he was captured by Henry Bendix and imprisoned in a cell which cut him off from his powers.[7] He was secretly freed by Jenny Quantum and joined in the battle with Bendix and his followers.[8] During the fight, Habib redeemed Rose Tattoo, transforming her from the Spirit of Murder to the Spirit of Life.[9]

Sometime later, Habib was unable to stop a cadre of clones of the High from damaging the Carrier, causing it to crash into London.[10] After witnessing the end of the world soon afterwards, Habib committed suicide by jumping from the Carrier and dissolving into butterflies.[11] Habib later appeared alongside Jeroen to Midnighter in a dream, ordering him to find something capable of healing the world.

However, Habib's consciousness, badly traumatised by the Earth's present condition, manipulated Gaia Rothstein into turning herself into an island and then built itself a new body out of the vegetables and plant life from Gaia's island form. Now calling himself the Green Man, Habib vowed to save the Earth by wiping humanity from the face of the planet. Midnighter freed Gaia from Habib's enslavement and sent Habib's consciousness to the Garden of Ancestral Memory, causing the Green Man's body to collapse.

The Wildcats then searched for Habib's successor as the Doctor with the help of the spirit of former Doctor Edwin Makepeace.[12]

Shen Li-Min

Authority member Shen Li-Min, (a.k.a. Swift), former friend of the last Doctor, was chosen as Habib's successor, as she possessed a connection to the planet's ecosystem.[13]

The Surgeon

During the Transfer of Power storyarc, the members of the Authority were temporarily replaced with analogues that had roughly the same powers; the Surgeon was the Doctor's analogue.[14]

Powers and abilities

The Doctor's powers work by imagining something and causing reality to build it, enabling each Doctor to do whatever they can imagine.[2] As part of their position, each Doctor possesses fifteen extra senses, including empathy with every living creature.[2] However, a Doctor's powers are disrupted if they are startled or distracted.[15]

References

  1. 1 2 3 The Authority (vol. 1) #18 (Oct. 2000)
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 The Authority (vol. 1) #20 (Jan. 2001)
  3. ↑ The Authority (vol. 1) #17 (Sept. 2000)
  4. 1 2 The Authority (vol. 1) #19 (Nov. 2000)
  5. 1 2 Jenny Sparks: The Secret History of the Authority #1 (Aug. 2000)
  6. 1 2 The Authority (vol. 1) #27 (Jan. 2002)
  7. 1 2 The Authority: Revolution #9 (June 2005)
  8. 1 2 The Authority: Revolution #10 (July 2005)
  9. ↑ The Authority: Revolution #12 (Sept. 2005)
  10. ↑ Number of the Beast #8 (Sept. 2008)
  11. ↑ The Authority (vol. 5) #10 (July 2009)
  12. ↑ Wildcats (vol. 5) #28 (May 2010)
  13. ↑ The Authority vol. 4 #29 (January 2011)
  14. ↑ The Authority #22 (March 2001)
  15. ↑ The Authority (vol. 1) #7 (Nov. 1999)
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