Hardware (character)

Hardware
Hardware #1, art by Denys Cowan
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Hardware #1 (April 1993)
Created by	Dwayne McDuffie (writer) Denys Cowan (artist)
In-story information
Alter ego	Curtis Metcalf
Team affiliations	Hard Co. Alva Industries Justice League
Notable aliases	The Cog in the Machine The High Tech Dreadnaught
Abilities	Genius-level intellect Powered armor

Hardware (Curtis Metcalf) is a fictional superhero published by DC Comics. An original character from DC's Milestone Comics imprint, he first appeared in Hardware #1 (April 1993), and was created by Dwayne McDuffie and Denys Cowan.

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 main titles.

Fictional character biography

Milestone universe

Curtis 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 whom Hardware is trying to bring down.

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 him 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 at age 14, and earning his first college degree at age 15. Alva paid for Metcalf's whole college tuition up to six additional college degrees, in exchange for Metcalf coming to work, after graduation, in Alva Industries' "Inspiration Factory" program, with his "own lab, entirely too big a salary, and mandate to indulge [his] curiosity by investigating whatever struck [his] fancy"; Metcalf's inventions made Edwin Alva Sr. many millions of dollars.

After a few years, and wanting a share of profits earned by his inventions, Metcalf asked Alva for a "royalty point or two". Alva'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". Metcalf's first thought was to quit, but his contract forbade him from working for any competitors: "If [he wanted] to work in [his] field [of expertise], [he] had to do it for Alva".

Metcalf thought that with some advanced hacking, he could find something on Alva to use as leverage, but found that almost everything about Alva was "Stone Cold Crooked":

Metcalf: "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 savior and humanitarian pillar 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 his pocket, he illegally manufactures weapons and sells them to foreign governments".

Metcalf 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; the law wouldn't dare go after him and the media refused to run any story that might incur his wrath. But Metcalf decided that maybe Alva wasn't beyond his own reach, so using 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".

Afterwards, Metcalf dons a selection of his many high tech gadgets (which he hides away in an abandoned basement/bomb shelter connected to his private lab) 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".

Hardware works with many other superheroes over his career, such as Blood Syndicate and Icon. He even teams up with a few that he considers fictional, such as Steel and Superman. In one instance, he assists in the evacuation of Utopia Park, a newly built theme park, which is being destroyed by riots.

DC Universe

In Final Crisis, Orion kills his father Darkseid, destabilizing the multiverse. Dharma transfers the Milestone characters to the DC universe, altering history so that they always existed there. Following this, Hardware becomes a mentor to Static, provides him with a modified flying disk, and gets him a job as a S.T.A.R. Labs intern.

Supporting characters

Deathwish the vigilante, artist J.H. Williams III

Hardware's protege Technique, artist Jimmy Palmiotti

• Barraki Young - Curtis' girlfriend.
• Don "Jolly Jock" Cornelius - A mob leader. After faking Hardware's death, Harm was left in control of Cornelius' mob sector in Dakota.
• Deacon "Phreaky Deak" Stuart - A hardcore computer hacker and friend of Hareware.
• Deathwish (Wilton Johnson) - 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 four-issue miniseries in December 1994.
• Edwin Alva Sr. - The owner of Alva Industries and the leader of the Indigo Cell in the S.Y.S.T.E.M. organization.
• Harm (Nick Pugliese) - A superhuman mob enforcer and undercover cop.
• Reprise - A super-human hitman 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.

Skills and abilities

Curtis Metcalf possesses no superhuman powers but has genius level intelligence, and is considered one of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet. He has created breakthroughs in metallurgy, computer science, nanotechnology, and plasma weapons. Metcalf is also a good hand-to-hand combatant, having been trained by his father in the martial arts.

Equipment

Hardware version 2.0 armor

All of Curtis Metcalf's superhuman abilities derive from his armor. It consists of a self-designed metal alloy, is resistant to bullets and energy, increases Hardware's strength via flexible polymers, and can fly via jet boots. Furthermore, the armor's helmet includes a spectral scanning unit, a radio receiver, radar, a chemical analyzer, a digital video player/recorder, a translator, and a voice modulator.

Additional equipment

Curtis has designed various pieces of equipment to enhance the capabilities of his Hardware armor. Many of them are hand-held and can be easily carried on his belt. Larger pieces of equipment are mounted on Hardware's helmet, gauntlets and shoulder pads.

• Quick Pick - A unique lock-picking tool of Curt's design. It can create keys of any shape to pick locks.
• Sonic Drill – A shoulder-mounted device that creates stunning sonic pulses.
• Inertia Winder - A device of Cooperative origin that can absorb and store kinetic energy. Two of these devices are known to exist on Earth; the other is built into Rocket’s belt buckle.

Other equipment Hardware has used include a forearm-mounted welding tool, tracking devices, a flashlight helmet attachment, a handheld depolarizing device (used to remove his basic armor during emergencies), a handheld scanning device, a wrist-mounted energy analyzer, a special gun that launches miniature eavesdropping devices, a laser cutting tool, a flare gun, wrist-mounted high-intensity flashlights (that double as blinding weapons), and a portable electromagnet capable of lifting weights equal to three armored SYSTEMatics.

Weapons

• Omnicannon: A forearm-mounted cannon that fires blasts of compressed air and has a variety of effects depending on the shell equipped.

• Plasma Whip: A whip that can extend between one and 15 feet long by manipulating its magnetic charge and generate disintegrating plasma.

• Retractable Sword: A retractable sword that can extend up to 30 inches by manipulating its magnetic charge.

• PLASER: A device that generates vaporizing plasma blasts.

• Energy Field: A forearm-mounted device that generates energy barriers.
• Fluid Gun: A gun that generates immobilizing fluids.

• Flow Gun: A handgun made of nanomachines that can assemble at will and resemble mercury.
• Holographic Projection System: This device projects convincing holographic copies of Hardware that he can use to distract or confuse opponents. He can also reconfigure the holographic system to project DOBIE's computer displays.

Other weapons Hardware uses less frequently include tasers, timed explosives, shoulder-mounted tranquilizer dart launchers, a liquid oxygen-fueled flamethrower, a micro-rocket (a small rocket that attaches to an opponent's back and then launches him helplessly into the air), a remote-controlled thruster unit (a miniature jet thruster that latches onto a fleeing vehicle and causes it to spin wildly out of control), a rocket pistol, a kusarigama, a high-powered laser pen (that temporarily blinds opponents), a neural net cannon (that produce effects like the omnicannon's neural net shells), a machine gun that fires explosive bullets, a "nova burst" (an extremely powerful directed energy weapon), a heavily armed Hardware robot (that Curtis could control from miles away via a telepresense rig), a power source shield (that protects his armor from energy-draining weaponry), and a field of supercool atoms that can trap and immobilize energy beings like Doctor Light.

Transportation

• Skylark: A modified Moller M400 Skycar that can fly at speeds above 400 mph thanks to a trio of rear-mounted 2500 horsepower Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines. Furthermore, the Skylark can receive television and radio signals and become invisible. Hardware sometimes uses a larger version of the Skylark called the Skytank.

• Jet-Pack (formerly): A personal short-range propulsion rig with turbine thrusters that gather the surrounding air, then expel it in a continuous stream. The original jet pack was designed for his Version 1.0 armor and was controlled via the suit's on-board computer ("Obie"). Because of the heat and thrust generated, Hardware had to replace most of the rig every three uses, allowing him to regularly experiment with new designs. He often used such experimentation to improve the Jet-Pack's fuel efficiency when used at maximum thrust. As a result, he eventually increased its maximum flight time from over 3 minutes to several minutes.

The second Jet-Pack was designed for the Version 2.0 armor and was controlled via DOBIE. Built with the full cooperation and resources of Alva Technologies, this rig was much sturdier and more dependable, enabling him to use it almost indefinitely with regular maintenance. At maximum thrust, the Version 2.0 Jet Pack had enough fuel to keep Hardware airborne for 20 minutes. Hardware increased the rig's flight time to over an hour by adding insulation made of "smart ceramic" developed by Hard Company.

Afrofuturism

Hardware can be included in the discourse of Afrofuturism based on its adherence to Mark Dery's definition of "speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture—and, more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future".

Curtis Metcalf re-purposes technology as a force of liberation, fighting against the evil Edwin Alva. As Hardware, he uses his superhuman understanding and fluency with technology as a form of agency. Hardware's status as a superhero, through the manipulation of technology, is a means of transcending the digital divide.

In other media

• Hardware makes a cameo appearance in Superman & Batman Magazine #7.
• Hardware makes non-speaking appearances in Young Justice. This version is a member of the Justice League.