Hardware #1
Title: “Angry Black Man”
Medium: comic
Cover date: Apr. 1993
Publisher:
7 characters in this story:
| Character (Click links for info about character and his/her religious practice, affiliation, etc.) |
Religious Affiliation |
Team(s) [Notes] |
Pub. | # app. |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
black; The Shadow Cabinet | |
97 | |||||||
|
|
System | |
39 | ||||||
|
black | |
14 | |||||||
|
[corrupt company run by Hardware arch-foe Edwin Alva] | |
25 | |||||||
|
black [Hardware's mother; community activist] |
|
4 | |||||||
|
black [Hardware's father] |
|
3 | |||||||
|
[assassin; mercenary] | |
6 |
Reprints of this comic:
Hardware: The Man in the Machine (May 2010): "Angry Black Man"
Summary (from http://milestone.luthor.com/comics_detail.asp?ID=21&):
We are introduced to Curtis Metcalf, a.k.a. Hardware. He is an inventor who has designed a super-powered suit. We also meet Edwin Alva, Curits's boss and main enemy. Edwin Alva helped sponsor Curtis's education and expects Curtis to be his laborer because of it. Curtis found out that many of Edwin's income came from illegal activities and thereby found an outlet to attack Edwin with Hardware. Curtis is obsessed with taking Edwin down.
Note about the Hardware series as a whole:
Hardware was one of Milestone's 4 launch titles, and ended up being its longest-running series (Apr. 1993 - Apr. 1997). Hardware himself most recently showed up in places such as Justice League of America (vol. 2) and Milestone Forever.
Perhaps not surprisingly for a series titled "Hardware," this was probably the Milestone series which LEAST frequently dealt with explicit religious characters and subjects. Many of the identifiably "religious" characters are classified more toward the political/ideological spectrum rather than the overt traditional religious side of things. These characters include the Gaian/fundamentalist environmentalist eco-terrorist group known as Gaea's Wrath, the racial justice obsessive Johnson Stroman, the ultra-nationalist / white supremacist group "America Rights", Transhumanist villain Malleus, Seven Pallaton (a Native American federal agent). Probably the series' most important character after Hardware himself was Edwin Alva, Hardware's arch-enemy and also mentor. Alva was obsessed with power - not really a religious affiliation per se, but definitely something that made for an interesting character study. Alva died but was eventually "resurrected" as an artificial intelligence - somewhat fitting for the technology-centric "Hardware" series.
