Midnighter (Wildstorm Universe)

{{DC Database:Character Template
 * Title                  = Midnighter
 * Image                  = Midnighter.jpg
 * RealName               = Lucas Trent
 * CurrentAlias           = Midnighter; "Night's Bringer of War", The world's deadliest killing machine
 * Aliases                =
 * Identity               = Secret
 * Affiliation            = The Authority, Grifter, formerly Stormwatch, Kev Hawkins
 * Relatives              = Apollo (husband), Jenny Quantum (adoptive daughter)
 * Universe               = Earth-50
 * BaseOfOperations       = Los Angeles, California; also the Carrier


 * Gender                 = Male
 * Height                 = 6'5"
 * Weight                 = 165 lbs
 * Eyes                   = Brown
 * Hair                   = Red
 * UnusualFeatures        = hair dyed Blond


 * Citizenship            = American
 * MaritalStatus          = Married
 * Occupation             = Adventurer
 * Education              =


 * Origin                 = Transformed by the first Weatherman into a human with artificial enhancements
 * PlaceOfBirth           = Harmony, Indiana
 * Creators               = Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch
 * First                  = Stormwatch vol. 2 #4

Midnighter, alongside his future husband Apollo, was part of a top secret Stormwatch team (an analog of the JLA) created by the first Weatherman (Henry Bendix). Nobody but Bendix himself knew of the team's existence. Bendix built them as superhuman and, when they donned their costumes and spoke their codenames, their previous identities ceased to exist.
 * HistoryText            =

However, this secret team was all but destroyed during their first mission, Apollo and Midnighter being the only survivors. They went rogue and spent the next five years undercover fighting for a finer world in the alleyways of America. One mission took them to Britain, where they thwarted Bendix's attempts at experimenting on children to create superhumans, in the process developing links with MI5. They remained unknown to Stormwatch until Christine Trelane found the files about their team after Bendix's fall.

Jackson King, formerly Battalion, now the new Weatherman, ordered them found, not being sure whether they were heroes or villains. Midnighter and Apollo were after weapons made in the "Nevada Garden", a relic of the first Engineer. He ordered Fahrenheit and Hellstrike to tag them with fetishes so they could be transported into SkyWatch. Midnighter and Apollo first attacked the Stormwatch team, believing them under Bendix's orders. However, they ceased the attack once they were told Bendix was dead. With King's help, they violently retrieved the Garden from the U.S. Army, and King granted them what they asked for: new lives away from Stormwatch.

This story is available in the Stormwatch TPB A Finer World.

The Authority
After Stormwatch was destroyed, Jenny Sparks convinced both Midnighter and Apollo to come out of retirement and join her new group, The Authority. A formidable fighter with a sardonic attitude, Midnighter epitomized the new team's commitment to fighting for a finer world, including against vested interests and world governments. Midnighter and Apollo's relationship, though hinted in previous issues, was revealed in The Authority #8. He was the architect of the team's first significant victory, the defeat of autocratic dictator Kaizen Gamorra, which he achieved by dropping the 50-mile-long Carrier on to Gamorra's island base.

Midnighter was the only Authority member to evade capture when the US government had the team attacked and replaced with manipulable substitutes. Presumed dead, Midnighter had in fact escaped the Carrier with baby Jenny Quantum. He returned to overthrow the puppet team and rescue Apollo from imprisonment and abuse at the hands of their replacements. Shortly thereafter Midnighter and Apollo were married and adopted Jenny.

Midnighter took a central role the Revolution events. A visitation, apparently from a future Apollo, convinced Midnighter that he was on the path to becoming a malign dictator. To avoid this fate Midnighter quit the team, precipitating its break-up, and returned to life fighting solo on the streets. Raised alone by Apollo, Jenny exploited her powers to age herself to young adulthood and reformed the Authority. Having convinced Midnighter to rejoin the team Jenny discovered he was being manipulated by a dimension-hopping Henry Bendix, hitherto assumed dead. Midnighter fought for Bendix before the Engineer was able to break the mind-control; Midnighter then killed Bendix by ripping out his spine.

Circumstances have twice forced Midnighter, very much against his will, to team up with Kev Hawkins, a homophobic former-SAS soldier and eponymous protagonist of the Authority. a relationship made worse by the fact that on their first meeting, Kev killed him, Apollo and the rest of the Authority, though the Carrier resurrected them. On their last meeting they took down MI5's Royal Oak project, an attempt at replicating Bendix's experiments.

After returning from a mission in war-torn Afghanistan, Midnighter was attacked and kidnapped by unknown agents while passing through the Carrier's teleportation portal. He awoke in a facility in Hamburg, Germany, where a man named Paulus told him that he was disrupting his ability to guess his opponents' moves, and that he had removed his secondary heart and replaced it with a remote-detonated bomb.

Paulus gave Midnighter the choice of either working for him, or dying, showing him a photograph of the person he wanted Midnighter to kill: Adolf Hitler. Time-travelling back to the First World War trenches, Midnighter encountered Hitler as a young corporal in the German army, but was apprehended by 'time police' officers from the 95th century before carrying out his mission. In his struggle to escape, he crashed the officers' time machine at the year 1945 -- shortly before Hitler's expected suicide. Eventually he allied himself with them and worked his way back to his own time, where he threatened to erase Paulus from history by killing his kidnapped younger self; it is unclear whether or not he would have executed the child, but ultimately he did not have to. Midnighter then returned to the Carrier, but was apparently just as listless as before, immediately setting himself on another mission in Iraq.

Midnighter's attempts to connect better with humans after the graphic and public disposal of supervillain "Suicide King". Trying to help a girl find her pet cat finds him stumble upon a mad scientist who has been kidnapping pets for his cybernetic experiments. After defeating him, he employs the scientist to experiment on the murderers and dictators he acquires before deciding to adopt the one pet the Doctor could not repair or rehome: a cyborg dog.

Midnighter managed to retrieve all the information about his former life prior to his reprogramming by Henry Bendix, and discovered that his real name is Lucas Trent, that he was born on July 14, 1967 (making him 40 years old in 2007), and that he hailed from Harmony, Indiana.

Battle Precognition: ability is his power to predict how a battle will happen before it starts. His 'fight implants' include a 'combat computer' that allows him to run through a given combat situation millions of times in his mind, almost instantly covering nearly every possible result before the first punch is even thrown. He uses this information to predict the actions and or reactions of his foes, counteracting their moves almost before they even think to make them. According to Midnighter, his powers also work by letting him see the outcome of the battle he wants, and working backwards, following the right steps to get there.
 * Powers                 =

Tactical Senses: Midnighter's senses allow him to detect any modifications or powers in anyone he looks at, as well as how they work, so he can defeat them. He can detect what special abilities a opponent has, he can see the enhancements. He can detect the increased electrical activity in an opponents brain.


 * Telescopic Vision


 * Thermal Vision


 * Enhanced Hearing: able to directionally tune into where exactly wants to hear.

Fight Implants: Midnighter's abilities were designed by Bendix to give him an all encompassing advantage in close-combat.


 * Enhanced Strength: He has fiber-lined muscle increasing his strength (he can dismember opponents with his bare hands and feet)


 * Enhanced Speed: Midnighter can move faster than the human (and even superhuman) eye in a quick speed burst, an effect perhaps created by his always possessing the element of surprise. He normally moves at slightly above human speed but can move so fast that enemies with super speed can't see him, though he can't stay at that speed for long.


 * Enhanced Durability


 * Enhanced Coordination: Midnighter's body has been altered to give him inhuman balance.


 * Enhanced Reflexes: Midnighter's body has been altered to give him faster nerve endings so he can react quicker than any human and many superhumans.

Survival Implants: Implants used to keep him fighting in the worst of conditions.


 * Pain Receptor Control: He can turn his pain receptors on and off so he can keep fighting when the pain would stop a normal man, and has implants that numb him to most pain - he has undergone major surgery while awake and alert. The pain is not totally cut off though, so his healing factor is also very helpful.


 * Enhanced Healing: Though not on the level of certain Marvel or DC characters, Midnighter does heal much faster than a normal human. He's fought with, and healed from, a broken neck, broken limbs, holes through his chest, having his whole body set on fire, contracting various viruses (including AIDS), and other things.


 * Super-Enhanced Immune System: to the point where HIV was defeated in six weeks and the common cold never stays more than a couple of minutes. After The Doctor overdosed himself with heroin, physicians used a shot of Midnighter's blood to jumpstart his system by deactivating his opiate receptors.
 * Environmental Adaptation: He can survive in anaerobic environments for short periods and possesses a secondary heart should the first one be rendered unusable. Midnighter has no need to use the bathroom and can go without food or water for an undetermined (but undoubtedly long) amount of time.

Weapons Master: He also speaks German and can apparently operate several types of outdated weaponry, as evidenced by his use of WWI artillery while chronologically displaced.
 * Abilities              =

Master of Stealth: Midnighter is also quite adept at stealth. He is known to only be seen when he wants to be seen.

Master Combatant: He is a close-quarters killer, having quite effortlessly slaughtered close to 30 superpowered soldiers by himself, without being so much as touched by them.

Omni-lingual

Master Tactician Psionics: a sufficiently powered psychic can shut down his mental enhancements making his ability to calculate a fight null and void.
 * Strength               =
 * Weaknesses             =

Inactive Opponent: It was revealed that his ability can be defeated if his opponent does not make the first move (although this may have been because he was facing a cyborg at the time).

Design Drawback: Because Midnighter's superhuman implants were all implemented by Henry Bendix, Team Achilles was once able to use a simple remote controlled switch to temporarily deactivate his powers upon accessing and making use of Bendix's secret files.

Nanite Infection: Midnighter is more susceptible to Nanite infection due to his neural enhancements. On at least one occasion his mind and body has been controlled by Nanties created to disrupt and control his neural enhancements.


 * Equipment              =
 * Transportation         = The Carrier
 * Weapons                = Midnighter has used both a nightstick and a telescoping staff in close combat. His personal arsenal also commonly incorporates throwing stars.


 * Notes                  =
 * On November 1 2006, an ongoing Midnighter series began, written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Chris Sprouse.


 * Trivia                 =
 * The Midnighter can technically beat anyone no matter how powerful they are with the only exceptions being Seth, the leader of Sliding Albion, and possibly Jackson King or other powerful Telepaths.


 * The Midnighter is gay and married to Apollo.


 * The Midnighter has adopted Jenny Quantum.


 * The Midnighter once contracted H.I.V. and defeated it in 6 weeks and the common cold stays in him no more then a couple minutes.


 * Midnighter's hair color differs from issue to issue. His Indiana state driver's license indicates that he has brown hair, but by his own admission, his hair is actually red, which he occasionally dyes blond.

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 * In a retcon, it was revealed that the Midnighter's costumed identity was inspired a heroine called the Midnight Rider, who was a member of a team called the Paladins
 * Links                  =