Jukko was a member of Stormwatch Team Achilles.
History
Jukko Hämäläinen was a former member of the Osasto Karhu ("Bear force") - a small, 40-men anti-terrorist elite police force. When Finland started investing heavily in research to develop a superhuman military unit (starting in 1956 and reaching workable results in the late 1980s), the Bear Force was among the first who could volunteer. Jukko didn't - he was afraid. His brother, his fiancee and others became Finland's first superhuman group, though.
It was all for naught, as within months the Soviet Union collapsed and civilians stood on the Berlin Wall. The useless super-Finns drifted away. Jukko's brother Lemminkäinen, however, had other ideas. He was a very powerful superhuman, who could affect minds and matter by sheer willpower. He became a politician, and his superhuman empathy made him hugely popular - his speeches resonated with the entire country, and his extreme right-wing opinions triggered a sea change in Finnish politics. His warped ideology evolved, and he soon became convinced that it was necessary to uplift his entire people to a superhuman level. A formidable psionic field called the "Masking Wall" was erected by a Finn named Pekka Viljo, Jukko's best friend - from outside, everything seemed as if it were normal. But within months, Finland's government, a thrall to Hämäläinen's super-willpower, was committing horrors similar to that of the Third Reich. The whole population was herded into superhuman enhancement centers. Millions died, unable to survive the transformation into superhumans.
Hämäläinen was obsessed with making his brother Jukko into a superhuman too, so Jukko could see the glory that would be his. Jukko, gifted with an incredible willpower, resisted all attempts to make him a superhuman for eight months, forcing his body to reject everything that was tried to enhance him. But after so much time, for a moment Jukko briefly lost his concentration and was turned into a superhuman against his will. The technology used would scan the subconscious to give subjects the powers they were yearning for. In Jukko's case, it was the ability to share feelings, as he wanted to expose his brother to all the pain they had inflicted him, to show him what his madness had wrought. When he touched his brother, they instantly shared their feelings of pain - what Lemminkäinen gave Jukko was negligible, but the feedback incinerated Lemminkäinen. However, Lemminkäinen, without Jukko realizing it, had a psi-link with every surviving Finn - the entire country shared Jukko's unimaginable pain, with fatal results. Between the superhuman enhancement camps and the psionic feedback, eight million Finns had been killed in just a few years.
The Masking Wall was still up - despite his death, Pekka Viljo still existed as a psionic lifeform. After some time, the less than 2,000 surviving Finns emerged from the vast cemetery their country had become, reaching Sweden for medical care and revealing to the world what had happened in Finland. Over time, the surviving Finns - all of them superhumans of some kind - decided that they would leave the Masking Wall up and turn their country into a haven for refugees all over the world, as long as they were willing to learn the Finnish language and weren't superhumans. This meant the Finns themselves would leave - but keep a watchful eye on Finland, and crush anybody trying something suspicious against their superhumans-free haven.
Jukko himself, as a representative of his country highly interested in the control of superhuman threats and with elite SWAT training, joined the United Nations' new version of StormWatch, Team Achilles, in the early 2000s.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
- Empathy: Jukko is an empath who can feel the pain of everyone within a three-kilometer radius. When he is sleeping the radius shrinks to half a kilometer. He can also make other people feel the pain he perceives with his power.
Abilities
- Martial Arts: He has extensive military training and is one of the deadliest hand-to-hand combatants on the planet.
- Indomitable Will
Related
- 22 Appearances of Jukko Hämäläinen (Wildstorm Universe)
- 5 Images featuring Jukko Hämäläinen (Wildstorm Universe)
- 4 Quotations by or about Jukko Hämäläinen (Wildstorm Universe)
- Character Gallery: Jukko Hämäläinen (Wildstorm Universe)
Footnotes