Writer: Tom King
Art: Jeff Spokes
DC Comics (Black Label imprint), October 2024
Tempus fugit. Twenty-four years ago, writer Warren Ellis observed the end of the twentieth century by killing off a character described as “the Spirit of the Twentieth Century” (The Authority #12, 2000). Jenny Sparks possessed absolute control over electricity, and led a superhero team who flew around in an sentient spaceship fifty miles high. The character died after using her powers to brain-fry a pyramidal alien threat the size of Pluto, and which had asserted ownership rights over the Earth. For convenience, the characters, including Sparks, call the creature “God”, since it seemed to have set up shop on the planet long before complex life evolved and had returned millions of years later to find its retirement home unpleasantly crawling with parasitic humans.
Here, a quarter of a century ago, is what readers thought was going to be Sparks’ final scene, acerbic even while dying:
As she approached midnight on 31 December 1999, Sparks was aware of her fate. Mr Ellis’ repeatedly explored the idea across various Wildstorm Comics titles is that the Earth’s noosphere has what is essence an immune system against catastrophic threats, and this immune system manifested as certain types of superheroes called Century Babies. Sparks was one of these – in effect, a planetary white blood cell with a lifespan of 100 years, as defined by how people calculate eras (rather than how the Earth itself might – “the fishhead majority” has done the arithmetic on the duration of her existence, as Sparks notes in her dying monologue). Her function, to protect the Earth and its people from a god-like Lovecraftian infection, was fulfilled.
Spark’s heroic death was, and pardon the pun, a shock. Sparks was the centrepiece of a band of superheroes called The Authority, and the title was selling well for then-publisher Wildstorm Comics. Killing off a key character might have been a silly move. But was Mr Ellis leaving the title, and Scottish writer Mark Millar took over and catapulted the title into the sales stratosphere. Wildstorm Comics’ characters were eventually integrated into DC Comics’ mainstream continuity.
Of course, in the American superhero genre, no character ever stays dead, and so this year we have a new title, Jenny Sparks, by Tom King and Jeff Spokes. Mr King has taken Sparks’ final words, “Be better. Or I’ll come back and kick your heads in” and implemented them quite literally. Here is DC Comics’ promotional copy:
The wild storm begins! What could four strangers have to do with the fate of the world? Find out as Captain Atom goes rogue, threatening to destroy the planet he once swore to protect. Can any hero stop him? Well, it may take the most unconventional of them all…Jenny Sparks, the one woman tasked with keeping ALL the heroes in line, no matter the cost. With a snap of her fingers, she’s entered the fray and won’t quit until the job is done! The Spirit of the 20th Century returns for the 21st in this action-packed new miniseries by Eisner Award-winning writer Tom King (Wonder Woman, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow) and artist Jeff Spokes!
Mr King certainly captures Mr Ellis’ vision for Sparks: a smartarsed curmudgeon who enjoys chain smoking, unconventional sex, and booze, and is so arrogant as to sarcastically talk down to the irrepressible Batman. But not only does Batman let her do that without comment, he calls her in as the only apparent solution to the problem at hand. The implication is that even Superman is of no help. Mr King has Sparks resume her task as the world’s protector, but this time with a twist: she apparently has an arrangement with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to smackdown rogue superheroes. “I’m not a superhero,” Sparks tells a cop while examining a dead body. “I’m the @$@$@$ who keeps them in line.” (Surely rogue superheroes are actually, technically, supervillains… and in any event, why limit Sparks’ chores to just renegade superheroes? DC Comics’ universe, chock-full of cosmic threats to Planet Earth – Darkseid, Trigon, X’Hal, Despero, Starro, Mordru, Mongul, Nekron, Krona, and a myriad of others – should be enough to keep Sparks busy before she even looks at friends who have gone off the rails. But never mind.)
Captain Atom, a superhero wonderfully redefined by legendary writer Cary Bates in the 1980s, is the crash test dummy for Sparks’ role in this limited series. The title is published under DC Comics’ Black Label imprint, which we had once thought was the successor to DC Comics’ alternative imprint Vertigo Comics, but instead has evolved into a non-canonical creative sandbox.
This should give Captain Atom’s fans solace that their hero’s sociopathy is not a permanent feature. In this first issue, the vastly powerful Captain Atom has gone completely bonkers, as Sparks might say. He brain seems to flicker through time, causing his physical appearance to morph: occasionally wearing his Vietnam-era air force uniform, occasionally nude, occasionally wrapped within the extraterrestrial silver shell which is the source of his powers. Mr King injects his trademark goofy humour into Captain Atom’s mental breakdown in describing the character’s ransom note, slipped under the door after he has entered a bar and taken the occupants hostage. A police officer reads it out. “One, uh, he, uh, wants to be God. Two, he wants his family returned to him from the past. Three, he wants a ham sandwich – rye, lettuce, no tomato, mayo and mustard.” Sparks arrives, swaggering between parked police vehicles. “Tell him he doesn’t even get the @#@#@# sandwich,” she snarls.
Importantly, within this story, Captain Atom has delusions of being a god. Given the character is capable of destroying cities and can absorb enormous amounts of energy so as to travel through time, he is probably not too wrong in that self-assessment. Sparks’ role, then, is to continue to bring down rogue gods. “This is stupid. You? They should have sent Superman,” grumps Captain Atom before Sparks causes a colossal thunderbolt to crash into his chest.
Sparks now seems to be immortal. Her 100 years has been extended to 124 years, as Batman notes. Captain Atom tells her off for smoking. “Those things will kill you,” he says, waggling a finger. Sparks replies, “Yeah, well. Way I figure it… something’s got to.” Captain Atom does indeed kill Sparks, and she ends up in a morgue with a crushed larynx. By the end of the issue, however, Sparks is back in action, apparently unaffected by her death. Again.
Mr Spokes’ art is seamless and polished. It is a little reminiscent of Bryan Hitch’s artistic style. Mr Hitch was the original artist for The Authority, which makes us wonder if deploying Mr Spokes was a deliberate choice, to trigger fin de siecle nostalgia amongst an old and tired Gen X readership. Mr Spokes follows the brief meticulously in his rendition of the characters. Captain Atom has an ominous presence, his silver shell filled with shadow. Even naked in her bedroom with a stranger, Sparks herself is not at all over-sexualised by Mr Spokes’ art (as she should not be, ever), and Mr Spokes ensures that her every movement, ranging from sitting to walking, conveys both presence and absolute certainty.
So, is this just more super-drivel, driven by the faint surprise of seeing a long-dead character back to life? No. Sparks is a unique personality within the American superhero genre, of any vintage. Like her creator Mr Ellis, Sparks is both foul-mouthed and British. She is no altruistic saint, no anti-hero like the Punisher, no character seeking redemption like Black Widow, no legacy character like Mr Terrific, no bestie-next-door-in-a-costume like Batgirl or Nightwing. She does not have a costume, other than a singlet featuring the Union Jack. There is a resemblance to DC Comics’ bush-league magician John Constantine, but she is no demon-wrangler with endless side hustles. Sparks is more powerful than Superman, and knows it. It is a remarkable combination of arrogance and altruism.
And there is no contemporary re-working in play – to his credit, and to our relief, Mr King is true to the character. Sparks’ integration into the DC pantheon is a development to welcome, and the story itself is fun to read.
