Johnny Rocket
Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Johnny Wade (b. 1921) loved cars from the moment he first saw one. As a teenager in Freedom City, he became a skilled mechanic with dreams of opening up a garage of his own eventually -- dreams that were cut short unexpectedly. Johnny was driving -- dangerously, as he often did -- along Bayview Heights when a big truck came barreling the other way. Both vehicles crashed, spilling the experimental rocket fuel the truck carried. Soaked in chemicals and choking for air, Johnny managed to pull himself from the wreckage. There was a spark and a ball of fire blossomed from the fuel tank . . . in slow motion.
Running from the blast as fast as he could, Johnny Wade found himself well over a mile away before the blast rose into the sky and the dull boom caught up with him. He initially allowed the criminals to believe he'd been killed, following the other car at the scene to their hideout, where he used his new super-speed to apprehend them. The crooks heard the "mystery man" call himself 'Johnny' and one said, "He moved like a rocket!" The Freedom City press quickly joined the two up and headlines wondered about this new hero "Johnny Rocket."
Johnny responded to the President's call for heroes to join the Liberty League and was the League's youngest official member (second-youngest after the team's "mascot," Bowman's junior partner Arrow). He fought alongside his teammates and quickly earned a reputation for "moving faster than he can think," as Dr. Tomorrow once put it. More than once, the Liberty League hauled Johnny's fat out a fire when he ended up in some Nazi deathtrap or the like. Still, exasperating as his exploits sometimes were, the Leaguer's considered Johnny Rocket a true hero and friend.
Johnny's powers began to fade in 1951, and he found himself retired from superheroics well before the Liberty League disbanded, with both events nearly breaking his heart. His one consolation was the loving relationship he had with his girlfriend, Mina Lampert, who'd been his partner and confidante from nearly the start of his career. They married in in 1953, and Johnny, no longer "forced" to divide his time between his work as a mechanic and thrilling heroics, soon found himself recognized for his skills and promoted to the position of shop manager. His son, Jacob., was born in 1958. By late 1960, he'd inherited the ownership of the shop when its original owner passed away, having never married or had children of his own. (Years later, Johnny would suspect that his benefactor had been a closeted gay man.)
In 1961, Johnny attended a university lecture about the properties of rocket fuels, somewhat tickled to be learning about the formula that had given him his powers, now that it was declassified. The discussion moved on to improved versions of that formula, and that was when yet another group of crooks in the audience attempted to steal the sample of rocket fuel that had been brought to the demonstration. Retired though he was, Johnny wasn't about to let something like that slide, and managed to knock out or otherwise incapacitate most of the robbers. Panicking, the gang's leader threw the volatile substance at Johnny ... and as it splashed against him, something not all that surprising happened: his powers returned, and in fact were enhanced beyond what they'd allowed him to do in his youth.
Johnny Rocket was back, though his second heroic career demonstrated a bit more caution and forethought than he'd ever shown in the Golden Age. When he finally joined the Freedom League in 1964, he found himself serving as a respected elder in the superheroic community, which amused both him and his fellows from the Liberty League, but was still a responsibility he tried to tried to shoulder. As a business owner, he had a much more conservative viewpoint than the Centurion or Lady Liberty, though not nearly as much as the Raven, and honestly did not understand the counterculture of the time nor try to do so.
That caused him a fair amount of heartbreak in the years to follow. He and Mina made the joint decision not to tell their son about his father's secret identity until he either turned fifteen or demonstrated super-powers of his own. The latter never happened, but by 1973, Jacob was fairly alienated from his father, in part because of Johnny's frequent unexplained absences, and in part because of the tenor of the times. Learning that his father was a superhero worsened matters; while Jacob never even considered selling out his father's secret identity, he didn't have much respect for someone he viewed as a puppet of an increasingly corrupt establishment, either.
As if that wasn't bad enough, Mina became seriously ill in 1977. It would later be revealed that she was being poisoned by Johnny's enemy Nurse Wretched, but at the time, Johnny found himself horribly afraid that exposure to his own chemically-altered physiology might be what was killing his beloved wife. He went on a series of long adventures to find a cure for Mina's condition, but never found the panacea he was seeking. When his wife passed away, in 1979, he was on the other side of the world, instead of at her side. Jacob proceeded to lay into his father at her funeral, before leaving Freedom City to move to nearby Bedlam.
Even without these personal tragedies, however, it's likely that Johnny's career would have come to an end sometime in the 1980s. It finally happened in 1982, after he suffered a major heart attack while working a case. He was told, in no uncertain terms, that if he kept trying to fight crime like a man in his 20s, he would be dead within a few years, if not sooner. Horribly depressed, he donated his costume to a museum, and retired as both a superhero and a mechanic, passing control of the business on to his employees ... who, within a few years, sold it to a chain.
It wasn't until after the Terminus Invasion -- during which he saved a number of his fellow senior citizens
without using his powers -- that things started to look up for him. Conscious of how the world had had a very narrow escape, Jacob finally reached out to his father and introduced him to his daughter-in-law and twelve year old grandson. While the relationship between the two men was never exactly cordial, they were able to get along for young Johnny's sake, and the boy spent a lot of time in Freedom City with his grandfather ... as he did when he was seventeen, and an old enemy sought old Johnny out. Everyone knows what happened next.
Johnny served as a mentor to the younger Johnny Rocket, and unreservedly accepted him when he came out, as well. (Jacob was less thrilled by this development; he's not exactly the most progressive individual, though he's made it clear that he does love his son and has a great relationship with his granddaughter, as well.) But no matter how fast you might be, old age catches up with everyone, and Johnny Wade Sr. finally passed away in 2012. He was ostensibly buried beside his wife, though in fact his mortal remains were taken into custody by the Burial Society of Velella,
Johnny Rocket -- PL 9/10
Abilities: STR 1 |
STA 2 |
AGL 3 |
DEX 4 |
FGT 6 |
INT 1 |
AWE 1 |
PRE 2
Powers (1940-1951):
Super-Speed: Enhanced Advantages 24 (Agile Feint, Defensive Roll, Evasion, Improved Initiative 8, Instant Up, Move-by Action), Enhanced Dodge 8; Enhanced Parry 8; Movement 3 (Wall-crawling, Water Walking, Limited to while moving); Quickness 8; Speed 10 (2000 MPH) - 61 points
Super-Speed Fighting: Array (24 points)
- Arm-Spinning Tornado: Cone Area 2 Move Object 8, Limited to pushing away - 24 points
- Fast Attack: Strength-based Burst Area Selective Damage 8 (includes Strength 1) - 1 point
- Flurry of Blows: Strength-based Multiattack Damage 8 (includes Strength 1) - 1 point
Powers (1961-1982):
Super-Speed: Enhanced Advantages 28 (Agile Feint, Close Attack 2, Defensive Roll, Evasion, Improved Initiative 10, Instant Up, Move-by Action; Quirk: Close Attack limited to foes with a lower Initiative total); Enhanced Dodge 10; Enhanced Parry 10; Movement 3 (Wall-crawling, Water Walking, Limited to while moving); Quickness 10; Speed 13 (16000 MPH) - 73 points
Super-Speed Fighting: Array (24 points)
- Arm-Spinning Tornado: Cone Area 2 Move Object 8, Limited to pushing away - 24 points
- Fast Attack: Strength-based Burst Area Selective Damage 8 (includes Strength 2) - 1 point
- Flurry of Blows: Strength-based Multiattack Damage 8 (includes Strength 2) - 1 point
Advantages:
Agile Feint,, Close Attack 2/
4, Defensive Roll, Evasion, Improved Initiative 8/10, Instant Up, Move-by Action, Taunt.
Skills:
Acrobatics 4 (+7), Deception 6 (+8), Expertise: Current Events 4 (+5), Expertise: Mechanic 6 (+7), Expertise: Popular Culture 4 (+5), Investigate 8 (+9), Perception 6 (+7), Technology 6 (+7), Vehicles 6 (+10).
Offense:
Initiative +43/35, Unarmed +10/+8 (Close Damage 1), Arm Spinning -- (Cone Area 2 Move Object 8), Fast Attack -- (Burst Area Selective Damage 8), Flurry of Blows +10/+8 (Multiattack Damage 8).
Defense:
Dodge 16/14/6, Parry 16/14/6, Fortitude 6, Toughness 4/2, Will 5.
Totals: Abilities 40 + Powers 87/99 + Advantages 3 + Skills 25 + Defenses 11=166/178 points
Complications (1940-1951):
Thrills--Motivation. Impulsive. Secret Identity.
Complications (1961-1982):
Responsibility--Motivation. Family. Increasingly Out-of-Touch. Secret Identity.