Jenny Sparks
Encyclopedia
Jenny Sparks, also known as "The Spirit of the 20th century", is a fictional character
in the Wildstorm
comic book
universe created by Warren Ellis
during his 1997 revamp of the dwindling Stormwatch series. Her first appearance was in issue #37 (Ellis' starting issue) where she was appointed the leader of Stormwatch Black (Black Ops division), with Swift
and Jack Hawksmoor, with whom she would later create The Authority. Jenny Sparks was named the 44th greatest comic book character by Empire Magazine.
took over. He did some extra fleshing-out of Jenny's history in the Jenny Sparks: Secret History of the Authority limited series, focused on the origin stories of the members of the Authority. Most of Millar's additions are furthering Ellis's backstory and intermeshing Jenny Sparks with important historical figures of the 20th century, including Albert Einstein
, Ernest Hemingway
, Adolf Hitler
, Jacques Cousteau
, John Lennon
, Princess Diana
, and many others.
Jenny is one of the characters Ellis created to protect humanity, present a facet of the coming age and do something specific for it in a given century
. Since the thesis given by the Doctor
goes that humanity as a whole thinks that a century begins with the centennial year, so the mass unconscious of humanity creates these heroes in the beginning moments of the centennial year. (see also: Century Babies).
Her being "The Spirit of the 20th century" is not only a title. Jenny was the one most tied with the century itself, always being in the centre of things, while her state of mind mirrored the spirit of the particular age. This is best shown in Stormwatch #44, where Ellis takes a ride through the 20th century, telling Jenny's story. This is accentuated by the artwork of Tom Raney
, the inks of Randy Elliot and the changing palette of Laura DePuy and Wildstorm FX. The style, the layout and the colors change with each era of Jenny's life mirroring the black and white of film noir
, the three colors and simple lines of the Golden Age
or the dark, oppressive backgrounds and gritty characters of the eighties.
Jenny Sparks is a pretty, yet foulmouthed, chain-smoking, bisexual blonde.
. Her family had died on the Titanic in 1912, and her father's arch-nemesis took over their fortune. Left penniless, young Jenny was invited by her godfather, Albert Einstein
, to Zurich
, where he offered to finish her education. Before leaving she recommended that a young painter
, whose art was quite abysmal, leave it behind and take a career in politics as he had a certain charisma and talent for speeches.
Between 1913 and 1919 her powers started to manifest. Jenny Sparks had absolute control of electricity, including travel through power lines, shooting bolts of lightning and shaping electricity. With age her control and power increased. By 1919 Jenny had also stopped aging.
Her adventures from 1919 to the early thirties were marked by the mindset of the era - Scientific Romance. In this period the Wildstorm universe had the first contact with Sliding Albion, an alternate Earth where humanity encountered aliens in the Renaissance
, and where the blueskinned aliens and humans intermixed through the ages. In 1919 she married Prince Lorenzo of Albion to help him to take power against his father's tyrannical reign. Unfortunately Lorenzo was using the British of Jenny's reality to help him take over from his father who he considered too soft. She continued with traveling the multiple realities, visiting alien worlds, entering fast relationships with supermen and people of the era. During this time she earned the rank of Colonel in British Army Intelligence. A reporter named Clarence Cornwall became part of her life.
In the early thirties she went to the United States and spent most of that time as an adventurer and pulp hero. During this period she was the girlfriend of a certain Dr. Jones
. In 1939 she met Elijah Snow and after a one-night-stand they both agreed to forget that it ever happened. It was also during this decade that Jenny met The High, a Superman
-like superhero, whom she would later meet during her stint at Stormwatch.
During World War II she was working as an Allied operative against the Nazi
superbeings and preventing the Nazis from obtaining valuable artifacts and ancient weapons. In 1943 she was rescuing a Tibet
an egg from the Nazis. The egg was prophesied to open and bring forth a being that will usher a new age. Inside it was a small, curled up woman. She was captured and the only thing that prevented her from being sent to a camp where she would be dissected for creating German supermen was her childhood friend Adolf Hitler
, who remembered her and upon accidentally noticing her being dragged away ordered her to be released and sent to England with the egg.
Jenny returned to the United States after the war. The world no longer believed in heroes. She did not either, and her darkening turned her into a noiresque
private eye who dealt her own brutal justice. During this time, she electrocuted
Clarence for trying to kill an orphanage because it was full of black kids. With the end of the 1940s she decided to head home.
, and bacterium weapons were unleashed on their London. In a final act of contempt and spite, Sliding Albion vented the bacterial fallout over Britain. However, this agent changed while traversing The Bleed
and caused the first surge of superhuman powers in Britain. Jenny did not notice, she only felt the world losing a great opportunity to become a better place. After a while she tried to write a book about her life but that got squashed.
. Tragedy struck when one of the heroes, Abel Eternity, overdosed on drugs in an attempt to prove his masculinity. Abel went into a homicidal rampage, forcing Jenny to slay him. The group disbanded and Jenny decided to go to bed until 1982.
In the 1980s, a new British superhero group appeared, mainly composed by people who were children during Sliding Albion's attack. Jenny Sparks joined the group since they considered her the "clean one" from the '60s group. However, they all were revealed to be homicidal and she threatened to kill them on the spot if she ever saw them again.
to join Stormwatch
. She declined, but, ten years later, Bendix managed to convince her to join the Stormwatch Black team alongside Swift (with whom she had a brief relationship) and Jack Hawksmoor. She was given command of the team against her will. Stormwatch Black was a covert insertion team, specially built for urban environments.
After a few missions, The High reappeared after decades of self exile, leading a group that wanted to change the world by removing the structure of society itself. It would be no more laws, no authoritarian structures, no crime and no war. Bendix didn't want her to know, but The High appeared on the TV news and Jenny saw him. Around this time, Jenny survived an assassination attempt by a needle-armed adversary. When Jenny confronted Bendix about The High, and about the fact that Bendix had given orders to Stormwatch to kill The High and his group, Bendix revealed the depths of his insanity. Jenny was forced to strike him down, but he escaped. In the ensuing chase, Jenny saw that he had killed all of the facility's cryogenically frozen prisoners. Afterward, an enraged High flew right to the Skywatch platform. Being temporarily in command, Jenny was forced, crying, to order the staff to raise the Storm Door force field to protect the hundreds of people on board. The High vaporized upon impacting against it. Some time later, Jenny finally tracked Bendix down and killed him, or so she thought.
When Stormwatch disbanded after the Aliens
attack that took the lives of half the team, she created the Authority alongside her Stormwatch Black teammates, with the goal to change the world, no matter what it takes. Old friends Battalion and Synergy assisted her in the beginning.
During her leadership, Jenny and her team faced many threats, including multiple attacks by Sliding Albion forces on Los Angeles and super-powered terrorists attacking many cities, including London and Moscow.
On December 31, 1999, Jenny Sparks knew that she would die at midnight as the 20th century ended, a fact known only by her teammate the Doctor. She electrocuted the brain of an enormous alien creature, the "God" that had originally created Earth and which was planning to wipe the planet clean of all life. This was her final act as humanity's defense mechanism. She died moments later in her teammates' arms. Her dying words and last will were: "Save the world. They deserve it. Be better. Or I'll come back and kick your heads in."
At the moment of her death, a new entity was born, Jenny Quantum
. Though not, in fact, a reincarnation of Jenny Sparks, she is actually her successor. Just as Jenny Sparks was the spirit of the 20th century, Jenny Quantum is the spirit of the 21st century.
During the Transfer of Power storyline, a magical version of Jenny appeared and temporarily removed all mechanical weapons from the Earth.
. Additionally, she stopped aging at nineteen and remained this way until her death. Her appearance alters from time to time and it is unclear if this is an effect of her connection to the planet or artist interpretation.
Jenny has the ability to manipulate electricity. She can easily draw electricity from electronic devices as well as from the human brain, a move she has threatened to kill people with. Sparks can also convert her entire body into electricity and travel anywhere electricity would. She can apparently survive being transformed into other forms of energy as when she traveled through a TV and power lines and then into a police radio. Shifting into her electrical form heals Sparks from injuries as well as poisons. Like an electrical current, Sparks as electricity must go somewhere before she can re-emerge in her human form. Normally this is into a machine, but other conductors seem to work as well. She was once able to go into the sky and remain there until striking down as lightning. She can also enter a person briefly and electrocute them.
A key distinction is that Jenny Sparks does not generate electricity like Electro
and others. If she is unable to access electricity from any sources or has no place for her electrical form to go, she is powerless and as vulnerable as a normal human. This limitation is a part of many of her adventures.
Through her lifetime Sparks was a member of several branches of the British military and led various superhero teams. As such she is an experienced leader and knowledgeable about military protocol. She has not demonstrated the fighting skill that one might associate with this experience, usually relying on her powers instead.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in the Wildstorm
Wildstorm
WildStorm Productions, or simply WildStorm, published American comic books. Originally an independent company established by Jim Lee and further expanded upon in subsequent years by other creators, WildStorm became a publishing imprint of DC Comics in 1999...
comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
universe created by Warren Ellis
Warren Ellis
Warren Girard Ellis is an English author of comics, novels, and television, who is well-known for sociocultural commentary, both through his online presence and through his writing, which covers transhumanist themes...
during his 1997 revamp of the dwindling Stormwatch series. Her first appearance was in issue #37 (Ellis' starting issue) where she was appointed the leader of Stormwatch Black (Black Ops division), with Swift
Swift (comics)
Swift is a fictional comic book superhero in the Wildstorm universe, published by DC Comics. Swift first appeared in Stormwatch #28 and was created by Jeff Mariotte and Ron Lim...
and Jack Hawksmoor, with whom she would later create The Authority. Jenny Sparks was named the 44th greatest comic book character by Empire Magazine.
Overview
After the 12th issue of Authority, Warren Ellis left the title and Mark MillarMark Millar
Mark Millar is a Scottish comic book writer, known for his work on books such as The Authority, The Ultimates, Marvel Knights Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Civil War, Wanted, and Kick-Ass, the latter two of which have been adapted into feature films...
took over. He did some extra fleshing-out of Jenny's history in the Jenny Sparks: Secret History of the Authority limited series, focused on the origin stories of the members of the Authority. Most of Millar's additions are furthering Ellis's backstory and intermeshing Jenny Sparks with important historical figures of the 20th century, including Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, Jacques Cousteau
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water...
, John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
, Princess Diana
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
, and many others.
Jenny is one of the characters Ellis created to protect humanity, present a facet of the coming age and do something specific for it in a given century
Century
A century is one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages .-Start and end in the Gregorian Calendar:...
. Since the thesis given by the Doctor
Doctor (Wildstorm)
The Doctor is a name of several fictional characters in the Wildstorm universe.There is always only one Doctor at any given time, who is the latest in a long line of shamans protecting the entire planet...
goes that humanity as a whole thinks that a century begins with the centennial year, so the mass unconscious of humanity creates these heroes in the beginning moments of the centennial year. (see also: Century Babies).
Her being "The Spirit of the 20th century" is not only a title. Jenny was the one most tied with the century itself, always being in the centre of things, while her state of mind mirrored the spirit of the particular age. This is best shown in Stormwatch #44, where Ellis takes a ride through the 20th century, telling Jenny's story. This is accentuated by the artwork of Tom Raney
Tom Raney
Tom Raney is an American comic book artist, known for illustrating titles as Annihilation Conquest, Alpha Flight, Ultimate X-Men and Uncanny X-Men for Marvel Comics, DV8 and Stormwatch for Image Comics, and Outsiders for DC Comics....
, the inks of Randy Elliot and the changing palette of Laura DePuy and Wildstorm FX. The style, the layout and the colors change with each era of Jenny's life mirroring the black and white of film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
, the three colors and simple lines of the Golden Age
Golden Age of Comic Books
The Golden Age of Comic Books was a period in the history of American comic books, generally thought of as lasting from the late 1930s until the late 1940s or early 1950s...
or the dark, oppressive backgrounds and gritty characters of the eighties.
Jenny Sparks is a pretty, yet foulmouthed, chain-smoking, bisexual blonde.
Fictional character biography
Jennifer Sparks was born in England on January 1, 1900 (the date is a running theme in Ellis' Wildstorm titles, see above). Her family possessed quite a fortune, and she was sent to an all-girls school in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. Her family had died on the Titanic in 1912, and her father's arch-nemesis took over their fortune. Left penniless, young Jenny was invited by her godfather, Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, to Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, where he offered to finish her education. Before leaving she recommended that a young painter
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, whose art was quite abysmal, leave it behind and take a career in politics as he had a certain charisma and talent for speeches.
Between 1913 and 1919 her powers started to manifest. Jenny Sparks had absolute control of electricity, including travel through power lines, shooting bolts of lightning and shaping electricity. With age her control and power increased. By 1919 Jenny had also stopped aging.
Her adventures from 1919 to the early thirties were marked by the mindset of the era - Scientific Romance. In this period the Wildstorm universe had the first contact with Sliding Albion, an alternate Earth where humanity encountered aliens in the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, and where the blueskinned aliens and humans intermixed through the ages. In 1919 she married Prince Lorenzo of Albion to help him to take power against his father's tyrannical reign. Unfortunately Lorenzo was using the British of Jenny's reality to help him take over from his father who he considered too soft. She continued with traveling the multiple realities, visiting alien worlds, entering fast relationships with supermen and people of the era. During this time she earned the rank of Colonel in British Army Intelligence. A reporter named Clarence Cornwall became part of her life.
In the early thirties she went to the United States and spent most of that time as an adventurer and pulp hero. During this period she was the girlfriend of a certain Dr. Jones
Indiana Jones
Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...
. In 1939 she met Elijah Snow and after a one-night-stand they both agreed to forget that it ever happened. It was also during this decade that Jenny met The High, a Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
-like superhero, whom she would later meet during her stint at Stormwatch.
During World War II she was working as an Allied operative against the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
superbeings and preventing the Nazis from obtaining valuable artifacts and ancient weapons. In 1943 she was rescuing a Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
an egg from the Nazis. The egg was prophesied to open and bring forth a being that will usher a new age. Inside it was a small, curled up woman. She was captured and the only thing that prevented her from being sent to a camp where she would be dissected for creating German supermen was her childhood friend Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, who remembered her and upon accidentally noticing her being dragged away ordered her to be released and sent to England with the egg.
Jenny returned to the United States after the war. The world no longer believed in heroes. She did not either, and her darkening turned her into a noiresque
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
private eye who dealt her own brutal justice. During this time, she electrocuted
Electric shock
Electric Shock of a body with any source of electricity that causes a sufficient current through the skin, muscles or hair. Typically, the expression is used to denote an unwanted exposure to electricity, hence the effects are considered undesirable....
Clarence for trying to kill an orphanage because it was full of black kids. With the end of the 1940s she decided to head home.
The fifties
In the 1950s she became involved with the British Space Group, "the biggest clandestine stunt ever pulled on the British public", an organisation involved with alien and cross-dimensional interaction and exploration. Even their banquets were held under maximum security. During one of those, in 1953, the Sliding Albion reality entered its first World WarWorld war
A world war is a war affecting the majority of the world's most powerful and populous nations. World wars span multiple countries on multiple continents, with battles fought in multiple theaters....
, and bacterium weapons were unleashed on their London. In a final act of contempt and spite, Sliding Albion vented the bacterial fallout over Britain. However, this agent changed while traversing The Bleed
Bleed (Wildstorm)
The Bleed is a fictional interdimensional realm, a comic book construct that appears in books published by DC Comics. It first appeared in Stormwatch #7 , and was created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch.-Publication history:...
and caused the first surge of superhuman powers in Britain. Jenny did not notice, she only felt the world losing a great opportunity to become a better place. After a while she tried to write a book about her life but that got squashed.
The sixties
The 1960s were a new age of exploration and freedom. Not only that but, the first British heroes started to band together, and quite easily took Jenny as their leader for her experience and spirit. For the first time Jenny actually felt she belonged somewhere, and with her companions was set on making the world a better place. In the late sixties, Jenny and her friends were participating in a large festival on the Isle of WightIsle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
. Tragedy struck when one of the heroes, Abel Eternity, overdosed on drugs in an attempt to prove his masculinity. Abel went into a homicidal rampage, forcing Jenny to slay him. The group disbanded and Jenny decided to go to bed until 1982.
In the 1980s, a new British superhero group appeared, mainly composed by people who were children during Sliding Albion's attack. Jenny Sparks joined the group since they considered her the "clean one" from the '60s group. However, they all were revealed to be homicidal and she threatened to kill them on the spot if she ever saw them again.
Stormwatch and The Authority
Years later, she was contacted by Henry BendixHenry Bendix
Henry Bendix, also known as Weatherman, is a fictional character in the Wildstorm universe. He first appeared in the Stormwatch series.-Early life:...
to join Stormwatch
Stormwatch (comics)
Stormwatch is a fictional United Nations-sponsored superhero team that originated in the Wildstorm Universe and has since been revived as part of the DC Universe. The original version of Stormwatch first appeared in Stormwatch Stormwatch is a fictional United Nations-sponsored superhero team that...
. She declined, but, ten years later, Bendix managed to convince her to join the Stormwatch Black team alongside Swift (with whom she had a brief relationship) and Jack Hawksmoor. She was given command of the team against her will. Stormwatch Black was a covert insertion team, specially built for urban environments.
After a few missions, The High reappeared after decades of self exile, leading a group that wanted to change the world by removing the structure of society itself. It would be no more laws, no authoritarian structures, no crime and no war. Bendix didn't want her to know, but The High appeared on the TV news and Jenny saw him. Around this time, Jenny survived an assassination attempt by a needle-armed adversary. When Jenny confronted Bendix about The High, and about the fact that Bendix had given orders to Stormwatch to kill The High and his group, Bendix revealed the depths of his insanity. Jenny was forced to strike him down, but he escaped. In the ensuing chase, Jenny saw that he had killed all of the facility's cryogenically frozen prisoners. Afterward, an enraged High flew right to the Skywatch platform. Being temporarily in command, Jenny was forced, crying, to order the staff to raise the Storm Door force field to protect the hundreds of people on board. The High vaporized upon impacting against it. Some time later, Jenny finally tracked Bendix down and killed him, or so she thought.
When Stormwatch disbanded after the Aliens
Xenomorph (Alien)
The Alien is a fictional endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species that is the primary antagonist of the Alien film series. The species made its debut in the 1979 film Alien, and reappeared in its sequels Aliens , Alien 3 , and Alien Resurrection , two crossovers Alien vs...
attack that took the lives of half the team, she created the Authority alongside her Stormwatch Black teammates, with the goal to change the world, no matter what it takes. Old friends Battalion and Synergy assisted her in the beginning.
During her leadership, Jenny and her team faced many threats, including multiple attacks by Sliding Albion forces on Los Angeles and super-powered terrorists attacking many cities, including London and Moscow.
On December 31, 1999, Jenny Sparks knew that she would die at midnight as the 20th century ended, a fact known only by her teammate the Doctor. She electrocuted the brain of an enormous alien creature, the "God" that had originally created Earth and which was planning to wipe the planet clean of all life. This was her final act as humanity's defense mechanism. She died moments later in her teammates' arms. Her dying words and last will were: "Save the world. They deserve it. Be better. Or I'll come back and kick your heads in."
At the moment of her death, a new entity was born, Jenny Quantum
Jenny Quantum
Jenny Quantum is a fictional comic book superhero in the Wildstorm Universe published by DC Comics. She first appeared as a child in The Authority #13 , and was created by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely...
. Though not, in fact, a reincarnation of Jenny Sparks, she is actually her successor. Just as Jenny Sparks was the spirit of the 20th century, Jenny Quantum is the spirit of the 21st century.
During the Transfer of Power storyline, a magical version of Jenny appeared and temporarily removed all mechanical weapons from the Earth.
Powers and abilities
Jenny Sparks is one of the Century Babies, a being produced by the multiverse for a specific task. In her case, this was to influence the 20th century. As such, her moods are tied directly to the world's status. For example, she was suicidally depressed during the Great Depression and deliriously high during the Roaring TwentiesRoaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties is a phrase used to describe the 1920s, principally in North America, but also in London, Berlin and Paris for a period of sustained economic prosperity. The phrase was meant to emphasize the period's social, artistic, and cultural dynamism...
. Additionally, she stopped aging at nineteen and remained this way until her death. Her appearance alters from time to time and it is unclear if this is an effect of her connection to the planet or artist interpretation.
Jenny has the ability to manipulate electricity. She can easily draw electricity from electronic devices as well as from the human brain, a move she has threatened to kill people with. Sparks can also convert her entire body into electricity and travel anywhere electricity would. She can apparently survive being transformed into other forms of energy as when she traveled through a TV and power lines and then into a police radio. Shifting into her electrical form heals Sparks from injuries as well as poisons. Like an electrical current, Sparks as electricity must go somewhere before she can re-emerge in her human form. Normally this is into a machine, but other conductors seem to work as well. She was once able to go into the sky and remain there until striking down as lightning. She can also enter a person briefly and electrocute them.
A key distinction is that Jenny Sparks does not generate electricity like Electro
Electro (comics)
Electro is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. He is a supervillain and an enemy of Spider-Man who gained the ability to control electricity after being struck by lightning while working on a power line. Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, he first...
and others. If she is unable to access electricity from any sources or has no place for her electrical form to go, she is powerless and as vulnerable as a normal human. This limitation is a part of many of her adventures.
Through her lifetime Sparks was a member of several branches of the British military and led various superhero teams. As such she is an experienced leader and knowledgeable about military protocol. She has not demonstrated the fighting skill that one might associate with this experience, usually relying on her powers instead.
Appearances
- StormwatchStormwatch (comics)Stormwatch is a fictional United Nations-sponsored superhero team that originated in the Wildstorm Universe and has since been revived as part of the DC Universe. The original version of Stormwatch first appeared in Stormwatch Stormwatch is a fictional United Nations-sponsored superhero team that...
, specifically in the graphic novels Force of Nature, Lightning Strikes, Change or Die and Final Orbit. - The Authority vol 1, specifically in the Relentless graphic novel.
- Transfer of Power - Collects issues # 22-29.
- Jenny Sparks : The Secret History of the Authority (ISBN 1-56389-769-5).