Engineer II

[Anthony Devlin]

<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/headshots/dc/ws/eng2.gif" align=left alt="/name of Character here"> <img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/headshots/dc/ws/eng1.gif" align=left alt="/name of Character here">Real Name:Angela Spica
First Appearance: <i>The Authority #1 </i>
Group Affiliation: The Authority
Known Allies: Jack Hawksmoor, Swift, Apollo
Major Enemies: Henry Bendix, Kaizen Gammora (deceased), The Machine (deceased)
Eyes: Green (human), Grey (Engineer)
Hair: Black (human), Dark Grey (Engineer)

Angela was born a normal child; the youngest of six, in an average blue-collar family from Queens NY. She grew up and went to school like any ordinary child. But while her friends aspired to be lawyers and doctors, Angela, dreamt of leaping tall buildings and moving faster than a speeding bullet; in all senses a super-hero fan-girl, boasting to own every DC comic since nineteen fifty six. Angela went on to attended college; excelling in the Sciences and Computer studies. It was around this period Angela was either tutored, or befriended by the first Engineer.

Some years later the original Engineer met his demise during a conflict between StormWatch, and The High. Not wanting his life's work to die with him, he had in place certain countermeasures. At the exact moment of his death, all data he had stored on liquid nano-technology was sent directly to Angela's computer; who was at that time researching nano-machines. This information combined with her own, enabled Angela to make a huge leap forward in her search to produce human/machine fusion. Realising she now had the means to fulfil her childhood dreams; Angela went ahead with her most daring experiment to date. Taking what she had learnt from the combined information, Angela proceeded to replace her blood with nine pints of liquid machinery. The liquid machinery not only carried out the regular functions of human plasma, but it also allowed Angela to cover her entire body in a liquid metal membrane by thought.

It was during the final days of StormWatch, Angela was approached by Jenny Sparks the leader of StormWatch Black; now operating as a separate until to the rest of the programme, who came with an offer of membership. Knowing of her experiments with liquid nanotechnology and the astonishing results Jenny was keen to have Angela as a member of her new squad. Adopting the alias of her former colleague, Angela, immediately accepted membership. As The Engineer she; with the aid of another new recruit The Doctor, found the team their new base of operations; The Carrier.

With the events that followed on from Skywatch and the demise of the StormWatch programme, Jenny Sparks made the unit operational, and The Authority was born.

As The Engineer, Angela, has been active in all combat situations alongside her team-mates, and has proven herself time over to be a valued member of the squad. Through her abilities she has been able to merge with the Carrier; hence gaining its trust, she frequently merges and even holds conversations with the Carrier, which has enabled her to unlock many of the secrets surrounding the Carrier - it's many functions and capabilities and why it exists. Angela has also formed close bonds with certain members of the team; the late Jenny Sparks being the predominate one. Angela not only acted as a close friend but also Counsel to the arrogant and headstrong leader. Added to this, she has started a relationship with Jack Hawksmoor which is strained at times and often brings Angela more pain than joy. More recently Angela has acted as an aunt figure to a young Jenny Quantum.

Due to Angela's inherited succession to her current status, she had no previous combat training before joining the team. She has received only basic combat training since joining The Authority under the tutelage of Jenny Sparks. All other experience has been gained in the field.

Angela's powers are limited only by her imagination; she has the ability to transform her body into a variety of combat appliances ranging from making as many duplicate clones of herself as she needs, to turning body parts into weaponry. When confronted by the Super Solider Armies of Kaizen Gamorra, Angela created microscopic bugs that embedded themselves on the brains of her teammates enabling them to communicate with each other during combat through the mean of radiotelepathy. Angela is also able to sense environmental changes due to atom sizes machine sensors that constantly surround her. She can fly, and is able to modify her own body to survive in space and other hostile environments unharmed. How much direct control and influence Angela has over her nanobots is not yet known. During the time when the leaders of the world's most powerful nations replaced the Authority with their own operatives, Angela's blood was removed from her body (a feat in itself) and placed into a Japanese operative know as The Machine who then displayed all the abilities and powers that Angela had previously. The nanobots therefore either have no in-built loyalty to Angela or were somehow coerced into obeying the new host as Angela was able to re-assimilate them upon her counterpart's death.


APPEARANCES:
The Authority (1st series) #1-12
The Authority (2nd series) # 1-14
Planetary: Crossing Worlds GN
Jenny Sparks #1, 5
Authority: Human on the Inside GN
The Authority: Scorched Earth GN
WildStorm Winter Special 2003
Coup De'Etat #1-5
StormWatch: Team Achilles #5-6
The Authority: Revolution #1-12
Captain Atom #5-

[Kevin Williams]

Another excellent review mate. Covers all the good stuff. See you couldn't help but mention Jenny Sparks a few times, lol. Old habits die hard I suppose....
In all seriousness though I can't wait for the next one, keep up the good work :cheers:

[Nick Costanzo]

Awesome... though Jack and Angie's relationship also has a lot of sweet moments as well :)

[Kevin Williams]

Which ones? The one where she slept with the Doctor or the one where she made duplicates of herself for that three-in-a-bed sex-romp ;)

[Nick Costanzo]

Which ones? The one where she slept with the Doctor or the one where she made duplicates of herself for that three-in-a-bed sex-romp ;)Well, if I were Jack I'd think that latter one was pretty sweet. And considering he was in ANOTHER three-way while the Doctor was sleeping with Jeroen, I dont think he would mind what she was up to ;)

The thing is, Jack and Angie were conceived as the ultimate liberal non-exclusive oversexed couple, not meant to be serious at all. Angie even describes what she has with Jack as "regular sex". They were only made more serious, unfortunately, as a way to distract people from Apollo and Midnighter, who's makeout sessions were noticably diminished as one went from volume 1 to volume 2.

Angie and Jack were more fun back before they were all lovey-dovey around each other... now I'm finding their relationship to be quite aggrivating. But at the very least, they managed to survive the Authority's break, while Apollo and Midnighter didn't. That's gotta show that there must be something there between Engineer and Hawksmoor to make them want to stay together.

[Kevin Williams]

Yeah, I look as Angie and Jack as the Scott and Jean of the WSU, but without the celestial/evil possessions, clones, alternate timeline children and blatant infedelity ;)

[Nick Costanzo]

But... there was blatant infedelity. They just didn't care ;)

[Kevin Williams]

Exactly. Angie wouldn't go and make out for the umpteenth time with the Doctor just becuase Jack was having a radiotelepathy affair with Shen.

[Nick Costanzo]

Well, not unless he was sharing his goods again... which is probably about as detailed as I can go into that scene without causing trouble...

[Kevin Williams]

Are we talking about recreational chemicals, his manly wares or both?

[Kevin Williams]

This probably bears mentioning: The former Engineer's technology, in the form of the Nevada Garden, has also passed into the hands of Stormwatch and by extension the hands of those nations with membership on its (now defunct) secret council - presumably this includes the economies that sponsored Seth and the faux Authority. This neatly explains all instances of her technology being hijacked (Santini, in particular, has said he has the knowledge.)



Well if they had access to the tech, why didn't they just make The Machine rather than infuse her with Angela's blood? My best guess, they couldn't make the human/machine fusion work as it was something specific to Angela's nanotech. Yeah it explains how they did it but for the purpsoe of a bio I don't think it's a major point, the fact that it was done at all is the important bit, the conjecture on how is secondary.



I'm not certain about how the site handles Enemies - should they be individuals with specific longterm enmity for the character, or known rivals, or...? I ask because Kaizen Gamorra saw the Authority as more of an annoyance than a real threat; I just don't think he passes muster as exceptional among the many things Angie's fought.



I'm not sure either, but in my book a bloke who goes around destroying cities just to carve a specifc mark on the face of the globe is pretty well up there as a major villian.

Your points are well made and relevant but you must remember these bios aren't meant to be full in-depth blow by blow accounts of the character's life. Besides, these things take a lot of time and effort to put together. I;m sure you can imagine the amount of resarch involved and just how difficult it is to summarise all the saliant points into something that doesn't come across as a dry and boring summary of evey issue a character has been in.

Oh and as a matter of courtesy, you could at least have congratulated Anthony on his effort before nit-picking. Nothing wrong with nit-picking but a "Thank You" and some words of appreciation/encouragement might have been a nice gesture.

[Kevin Williams]

Your input would only be insincere if you didn't mean it. A few words of what you thought about the review in general would have been nice before launching into nit-picking.

As for your points, again they are very valid. With regards to the major villains, yes God and the Sliding Albion crowd might rate a mention, but Kaizen Gammora was the first one the team went up against. Sliding Albion was more of Jenny's bag and confronting God lead to the death of Jenny, so I'll concede that maybe God might warrent inclusion but do that and I think you'll open the floodgates for anyone who has ever trangressed against the team (the US Government, StormWatch Team Achilles, Reality Inc, Vice World, get the picture?) which would just entail listing everyone the team ever fought.

As for your points regarding Angela's nanotech, it seems to me that you might have missed the point; its the bio for the Engineer II not the original. Banging on about about the Nevada Garden would have confused new readers. Yes it indirectly led to Angela's research producing human/machine fusion but it wasn't the precise source of her powers (a lot of it had to do with her own research too). Any information on the Nevada Garden belongs pretty exclusively in the bio for the original Engineer.

I'm glad you're interested in doing bios, lord knows we need more in the Wildstorm section. However I think you'll find it a bit harder than you think if you're going to go into such fine detail on them all. Yeah, compared to some characters Angels has had a limited run, but just wait until you do your Jackson King one; a whole 50+ issues of Stromwatch appearnces, various cross overs, appearnaces in The Authority and then The Monarchy. The trick will be to summarise all of that keeping it concise and relevant without it being a huge chronological summary of everything he's been in or being so volumous and dry that readers will just switch off and lose interest. I know I'd have difficulty doing it so I do sincerely wish you the best of luck.

[Kevin Williams]

I don't consider what I'm doing here to be nitpicking as much as providing input

....or quibbling with the author because he didn't write the bio in the way that you would have. It' his call, respect his decision, please.


But in the absence of implicit praise: This is a good bio. It handles the major points and has little excess. I feel as if some points could use trimming or clarification.

That would have been a much more apporpriate way of opening your very first post on this subject.

As for adresssing your other points, when writing a bio, you'll find that you can't please all of the people all of the time, especially the fanboys. Bear that in mind when you do your ones. Be prepared for the inundation of "but you never mentioned this" and "but what about the time when" plus of course their idle specualtions and theories.

The biographies, as I see them, aren't meant to be a comprehensive guide to the character they are profiling (I'll leave that to Official Handbooks). Instead they serve as a quick overview of a character, providing the familiarised reader an easily acessible resource and hopefully engaging the casual reader's interest and motivate them into checking out a few of the comics and experiencing the events for themselves firsthand.

[Jenny Spark's Sister]

Loving your Bio's Antony! :LOL: Looking forward to the Doctors ( ahhhh Joeron :~( , poor quite, literally "shagged-out" Joeron :LOL: )

Right am off to cover myself in Bacofoil in some kind wierd tribute to one of our favourite Queens..... :howudoin: ;)

[Remnant]

Hey Ant, Great Bio! It gets to the point straight away and contains everything you need to know about the character without getting hung up on the previous Engineers history :). The Engineer's a great character, i'm glad she has a bio now :yes:.

Cant wait for the Doc's bio...

Remnant

[Berserk_Seraph]

Edit:

You know, after a moment's consideration I've decided against this - It's a meaningless struggle and both sides are pretty well entrenched. I've deleted my posts and I politely request that Elijah edit away the quotations thereof; apparently the preservation of an 'aura of friendliness' is preferable to what I consider an acceptable standard of accuracy.

Great work, Anthony, despite all the noise that's been flying.

Otherwise: Crisis averted, invading army routed, and so on. I guess this is what counts for a 'victory' on the internet.

[Kevin Williams]

I'd be more than happy to oblige mate, but the tone of your last post leaves a lot to be desired. I think it only fair I leave them in so other posters can get some sort of idea of what you're actually like.
The internet isn't about victories, it's about having respect for other members of a community; something your last post shows your a bit dificient in with regards to the people/author in this bio thread.

[Remnant]

I really like the headshot thats been added, wheres it from?

Remnant

[Jenny Spark's Sister]

It's from the front cover of Coup De'Etat Trade.

[Berserk_Seraph]

Believe it or not, I'm rather fond of what this forum does; so I'm going against my instinct and responding. If a mod doesn't like where this is going, I'll delete it immediately.

I'd be more than happy to oblige mate, but the tone of your last post leaves a lot to be desired. I think it only fair I leave them in so other posters can get some sort of idea of what you're actually like.

Your prerogative, I guess. For what it's worth I probably deserve the parting shot.

I didn't want this to devolve into semantical arguments about the presence of faux politeness vs. honest sincerity or a flame war over the little jabs and jibes that we were both resorting to - so I decided to get out of it. Sometimes respect is knowing when to stop.

So I'll make this a group thing. If having the 'full record' is so important to this community I can ask Anthony to undelete my posts.

Edited for bad idea! BAAAAD IDEAAAA
Edited a bit later for Terrible writing! TERRIBLE WRITING.

[Jon Hancock]

Ok.... Should have seen this sooner. Stupid internet stranding me for a month or however long it's been.

Firstly, Beserker I've no problem with you adding, querying or questioning the input. The bios are living documents and you didn't do anything wrong.

Elijah, I'm glad you enjoy reading Anthony's bios but it is not your place to tell people off for criticising, adding or 'nit picking' at them. Anthony's a big boy and can handle himself. Beserker wasn't flaming or posting off topic. I'd ask that in future you leave the modding to the staff.

On a technical matter, enemies are subjective. It's good to have one or two and then apply the rule consistently for the character. eg, angie doesn't have a rogues gallery so gets the enemies who have plagued her team the most whereas the flash has plenty of enemies but there's a clear difference between the animosity he feels for the reverse flash compared to the Rainbow Raider. Make sense?

[Alsatian_Cousin]

Her eyes are constantly being colored green in both human and nano-form. There are only a few times they are not colored green.

[Anthony Devlin]

Her eyes are constantly being colored green in both human and nano-form. There are only a few times they are not colored green.

Thanks for that, i meant to change that a while back and forgot. :)

[Alsatian_Cousin]

No prob.