Kev Hawkins
Encyclopedia
Kev Hawkins is a comic book anti-hero
who first appeared in an Authority one-shot in 2002
.
Kev was created by Garth Ennis
and Glenn Fabry
and is a (former) SAS
operative who is forever down on his luck. Despite all his training, Kevin is not very muscular or intelligent and is cursed with probably the worst luck of anybody on the Wildstorm
Earth.
, Kev joined up with the British Army
. It turned out that Kev was rather good at being a soldier and he enjoyed his time, until one day a man caught Kev in bed with his wife. This man later turned out to be Kev's new commanding officer. After the man made Kev pay by putting him on any humiliating assignment and giving him the blame for everything that went wrong in the camp, Kev had enough and joined up with the SAS, the only place his commanding officer couldn't reach him. Motivated by his desire to escape, Kev finished the SAS training and was assigned to various missions.
During a mission in Northern Ireland
, he had to kill members of both the IRA
and the Ulster Defense Association, which meant that assassins from both movements wanted revenge for the rest of his life. Every few weeks or so, Kev gets attacked by a former terrorist or terrorist squads, but escapes unscathed because his assassins tend to suffer strokes from bad luck or take each other out. Kev had a relationship of mutual loathing with Froggett, the British Intelligence official who disposes of all the corpses Kev (and others) make.
Kev and three others, including Bob, were assigned to infiltrate a small Iraqi camp, steal a video tape, and leave (And to absolutely under no circumstances view the tape.) After infiltrating the camp, the squad finds the tape only to see it already running in a VCR, which is apparently homemade pornography tape of Saddam Hussein and Margaret Thatcher having sex in the White House. Before they can kill the guard who was watching it, however, they are happened upon and forced to make their escape, only to be inadvertently bombed by a US Air Force jet. One member is caputured and tortured while Kev is denied the chance to mount a rescue and turns over the tape.
Kev's regiment was once loaned to the Indian government
, and the mission saw his friend Danny killing an elephant
. Danny had emotional trouble after this and when they later stumbled upon a baby tiger, Danny couldn't obey the order to kill it (as the mother had died, they thought that the baby had no chance of survival on its own). Instead Danny hid it in his backpack and took it home. A few years later, Kev was promoted and given the command over his first operation: protecting a cabinet minister. The cabinet minister in question blackmailed his SAS bodyguards to find him a prostitute - otherwise he would have them fired - and the group decided to take him to Danny's house, the only suitable location. When suspicious figures (who turned out to be tabloid reporters) were spotted, Kev grabbed the minister and locked him inside the basement... the same basement where Danny had hidden his now full-grown tiger.
Kev helped Danny and his tiger to escape before questioning, but remained behind himself, unable to contemplate dropping out of the army and not following orders, and so took the full blame for the minister being eaten. Kev was fired from the SAS and given to MI5
to do every assignment no one else would do. Any complaints from his part would see his superior officer to mention "the thing with the tiger" and he knew he had no choice but to obey. Meanwhile, it was hinted Danny was now working as an eco-terrorist alongside the very tiger that has caused so much trouble.
. To the complete surprise of the Authority, who thought it was all a joke, the gun turned out to be capable of killing even the invulnerable Apollo
and contained more bullets than it should have, and Kev killed the whole team in twelve seconds. Unfortunately, it turned out that he'd been assigned the mission by an alien masquerading as his boss, all to allow an invasion fleet to attack Earth. Kev then had to convince the sentient Carrier to reverse time to before the Authority died so they could handle the invasion, but before he could escape they discovered that he'd killed them. For a moment it seemed like he would escape unscathed (mainly by being completely pathetic), but an ill-timed remark - "what, are they a couple of poofs or something?" - about Apollo and the Midnighter
earned him the beating of a life-time and Kev ended up in hospital.
Two years later, Apollo and Midnighter were forced to contact Kevin again: it turned out the cabinet minister that was eaten had actually been an alien fugitive named B'eeef, and the alien Rukalai, who had just neutralised the rest of the Authority, were threatening to destroy the Earth if he wasn't handed over. Kev and his former SAS mates - Tiny, Mick and Bob - took them to the fetid swamp where Froggett dumped all his bodies, where B'eeef had regrown his head. The team captured B'eeef and defeated all the zombies he'd reanimated, but Kev inadvertently made another attempt on the Authority's life when, coming across a nuclear bomb B'eeef had made, he chucked it through the open Door leading to the Carrier. The Midnighter, annoyed at the bomb destroying "all our ****ing stuff", later met with Kev and, after arguing with him, told him that the real reason he was a homophobe was because that's what he thought "tough guys" were like - that all his life, Kev had been letting others tell him how to think.
When a mysterious creature appeared on the Carrier in 2005 and took out the Authority by throwing pies at their faces, a heavily wounded Midnighter escaped the Carrier and landed in Britain, sending a request to British Intelligence to have Kev bring him in. Kev, already dealing with the recent suicide of Tiny, reluctantly went but was double crossed by Mick, who was shadowing him. Midnighter had expected this and gave Kev the password to the file Royal Oak; investigating later on, Kev discovered it was a plot to create superhumans for the British government, using the Midnighter's DNA, by experimenting on children; the attack on the Carrier had been the result of a computer virus planted by MI5 in order to capture one of the Authority. Kev went to save the Midnighter and the children and was confronted by Mick, and was shocked to hear that Mick doesn't care about any of this or even about the recent death of Tiny. Kev killed him in a rage and when his boss entered & commanded him to kill the Midnighter and the children, he shot her too.
Now a wanted man, he left the kids (who were unbearable brats) at an orphanage and returned with the Midnighter to defeat the creature. Midnighter ordered the Carrier to purge the virus from its memory, revealing the creature to have really been Froggett, using the Carrier's own systems to transform himself in a creature capable of defeating the Authority. Midnighter gave Kev the chance to torture Froggett with a spiked baseball bat and afterwards they threw him out of an airlock. Kev returned to London to have a last drink before starting life on the run, with the Midnighter showing some grudging respect for him changing his ways.
After being "fired" from his job, Kev is blackmailed into leaving the UK with an old pornographic movie he once filmed with a now famous porn star. If it were to be released, it would ruin any chances of him finding any work ever, so he agrees. His ex teammate Bob gives him the address of Danny, now living in the states. Bob is soon murdered by what appears to be a ninja. After arriving in the States, Kev finds his way to Danny, who is now a cannabis growing mountain man, living with his tiger and a woman. Kev soon finds out that the woman is the sister of Danny's lover and that Danny himself is gay. It's soon revealed that the ninja is coming after Kev as well; the guard who was watching the tape is now in a position of power, and wants anyone he thinks has a copy killed, Kev included. Danny is murdered in the ensuing battle, but Kev takes revenge by killing the ninja and executing the former guard one bullet at a time. He then leaves to begin a new life growing cannabis and caring for Danny's tiger with his new girlfriend. Kev's life was later made even more comfortable when the Authority ruled America and legalized cannabis.
Kev was likely killed by the events of World's End, in which millions of nuclear bombs surrounding Earth explode and cause the Earth's axis to tilt, turning the planet into a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which 90 percent of the human population has been destroyed. The Authority is in ruins, the Wildcats can barely survive LA, Gen13 are missing. Kev is likely dead, unless he's lucky enough for his adventures to be set in a parallel version of Wildstorm's continuity that was more in tune with Garth Ennis' sensibilities than Wildstorm editorial's. We can hope, eh?
:
Anti-hero
In fiction, an antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero, and is in some instances its antithesis in which the character is generally useless at being a hero or heroine when they're...
who first appeared in an Authority one-shot in 2002
2002 in comics
-March:* Adventures of Superman #600: super-sized anniversary issue by Joe Casey, Mike Wieringo, and Jose Marzan, Jr. -April:* Batman #600: "Bruce Wayne: Fugitive," part one, 64-page giant, written by Ed Brubaker.-January:...
.
Kev was created by Garth Ennis
Garth Ennis
Garth Ennis is a Northern Irish comics writer, best known for the Vertigo series Preacher with artist Steve Dillon and his successful nine-year run on Marvel Comics' Punisher franchise...
and Glenn Fabry
Glenn Fabry
Glenn Fabry is an Eisner Award-winning British comics artist known for his detailed, realistic work in both ink and painted colour.-Biography:...
and is a (former) SAS
Special Air Service
Special Air Service or SAS is a corps of the British Army constituted on 31 May 1950. They are part of the United Kingdom Special Forces and have served as a model for the special forces of many other countries all over the world...
operative who is forever down on his luck. Despite all his training, Kevin is not very muscular or intelligent and is cursed with probably the worst luck of anybody on 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...
Earth.
Life in the army
Kev Hawkins lead a rather uneventful life, with no money, no proper education and no significant other. Wanting to escape LutonLuton
Luton is a large town and unitary authority of Bedfordshire, England, 30 miles north of London. Luton and its near neighbours, Dunstable and Houghton Regis, form the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area with a population of about 250,000....
, Kev joined up with the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
. It turned out that Kev was rather good at being a soldier and he enjoyed his time, until one day a man caught Kev in bed with his wife. This man later turned out to be Kev's new commanding officer. After the man made Kev pay by putting him on any humiliating assignment and giving him the blame for everything that went wrong in the camp, Kev had enough and joined up with the SAS, the only place his commanding officer couldn't reach him. Motivated by his desire to escape, Kev finished the SAS training and was assigned to various missions.
During a mission in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, he had to kill members of both the IRA
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
and the Ulster Defense Association, which meant that assassins from both movements wanted revenge for the rest of his life. Every few weeks or so, Kev gets attacked by a former terrorist or terrorist squads, but escapes unscathed because his assassins tend to suffer strokes from bad luck or take each other out. Kev had a relationship of mutual loathing with Froggett, the British Intelligence official who disposes of all the corpses Kev (and others) make.
Kev and three others, including Bob, were assigned to infiltrate a small Iraqi camp, steal a video tape, and leave (And to absolutely under no circumstances view the tape.) After infiltrating the camp, the squad finds the tape only to see it already running in a VCR, which is apparently homemade pornography tape of Saddam Hussein and Margaret Thatcher having sex in the White House. Before they can kill the guard who was watching it, however, they are happened upon and forced to make their escape, only to be inadvertently bombed by a US Air Force jet. One member is caputured and tortured while Kev is denied the chance to mount a rescue and turns over the tape.
Kev's regiment was once loaned to the Indian government
Politics of India
The politics of India takes place within the framework of a federal constitutional republic, in which the President of India is head of state and the Prime Minister of India is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the President and is independent of the legislature...
, and the mission saw his friend Danny killing an elephant
Elephant
Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...
. Danny had emotional trouble after this and when they later stumbled upon a baby tiger, Danny couldn't obey the order to kill it (as the mother had died, they thought that the baby had no chance of survival on its own). Instead Danny hid it in his backpack and took it home. A few years later, Kev was promoted and given the command over his first operation: protecting a cabinet minister. The cabinet minister in question blackmailed his SAS bodyguards to find him a prostitute - otherwise he would have them fired - and the group decided to take him to Danny's house, the only suitable location. When suspicious figures (who turned out to be tabloid reporters) were spotted, Kev grabbed the minister and locked him inside the basement... the same basement where Danny had hidden his now full-grown tiger.
Kev helped Danny and his tiger to escape before questioning, but remained behind himself, unable to contemplate dropping out of the army and not following orders, and so took the full blame for the minister being eaten. Kev was fired from the SAS and given to MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
to do every assignment no one else would do. Any complaints from his part would see his superior officer to mention "the thing with the tiger" and he knew he had no choice but to obey. Meanwhile, it was hinted Danny was now working as an eco-terrorist alongside the very tiger that has caused so much trouble.
The Authority
In 2002, Kev got assigned the mission to kill the Authority, being handed an old gun and a device that would allow him to teleport to the team's headquarters, CarrierThe Carrier
The Carrier is the fictional base of operations of The Authority, a Wildstorm Comics superteam. It is a shiftship, a ship capable of moving through the Bleed, the red space which separates alternate universes in the Wildstorm multiverse. It is long, high and two miles wide. It is powered by a...
. To the complete surprise of the Authority, who thought it was all a joke, the gun turned out to be capable of killing even the invulnerable Apollo
Apollo (comics)
Apollo is a fictional character, a comic book superhero who first appeared in the Stormwatch series, but is best known for his role in The Authority. While visually distinct, Apollo is cast in the mold of the Superman archetype....
and contained more bullets than it should have, and Kev killed the whole team in twelve seconds. Unfortunately, it turned out that he'd been assigned the mission by an alien masquerading as his boss, all to allow an invasion fleet to attack Earth. Kev then had to convince the sentient Carrier to reverse time to before the Authority died so they could handle the invasion, but before he could escape they discovered that he'd killed them. For a moment it seemed like he would escape unscathed (mainly by being completely pathetic), but an ill-timed remark - "what, are they a couple of poofs or something?" - about Apollo and the Midnighter
Midnighter
Midnighter is a fictional comic book superhero, best known as a member of the rogue superhero team The Authority. Created by writer Warren Ellis and artist Bryan Hitch, he first appeared in Stormwatch #4, before appearing in various Authority books and series and his own eponymous ongoing series...
earned him the beating of a life-time and Kev ended up in hospital.
Two years later, Apollo and Midnighter were forced to contact Kevin again: it turned out the cabinet minister that was eaten had actually been an alien fugitive named B'eeef, and the alien Rukalai, who had just neutralised the rest of the Authority, were threatening to destroy the Earth if he wasn't handed over. Kev and his former SAS mates - Tiny, Mick and Bob - took them to the fetid swamp where Froggett dumped all his bodies, where B'eeef had regrown his head. The team captured B'eeef and defeated all the zombies he'd reanimated, but Kev inadvertently made another attempt on the Authority's life when, coming across a nuclear bomb B'eeef had made, he chucked it through the open Door leading to the Carrier. The Midnighter, annoyed at the bomb destroying "all our ****ing stuff", later met with Kev and, after arguing with him, told him that the real reason he was a homophobe was because that's what he thought "tough guys" were like - that all his life, Kev had been letting others tell him how to think.
When a mysterious creature appeared on the Carrier in 2005 and took out the Authority by throwing pies at their faces, a heavily wounded Midnighter escaped the Carrier and landed in Britain, sending a request to British Intelligence to have Kev bring him in. Kev, already dealing with the recent suicide of Tiny, reluctantly went but was double crossed by Mick, who was shadowing him. Midnighter had expected this and gave Kev the password to the file Royal Oak; investigating later on, Kev discovered it was a plot to create superhumans for the British government, using the Midnighter's DNA, by experimenting on children; the attack on the Carrier had been the result of a computer virus planted by MI5 in order to capture one of the Authority. Kev went to save the Midnighter and the children and was confronted by Mick, and was shocked to hear that Mick doesn't care about any of this or even about the recent death of Tiny. Kev killed him in a rage and when his boss entered & commanded him to kill the Midnighter and the children, he shot her too.
Now a wanted man, he left the kids (who were unbearable brats) at an orphanage and returned with the Midnighter to defeat the creature. Midnighter ordered the Carrier to purge the virus from its memory, revealing the creature to have really been Froggett, using the Carrier's own systems to transform himself in a creature capable of defeating the Authority. Midnighter gave Kev the chance to torture Froggett with a spiked baseball bat and afterwards they threw him out of an airlock. Kev returned to London to have a last drink before starting life on the run, with the Midnighter showing some grudging respect for him changing his ways.
After being "fired" from his job, Kev is blackmailed into leaving the UK with an old pornographic movie he once filmed with a now famous porn star. If it were to be released, it would ruin any chances of him finding any work ever, so he agrees. His ex teammate Bob gives him the address of Danny, now living in the states. Bob is soon murdered by what appears to be a ninja. After arriving in the States, Kev finds his way to Danny, who is now a cannabis growing mountain man, living with his tiger and a woman. Kev soon finds out that the woman is the sister of Danny's lover and that Danny himself is gay. It's soon revealed that the ninja is coming after Kev as well; the guard who was watching the tape is now in a position of power, and wants anyone he thinks has a copy killed, Kev included. Danny is murdered in the ensuing battle, but Kev takes revenge by killing the ninja and executing the former guard one bullet at a time. He then leaves to begin a new life growing cannabis and caring for Danny's tiger with his new girlfriend. Kev's life was later made even more comfortable when the Authority ruled America and legalized cannabis.
Kev was likely killed by the events of World's End, in which millions of nuclear bombs surrounding Earth explode and cause the Earth's axis to tilt, turning the planet into a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which 90 percent of the human population has been destroyed. The Authority is in ruins, the Wildcats can barely survive LA, Gen13 are missing. Kev is likely dead, unless he's lucky enough for his adventures to be set in a parallel version of Wildstorm's continuity that was more in tune with Garth Ennis' sensibilities than Wildstorm editorial's. We can hope, eh?
Running jokes and repeated themes
- Each story begins with members of the Provisional IRA or the Ulster Volunteer Force attempting (and failing) to assassinate Kev in order to "avenge (their) noble brothers".
- The start of each story also has a scene in which Kev loses money on a horse-race because the horse becomes incapacitated. This happens in more and more ludicrous ways each time.
- Another running joke sees Kev seemingly commenting on a terrible tragedy in a newspaper, only for it to be revealed that he is reading a sports article.
- The first three stories also featured ongoing arguments between Kev and Froggett, the man assigned to clear up the bodies of everyone that tries to kill Kev.
- Kev often finds out that a friend of his is gay when he goes on a gay-bashing rant.
- The Carrier (The Authority's sentient shiftship/base of operations) is usually introduced in mainstream Authority books with a piece of prose listing its capabilities and/or current location. For example, from The Authority #1: 'The Carrier: Moving downwake through the devachanic realm at a speed of twenty-five dreams per second...' However in books and stories involving Kev a suitably earthier piece of text is used. For example: 'The Carrier: The Death Star can suck its big fat c**k.'
Individual series
- The Authority: Kev (oneshot) (2002)
- The Authority: More Kev #1-4 (2004)
- The Authority: The Magnificent Kevin #1-5 (2005-2006)
- A Man Called Kev #1-5 (2006)
Collections
The mini-series are collected into trade paperbacksTrade paperback (comics)
In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...
:
- The Authority: Kev (with Glenn FabryGlenn FabryGlenn Fabry is an Eisner Award-winning British comics artist known for his detailed, realistic work in both ink and painted colour.-Biography:...
, Wildstorm, tpb, collects "Kev" and "More Kev", 2005, ISBN 1-4012-0614-X) - The Authority: The Magnificent Kevin (with Carlos EzquerraCarlos EzquerraCarlos Sanchez Ezquerra , who has also worked under the alias L. John Silver, is a Spanish comics artist who works mainly in British comics and currently lives in Andorra...
, DC/Wildstorm, tpb, 2006, ISBN 1-4012-0990-4) - A Man Called Kev (with Carlos EzquerraCarlos EzquerraCarlos Sanchez Ezquerra , who has also worked under the alias L. John Silver, is a Spanish comics artist who works mainly in British comics and currently lives in Andorra...
, tpb, June 2007, ISBN 1-4012-1324-3)