Samaritan (Astro City)
The Samaritan is a male comic superhero who features in Astro City.
Contents |
Biography
The Samaritan was a male human who was actually an inhabitant of a dystopian future in the 35th century. He came to be selected to go back in time to prevent a catastrophic event whose consequences ultimately ruined the future world. Launched into the timestream, he is caught up in empyrean fire, the strands of energy that make up time itself. Crash-landing near Astro City in late 1985, he spends the remainder of the year learning to master the empyrean forces which had suffused his body, and to alter it to change back to a more normal appearance (the empyrean forces had changed his hair to a bright shade of blue; he uses his powers to bleach the blue coloring away, rendering it white, and restores it when he appears as Samaritan.). Desperately working to control his powers, he barely succeeds in time to prevent the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the event he has been sent to amend. Upon placing the Challenger on the ground, he is besieged by the media, who press him for details on himself. Briefly dismissing himself as just "a Good Samaritan", he departs immediately to better figure things out.
Eventually deciding that he could do a lot of good with his powers, he added a cape to his outfit and takes the name "Samaritan", basing himself in Astro City. Additionally, he uses his Zyxometer, a living bio-computer shaped like a diamond with tentacles, to create a civilian identity for himself as "Asa Martin" (an anagram of "Samaritan"), a fact-checker for Current, a news magazine based in Astro City. With the quiet his job affords, Martin programs the Zyxometer to do his daily duties at Current, enabling Samaritan to simultaneously continue performing his heroics and protecting the people. However, this causes Asa to appear to his colleagues as standoffish. His sense of duty has led to a similar problem as Samaritan, leading him to attempt to ameliorate it with what he considers non-essential activities. For example, he consents to attend dinners and banquets held in his honor, lest he seem arrogant by those he serves. The plaques and trophies given to him at these events end up in an alternate dimension, nicknamed "the Closet", that he can access.
The stress of his responsibilities has effects on Samaritan. With little time to himself, he often (though silently) grouses that the need to fly rapidly to various locations to stop crimes and prevent disasters leaves him little time to enjoy the sheer sensation of flight. He also frets over the fact that he cannot be omnipresent and deal with every problem that warrants his attention. His problems are further compounded when, on a time-traveling mission back to his home future, he discovers that saving the Challenger changed the timeline (as planned), turning the barren wastelands he came from into a prosperous near-utopia. However, this also results in a paradoxical future in which he never existed; thus, he has no home to which he could ever conceivably return.
Overview
Personality and attributes
He admitted that he could not save everybody and that people would die when he was saving lives. Despite that, he still wanted to do what he could do to save people.
Powers and abilities
Due to exposure to the energies that make up the timestream, Samaritan has a number of superhuman abilities.
This energy field was called the 'empyrean fire' that was an ambient of time itself. (Astro City v1 #6)
He is capable of hypersonic flight, as evidenced in a flight from the United States to the Philippines that took 6.2 seconds. He can manipulate a field of energy, called an empyrean web, to carry and hold objects larger than him. Additionally, he has exhibited super strength, though it is not known whether it is due to muscular feats or his manipulation of energy fields. He can travel into alternate dimensions unaided. It is not known if he can travel through space-time on his own accord.
The Samaritan was capable of projecting the empyrean energy from his body. (Astro City v1 #1)
His earpiece is an extension of the Zyxometer, constantly feeding him updates on emergencies from various sources.
Notes
- The Samaritan was created by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross where he made his first appearance in Astro City v1 #1 (August, 1995).
Appearances
- Astro City v1: (1995)
External Links
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