Brick
45 years ago - Danny Brickwell is born to a single mother in Star City.
31 years ago - 14-year-old Danny Brickwell is present when the rhyming demon Cthugha is summoned by his friend Samuel, who then attempts to offer him as a sacrifice. Danny is able to win over the favor of the demon and offer Samuel in his place. He is granted demonic strength and durability, but cursed with stony red skin. He starts working as an extremely low-level enforcer.
24 years ago - 21-year-old Danny Brickwell becomes an enforcer for William Tockman as he becomes the costumed criminal Clock King.
20 years ago - 25-year-old Danny Brickwell, with the backing of Tockman Inc, starts to build his own criminal organizations, allowing William Tockman to remain completely legitimate.
18 years ago - 27-year-old Danny Brickwell minimizes his profile in Star City, seeing Green Arrow disassembling his competition. He agrees to distribute the drugs brought into Star City by Chien Na Wei, negotiated by William Tockman.
15 years ago - 30-year-old Danny Brickwell sees the sudden vacuum of power when Chien Na Wei is captured by Green Arrow. He begins to quickly build alliances among the remaining organized crime fixtures with the support of William Tockman, anticipating the inevitable war for power.
14 years ago - 31-year-old Danny Brickwell's alliances among the organized crime of Star City pay off when Chien Na Wei is murdered (at the behest of William Tockman), setting him up to assume power as the new crime boss of the city.
13 years ago - 32-year-old Danny Brickwell's criminal organization's expansion is unintentionally aided by the vigilante Eric Needham’s attack on the drug trade taking out his competition.
12 years ago - 33-year-old Danny Brickwell's rise to power draws the attention of Green Arrow, who continually works against him with his ally Speedy.
11 years ago - 34-year-old Danny Brickwell partners with the Japanese Yakuza, drawing the vigilante Shado to Star City.
10 years ago - 35-year-old Danny Brickwell, in an effort to rid Star City of its vigilantes, begins setting off a series of fires, bombings, and crime sprees to draw them out so he can fight them himself. He is almost successful but is ultimately captured by Green Arrow, Speedy & Black Canary. William Tockman secures his organization in his absence.
9 years ago - 36-year-old Danny Brickwell sees William Tockman completely take over his organization, assuming full control of organized crime in Star City. He plans his escape, but is killed in prison with a weapon smuggled in by Tockman.
One of the best things about a particular character having their own ongoing series is the worldbuilding that grows up around them. We learn about their home city, see how their life works, meet the people that they know. You can see it in the organization of this site; characters are almost always stronger the more concrete their supporting cast is. This is also true of their villains; they might be the catalyst of a lot of the drama, but they also help define the world around the hero in question. Brick is a great example of this; a character specifically introduced because he helps shape the world of the hero.
Brick's Comic HistoryBrick is introduced in Issue #40 of Green Arrow Vol 3, the series that begins with bringing back Oliver Queen from the dead. By 2004's issue 40 a lot of worldbuilding had been done by writers Kevin Smith & Judd Winnick, establishing the landscape of organized crime in Star City. They'd just come out of a story in which the city suffered a demonic invasion, fought by an army of both cops and gangsters, creating a vacuum of power that is filled by Winnick's new character Danny Brickwell, a purpose-built metahuman powerhouse gangster who acquires enough territory make himself the figurehead for organized crime in Green Arrow's Star City.
The cool thing about Brick is that he's not designed to be an antagonist in a particular story; he's part of the landscape. He IS organized crime. He's as much a regular part of the Green Arrow cast as Lex Luthor is part of Superman's. He isn't a problem to be solved, he's part of what maintains equilibrium in the city. As he continued to appear in the series, he would even work WITH Oliver occasionally, since it was in both of their interests to protect the city from external threats. Brick has gone on to make regular appearances in practically every Green Arrow series to follow. The scope of his role has varied depending on the story at hand, but it's clearly understood that he needs to be there. |
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Our Brick StoryFirst of all, we tried to give Brick an origin. traditionally he's just a metahuman, a person born with superhuman powers of some kind (coughmutantcough), but we do try to create origin events when we can. For Danny, since the story he debuted in came right on the heels of a story about a demonic invasion, we decided to go ahead and use that as the source of his powers, saying that he was nearly a victim of human sacrifice who managed to turn the tables on his friend, and was rewarded with his powers by a low-level rhyming demon. This does a neat job of establishing exactly what sort of power level we're talking about here, since we have an inherent understanding of how powerful characters like Etrigan or Blue Devil are.
As far as his story is concerned, we actually have a very particular role for him. We've made some changes to the organized crime landscape of Star City, in that it starts out under the control of China White, and eventually comes under the control of the Clock King. By introducing Brick, we can use his overt rise to power, all with the support of Clock King, as part of that transition of power. He can build the organization that Tockman eventually takes control of. Currently, we have Tockman killing Brick in prison as he takes control of the city, but we're fairly certain the story isn't going to stay that way. Brick is a very useful character, and we may find another way to use him in the future. When we do, we'll very likely undo that murder and continue Brick's story. |
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