Paul Kirk
1898 - Paul Kirk is born, the son of a Kentucky Miner.
1914 - 16-year-old Paul Kirk lies about his age to leave the country and join the war in East Africa.
1919 - 21-year-old Paul returns home to Kentucky.
1920 - 22-year-old Paul goes back to Africa to hunt big game.
1925 - 27-year-old Paul travels through Constantinople
1929 - 31-year-old Paul goes home for his father's funeral, but then returns to Africa & Turkey.
1935 - 37-year-old Paul begins working with the Order of St Dumas in Istanbul.
1945 - 47-year-old Paul sacrifices himself fighting off Nazi's to give Human Bomb time to destroy the Vandal Savage's secret labratories.
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While the original version of Manhunter was a Quality Comics character, Paul Kirk was an original character during the golden age. After DC's acquisition of Quality Comics, the characters met retroactively and joined different teams; Paul Kirk was part of the All-Star Squadron, while Dan Richards, the Quality Comics Manhunter, joined the Freedom Fighters. We've definitely used Paul Kirk's origins, but the Freedom Fighters are a much better place for this character. Paul Kirk was also a part of the Elseworlds graphic novel Golden Age, and we're heavily influenced by his depiction in that story.
Paul Kirk was featured in backup stories in Detective Comics in the seventies, where he was cloned from the original by a shadowy group called the Counsel. We're actually using a version of this 'clone of the original Paul Kirk' story idea for a second character, but rather than invent an entirely separate shadowy organization, we're taking a cue from the fact that Kirk spent years operating in Constantinople (Istanbul, after 1930) and made the organization that one day clones him the Order of St Dumas. The relationship between Kirk and the Order plays out more in his later cloned incarnation, which we're calling Mark Shaw, but the foundations of it are laid here. |