Royal Flush King
32 years ago - Derek Reston is born.
17 years ago - 15-year-old Derek plants a bomb in his school that is found and deactivated before detonation. He's sent to juvenile detention, but his advanced design attracts the attention of H.I.V.E. He's recruited into their weapon division.
13 years ago - 19-year-old Derek joins H.I.V.E. Academy. He creates energy & bladed weapons, and flying attack platforms.
10 years ago - 22-year-old Derek & the H.I.V.E. Academy battle the Titans, and are defeated. Derek steals the Brute Robot and joins the Royal Flush Gang, recruited by Mona Wayland. His weapon designs advance their whole organization, immediately becoming the new Jack. He first meets Melanie Wayland.
7 years ago - 25-year-old Derek & the Royal Flush Gang fight Green Arrow. The King Joe Carny believes that their new profile is attracting too much attention, leading the two of them to fight.
4 years ago - 28-year-old Derek & the Royal Flush Gang battle the Justice League. They escape by abandoning Derek, who is sent to prison.
2 years ago - 30-year-old Derek escapes prison, and stages a coup within the Royal Flush Gang, killing Joe Carny and becoming the new King. He is rejected by Melanie Wayland, but the Queen Mona Wayland takes him as a lover. They are betrayed by Mel, and taken down by Green Arrow.
The core concept for the Royal Flush Gang's Jack is a pretty thin one... he's just another criminal in the Gang, but not the King. The comic versions of these characters never got that deep a characterization for the Gang... most of them didn't even get a name. We're going to add quite a bit to this character to make him a big catalyst for change.
Jack's Comic & Animation HistoryThe oldest version of Jack, going all the way back to 1966, was perhaps the least defined of the various members of the Gang. Even when a new version of the Gang came together in 1982, because the storytelling device giving us the names of all the characters was happening in Jack's internal monologue, we never got a name for him. We only learn that he was a former con man who accidentally killed one of his marks, and was brought into the Gang to avoid becoming a fugitive for murder.
Meanwhile, over in the Batman Beyond series, the Gang was all family, so Jack (actually his name this time) was the son of the King & Queen and brother to Melanie, the Ten of Spades. He was basically just a career criminal, although he wound up being put in jail, and later on, when Melanie rolled over on her parents, part of her deal was that her brother be free to go, since he was essentially as much of their victim as she was. In the comic adaptation of Batman Beyond, we eventually see Jack take over as the new King, which we are absolutely exploiting for our own timeline. |
Our New King StoryFor our purposes, Jack is not yet going to be part of the family that makes up the Royal Flush Gang. It needs to bring in new blood periodically as new members marry into the family, which is how the current King joined the family. We used the name Derek Reston, which is taken from a character in comic continuity, the head of Mega-Corp that is manipulated by Hector Hammond into building the Ace Android. In our story, we've made Reston a former H.I.V.E. academy member that has actually fought the Titans, is going to be responsible for the new technology that takes this family-lead team of robbers and hijackers and turns them into a threat worthy of fighting superheroes, which elevates him to the highest position a member of the Gang can have without being married to the Queen. This, of course, implies that he WILL one day be King, and that he'll marry Melanie... who doesn't like this guy.
This whole Idea is meant to infuse the Gang with this narrative tension as their old ways of doing things are confronted by Jack's new flashy tactics. As this draws attention to the Gang, conflict brews between Derek and the current King, right up until they fight the Justice League and only escape because they leave Derek behind. When he gets out of prison, he returns to fight the King, kill him, and take over as the new King of the Royal Flush Gang. |