Silver Agent

Silver Agent
Real name	Alan Craig
Gender	Male
Nationality	American
Affiliations	Honor Guard
Marital status	Single
Base of operations	Astro City
Alignment	Good
Publication
Creators	Kurt Busiek; Brent Anderson
First appearance	Astro City #2 (1995)

Your army's not going anywhere except the stockade, chum!

--Silver Agent

History

The Silver Agent was born in 1932, and died in 1973. There is a great shame associated with his ultimate sacrifice, as attested to on his statue. He is a symbol of all that is good in man, while his death is a reminder of a weakness in human nature. Emotional judgement overcame rational thinking. It was a time that very much enabled a mob mentality to ridicule, bring down, even destroy heroic figures.

Origin

Alan Craig was struck by polio in infancy, leaving him with a badly diseased leg. This deformity seemed as if it would leave him crippled for the rest of his life. This greatly disappointed Alan. His family had a strong tradition of pursuing careers that served the public good, and usually such careers were in physically demanding fields such as fire-fighters, police officers and the like. Alan greatly admired his elders and dreamed of following in their footsteps. In the end he became a mail carrier, the best job his physical condition allowed.

While on the job he stumbled onto a ballot-stuffing scheme by members of organized crime. When they gave chase, he tried to lose them in a nearby park, an environment he was thoroughly familiar with. In his flight, he stumbled upon a cave he'd never seen before. This was near the original Romeyn Falls (Waterfalls). Inside he found a bizarre construct of glowing silver, something alien to his every frame of reference. When he touched it, his body was transformed: his disability vanished, he became stronger and faster, and his senses increased. Using his new athleticism, he became the Silver Agent, finally able to serve the community the way he longed to all his growing years.

The Eternal Shame

In 1972, the Silver Agent was framed for the (seeming) murder of the Mad Maharajah.

Following his conviction and shortly before his execution, he was teleported into the 43rd century by the Silver Centurions, an organization from that era. Future Earth and the other Hundred Worlds were at war with the iGod. The Silver Centurions retrieved the Silver Agent, the legend who inspired them, for help. For three long years he fought alongside them to an eventual victory.

After the fighting concluded, Alan chose to return back to his own time, to avoid the risk of altering the timeline for the worse. His journey back took the form of a series of time jumps, each one sending him further into the past, closer to the day he would be executed. Each one skipping less time than the last. Many of these time-stops were far from safe. There were future eras where he fought against the danger of some potent threat. There were eras where civilization had fallen and he aided in its rekindling. Throughout his eventful journey, the Silver Agent kept a detailed journal, in the hopes that his notes might someday help humanity against the various dangers he encountered.

As he traveled ever further back, the process was causing his body to accumulate an undefinable kind of energy, imbuing him with more and more power.

On a day approximately thirty years in the future of his initial teleportation, he was visited by his nephew, Tommy. A young boy when he'd last seen him, Tommy was now a U.S. Senator and older than Alan. He knew where and when to find his uncle, because Alan himself had told Tommy during another stop in the timeline. A stop that was in Tommy's and the world's past, but Alan Craig's subjective future.

After that, the Silver Agent visited four more crisis points in Astro City's timeline:

• His Final Crisis Point(1984)
• The Rise of Kerresh the Devastator(1982)
• The period when the vigilante hero the Black Velvet was out-of-control and flooding the city with powerful energy forces during the Gang Wars(1977),
• Finally, and most critically, Madame Majestrix's Invasion(Spring of 1973).

In each, he was of immense aid against whatever forces were imperilling his city. By the last one (but first from the universe's point of view), his store of accrued energy from his travels was so vast that he had tremendous super-abilities at his disposal.

Making use of the flight ability he now possessed, he hid his journals in a support beam beneath the Calkins Bridge. The journals were designed by Ømnix of the 43rd century Silver Centurions. It wasn't a collection of books, their appearance instead that of a glowing blue cylinder. It would convert itself into a format readable to future generations when the need arose.

Next, he visited his nephew Tommy, at a earlier time and a younger age. This stop occurred on the day of, but after the Agent's execution. He told Tommy of the journals location so that they could be retrieved sometime in the future.

Finally, he made his final step across time, arriving in the prison from whence it all began, mere seconds after he'd vanished. To an outside observer, it would almost have been as if nothing had happened, except of course the replacement of his prison garb by his battle-torn costume made it clear something had.

He was executed by the state in the Spring of 1973.

In the Silver Agent's last life moments, he released all the strange energy he'd collected, sending that accumulated store across the city, suffusing the land with it, marrying the rivers to it, even extending it beyond four dimensional constraints into the past and future. It became the very silvery artifact that made him the Silver Agent, and whose energy touches what is, or one day would be, Astro City.

Powers and Abilities

• Acrobatics: Even weighed down by his heavy metal armor, he can flip off buildings, kick multiple enemies around and tumble through monsters to dodge their teeth.
• Firearms
• Hand-to-Hand Combat (Advanced): Silver Agent, in his prime, was young and virile. An accomplished fighter he has taken down many different kinds of enemies unarmed.
• Leadership: Silver Agent has led the Honor Guard in countless dangerous adventures.

Notes

• Silver Agent's middle name is given as Jay.
• Aspects of Silver Agent, such as his origin as a physically infirm but goodhearted man empowered by an outside force, his mail uniform with a star symbol and cuffed boots, and his status as a universally-beloved icon and leader appear to be based on Captain America.

Appearances

This list is incomplete.

Astro City #2 Astro City (Volume 2) #½ Astro City (Volume 2) #13 Astro City (Volume 2) #14 Astro City (Volume 2) #16 Astro City (Volume 2) #19 Astro City Local Heroes #4 Astro City/Arrowsmith #1 Astro City A Visitors Guide #1 Astro City The Dark Age (Book One) #1 Astro City The Dark Age (Book One) #2 Astro City The Dark Age (Book One) #3 Astro City The Dark Age (Book One) #4 Astro City The Dark Age (Book Two) #3 Astro City The Dark Age (Book Two) #4 Astro City The Dark Age (Book Three) #1 Astro City The Dark Age (Book Three) #2 Astro City The Dark Age (Book Three) #3 Astro City The Dark Age (Book Three) #4 Astro City The Dark Age (Book Four) #1 Astro City The Dark Age (Book Four) #2 Astro City The Dark Age (Book Four) #3 Astro City The Dark Age (Book Four) #4 Astro City Silver Agent #1 Astro City Silver Agent #2 Astro City (Volume 3) #17 Astro City (Volume 3) #22

Gallery

External links

• Silver Agent at the Comic Book Database