Who the hell is: DIGITEK?

A good question indeed. 

This was a question that a fair few people were asking last year, during Marvel Comics' Civil war storyline, courtesy of a section of panels in the series Civil War: Frontline.

But we'll get to that.

This is the first in a series of blogs in which I aim to introduce the uninitiated to the characters of Marvel UK, and try to explain how they could still be viable characters, suitable for revival or reinvention, in a modern book. Or, I'm sure in some cases, why that probably shouldn't ever happen...

So today, we start with one Jonathan Bryant - who went by the name of DIGITEK.


Now, despite the reprints in Marvel UK's anthology title, OVERKILL, making it perhaps seem longer, Digitek actually only ran to a four issue limited series, back in 1992. He was written by John Tomlinson and Andy Lanning, and the painted (That's right painted) artwork was supplied by Dermot Power.

Now while Tomlinson and Lanning are still out there, plying their trade as editor and writer respectively, Power is a name you may not have heard in a while. He had some successful stints producing work for Judge Dredd and Slaine for 2000 AD, but these days Power's chief gig appears to be in producing concept art for movies - such as V for Vendetta, Attack of the Clones and some of the Harry Potter movies.

I’ve touched on Marvel UK’s use of painted artwork briefly, before. Here in the UK it wasn’t uncommon to see painted artwork in magazines, or in the weekly pages of 2000AD. But outside of that the mainstream of US market comics was not really in place to reproduce this in the early 90s. Theirs was still very much a four colour world. Bold inks, and simple colours. Airbrushing was slowly starting to creep into the medium, but it was not widely used. The notion of reproducing fully-painted artwork on the general US market comics’ paper stock didn’t always yield great results, but the artwork itself was great. 

So what was the concept? Strap in. Some of this may sound a note convoluted. 

Digitek as a character spins out of the Marvel UK series Warheads. 

The Warheads were a combat and retrieval team, charged by their employers (The Mys-Tech Corporation - the age-old demon-serving business bad guys of Marvel UK) to travel across the Omniverse, retrieving valuable technology, artefacts and resources from other universes. 

One such resource retrieved was the substance known as Protosilicon. (With me so far?)

A Protosilicon Geoid (Still with me?) was taken to be analysed by a team of scientists led by one Jonathan Bryant. However, one of Bryant's underlings did the dirty on him, and sold out information on the substance to a rival company. A rival company who promptly sent in an armed retrieval team of their own to nab it. 

During the chaos that followed Bryant was killed, but only after having come into direct contact with the geoid itself, resulting in a bizarre transformation.

The net result is that Bryant's physical body is completely incinerated, but due to his contact with a) The Geoid and b) the array of computers monitoring it, parts of all three joined together to form a new gestalt life form. 

A primarily digital life form, with a physical presence. 

It held the personality and memories of Bryant, combined with a physical form which in some way resembled Bryant, but which was able to change its form and make itself easily transferable through all kinds of digital medium.

And this is where as a sci-fi concept, in many ways Digitek was kind of ahead of its time for 1992. For one this new digital form could be assembled and disassembled at will, allowing for such quirks as travelling down power and phone lines - packing up at one end, unpacking at the other. A neat little idea, years before The Matrix came along. It was only solid when it wanted to be, could reconstruct itself after being smashed to pieces, and (Because it was the 90s) could form up impossibly large guns out of next to nothing, at the drop of a hat.

Still, I think that most of those abilities are quite handy, and viable in a modern comic. We're talking about a being who can never truly be killed, who can communicate with pretty much any machine on the planet, and who can be pretty handy in a fight - should it ever come to that. 

One might consider though, that given that Digitek is composed mostly of data, he (if that’s truly the correct term here) could be susceptible to things which can corrupt or disrupt data. Viruses? Magnetism? Really slow broadband connections? The possibilities are endless, though I’m sure he probably has multiple backups on servers elsewhere. 

So what are the flaws? Where are the catches? 

Well, the aesthetic is a bit dated. Just look back at the cover to that first issue. See the weird looking electrical samurai guy? Yeah, that's Digitek's chosen form. Of all the things he could have looked like? That's what he chose. Needs a little reinvention, methinks. Might have looked cool in the 90s, but it all seems a little cliched today. I think there's definitely potential in the character to be used again. But maybe pick something a little less… that. 

Of course unlike many of Marvel UK’s other properties, Digitek can at least boast to have been in a published comic more recently. Sort of. 

This is where Marvel's 2006 Civil War event fits in. One of the back up stories in the series Civil War: Frontline detailed the scapegoating and incarceration of Speedball, the one surviving member of the New Warriors (Whose failure to stop a huge explosion outside a school started the whole event). Speedball, along with any other super-powered individuals who refused to register their identities and powers to the US government, found themselves incarcerated in a prison built in some obscure dimension which the Fantastic Four knew of. With very little chance of ever leaving.

In issue #6 of Civil War: Frontline, the following panels appeared:


To save your eyesight from trying to figure out the hand-written scrawl, the text says:

Panel 1: My buddy in the next cell was called Jonathan. Back in the real world, he used to be called Digitek. He told me that when he was a hero, he had the powers to re-form parts of his body into machinery, or weapons.

Panel 2: Yesterday, Jon formed an M-110 particle shotgun out of his right arm. Four guards tried to stop him as he yelled something about his wife. And then he blew his own head off.

 

This does, however, raise two questions. 1) Is he really dead, or was this an attempt to escape out via any electrical equipment that happened to be lying around, and 2) How exactly did he get there? 

Digitek, or at least Jonathan Bryant, was a UK citizen. Why would he have been affected by an American registration act? There's no logical reason why he would be expected to sign it. 

Hmmm.

Well, maybe that's a story for another day, and another writer to pick up on.

What are your thoughts or musings on Digitek? Do you remember him? I’d love to hear other opinions on this. Feel free to add a comment below.