Eclipse

Origin

Eclipse was born in Chicago and volunteered as an altar boy as a teen. He worked in a factory building planes during the war, then joined C.O.W.L., the superhero union, in 1949 as a member of the Patrol Division on the West Side. His partner is Grant Marlow, a non-powered sharpshooter.

Character Evolution

Eclipse is introduced to us as he beats a man’s head against a wall and urinates in his face—simply for being a peeping Tom. He is rough, bragging, and seemingly without subtlety; his jokes about why he doesn’t have kids aren’t exactly family-friendly. However, over the course of the series, while he retains his tough attitude towards crime, he starts to show an unexpected soft touch when it comes to perceiving the gender bias that his colleague, Radia, undergoes on the job, and eventually builds a strong friendship with her.

Major Story Arcs

Eclipse and Marlow help fellow union member John Pierce run down a lead on the technology left over after the defeat of one of their arch-nemeses, Skylancer. They knock on doors and discuss Marlow’s increasingly-annoying son. They find the cache, and defeat the lame criminal who found it first, with Eclipse blasting him out of the window, presumably to his death. Eclipse later exaggerates and brags about the story in a bar.

On another day, Eclipse and Marlow drop Marlow’s son off at school, and Eclipse is impressed by how much of a jerk he is towards his father, who he thinks is on a lesser tier than the powered, code-named, costumed heroes like Eclipse. That night, when they’re on patrol, they’re still discussing Marlow’s frustration with his son and his own sense of inadequacy when they get a call about a criminal named Michael with enhanced strength. Technically, criminals who have powers, but doesn’t use them, or don’t wear a costume, don’t fall under C.O.W.L. jurisdiction: crimes that don’t involve powers fall to the normal city police to deal with. However they go to check it out. Eclipse wants to call backup, but Marlow, his inferiority complex on his mind, decides to go after the escaping thug. The thug beats Marlow almost to death with his super-strength, but Grant manages to shoot and kill him. Eclipse catches up to find his unconscious friend and gets him to a hospital.

Eclipse tracks down union member Radia. She is a powerful member of C.O.W.L., but has often been overlooked due to her gender. Eclipse, however, respects her power, and asks her to join him in shaking down mobster Camden Stone, who was Michael’s boss. They go to one of his joints and knock him around and tell him to quit his business. This begins a close relationship between the two, one of the only ones Radia has in which she feels respected.

C.O.W.L. goes on strike about its contract, since the city believes it is no longer needed. Eclipse hangs out with fellow union members Don and Frank at the strike line, jawing about the issues. Then he leaves with Radia, to the others’ surprise (since he would normally be considered to be on a tier far below the prominent cover girl heroine. Now that they’re on strike, they need to go undercover when they trash Stone’s places, which is exactly what they do. They put on ski masks and bust up a casino. Eclipse and Radia defeat the resident powered criminal, Jim Macauley. However, Eclipse starts to get nervous about getting caught doing this during the strike. Later, back on the strike line, he is present when a riot starts and an unknown C.O.W.L. member shoots a fire blast at City Hall, causing havoc and increasing mistrust for the union.

When his friend John Pierce is murdered and “scab” is written on his forehead, Eclipse becomes even more jittery. (The murderer is later discovered to be C.O.W.L. member Arclight.)

Grant Marlow finally gets out of the hospital, and Eclipse and Radia pick him up. When Grant makes a sexist remark about Radia, Eclipse stands up for her against his old partner, displaying a new sense of chivalry.

He goes to John Pierce’s funeral—even that is politicized now, since people think he was a scab, and Don and Frank criticize him for it. He tells them off, but when he sees Radia right after, he tells her he thinks it’s time to stop going undercover against Stone. He’s losing his edge and starting to toe the company line.

Grant heals enough to go back to practice target shooting, and Grant and the guys hang out with him as he shoots. Don and Frank predictably rag on Grant, but Eclipse stands up for him. Then the deputy leader of C.O.W.L., Blaze, comes up to talk to them about his investigation into the fire-blasting of City Hall. When they’re alone again, Eclipse tells Frank, who he suspects is the guilty one, to keep his mouth shut about it—it would only help the city and hurt the union if they knew.

Later Blaze calls in Eclipse, and ask him to sign a false witness report saying that he saw Frank blast City Hall. Eclipse refuses, and Blaze says he’ll tell people about what he and Radia were doing to Camden Stone. Eclipse calls him a lapdog for Geoffrey Warner, the union leader. When Blaze activates his power gauntlet in anger, Eclipse uses his own powers to negate Blaze’s, and walks off.

Just like in the beginning of the series, Eclipse and Grant drop off Grant’s kid at school, but now his son respects him—because he killed the thug, Michael. Eclipse is frustrated with the fact that Grant doesn’t appreciate what Eclipse was doing to get revenge for Grant’s hospitalization, and they start to grow apart. However, even though the city finally gives the union its contract, Grant is fired for excessive force against Michael. Eclipse knows that it was Blaze, acting in retaliation for Eclipse refusing to sign the document against Frank. He tells Blaze off, and quits. On the way out, he finds that Radia quit too. They both tired of all the politics. Eclipse apologizes for giving up on their crusade against Stone. Soon, they happily go into business together as private investigators. Marlow, now alone, seemingly has a much darker ending and considers becoming a super-villain as revenge against the union.

Powers & Abilities

Eclipse has energy-disruption powers that seem to have two slightly different effects: anti-kinetics and power disruption. The power disruption seems to only work on energy powers (as opposed to, say, superhuman strength).

For instance, he used his anti-kinetic powers to keep a gun from shooting, and then seemed to use them slightly differently on an energy pistol, causing it to explode.

He used his power to disrupt Jim Macauley’s forcefield, turning it off and rendering him vulnerable. Perhaps most impressively, he was able to turn off Blaze’s powerful zero-point energy gauntlet with a simple snap of his fingers.

The origin of his powers is unknown, but he gained them during his late teens.