Samaritan

SAMARITAN

Real Name: Unrevealed, aka Asa Martin

Class: Human mutate

Occupation: Superhero, newspaper fact checker

Group Affiliation: Honor Guard

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Astro City, Earth-Astro City

First Appearance: Kurt Busiek’s Astro City I (Image) #1 (August, 1995)

Powers: Samaritan possessed vast superhuman strength, speed and durability as well as the powers of flight, energy projection and dimensional travel. Samaritan's zyxometer was an organic computer used to gather news from across the world and send alerts.

History: (Kurt Busiek’s Astro City I (Image) #1) - Samaritan had a peaceful dream about flying when he was woken by his emergency alert transmitter. He had a busy morning preventing a typhoon in the Phillipines, preventing a Pyramid assasination attempt in Turkey and dealing with a chronal anomaly in Stuttgart. He arrived to work at the Current newspaper in his civilian identity, locking his office and letting the zyxometer, which was plugged into over 75 news sources, fact check an article. He snuck out of the office to foil the supervillain Dr. Saturday and prevent a disaster at FBU’s Bio Labs. He attended a meeting of the Honor Guard, where they compared notes on their enemies, including who was active, who was in jail, and who had disappeared. They also fixed their alien detector, which had been malfunctioning ever since the Zonn attacks. The Honor Guard emergency signal went off, and they stopped the Menagerie gang from robbing Astrobank, and took a few moments to receive appreciation from the adoring public. Samaritan rushed back to his office, handing his work over to his editor Ms. Cavendish. She assigned him an article about the 25 most beautiful women in Astro City. The article made Samaritan depressed, as he wished he had the time to pursue a relationship, or even have a friendship or any semblance of a life outside of being a superhero, but his sense of duty would never let him rest. Samaritan prevented a number of other disasters before receiving a reward from the Astro City Firefighters Association. He used to avoid award ceremonies, but didn’t want to get too detached from the people he protected or give them the impression that he thought he was above them. He ended the night by battling the Living Nightmare, ending the fight by tossing him into the sun. He rushed home and went to sleep, increasingly the only time he could find peace and enjoy himself.

Comments: Created by Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross & Brent E. Anderson.

Samaritan was originally published by Image Comics.

Samaritan's appearance in Kurt Busiek’s Astro City I (Image) #1 was reprinted in Kurt Busiek’s Astro City: Life in the Big City #2.