Clark Davis

"Energon"

(retired)

Clark Davis was born to run, and a track scholarship got him to Ohio State, where, aside from being a track star, he also nurtured his love of science and engineering. His roommate in college was a young genius named Taylor Childress, who was back working on yet another PHD (and yet was younger than Clark), and the two became the best of friends. Clark graduated in 1984 and took a position at S.T.A.R. Labs in Cleveland, and continued his training for running, as he had his sights set on the '88 Olympics.

But a terrorist attack by the group called CANON ended that when their assault on S.T.A.R. Labs paralyzed Matt from the waist down. He fought to overcome this life-changing blow, spending all this time at Xevex Labs, the company of his former roommate, where the Childress was developing an exo-skeleton that would help Clark walk again. But fate threw another strange curve his way when they became caught up with a private investigator named Sam Darwin, who was on an insurance investigation. The trial he followed led him to a front for a CANON operation, and to flee for his life with a stolen set of high-tech armor. To save their lives, Clark donned the suit, adapted with the prototype exo-skeleton, and fought off the CANON attack and defeated the terrorists, his rage at what they had taken from him almost causing him to murder the final attacker. But Darwin talked him down, convincing him of the differences between those on the right and wrong side of the law.

Clark and Childress kept the suit and modified it further, and, as the police had assumed he was a super-hero when they picked up the CANON men, Clark took a liking to the idea and became the hero Energon. Soon after he joined a new group of Ohio heroes and formed the Paragons. The team was the pride of Cleveland and big news for some time, and his diverse group of teammates became Clark's close friends. But the Paragons ended one fateful day in a final battle against Emil Gargunza, where founders Superion and Komal died in a nuclear explosion, new member Gladiator died fighting along Energon against an army, and Clark himself was nearly killed in the battle. The team was no more. With Clark in for a long recovery, surviving members Knightmare and Starman walked away from super-heroing.

What happened next is still shrouded in mystery, due to Clark's memory wipe of the events. Somehow, the grief- and guilt-stricken Clark traveled to Valhalla to free the souls of Komal and Superion. This attempt angered the gods, who wiped his memory of the event, returned him to Earth, and, as punishment, took his armor from him. It's taken years for bits of the memories to start filtering back to Clark, but the final result was that Energon, like the Paragons, lived on now only in history.

Focusing his life back on engineering (as his life's love, not as a living, because insurance settlements had taken care of him for life), Clark made many new advances and now holds a number of very lucrative patents. In 1996, Clark was approached by an old friend and former teammate, the one-time Paragon Tracker, who had left the team before their fatal end. Tracker had been part of a company called Armor Security in the 80's and 90's after his time as a Paragon, and though the company had gone under, it was now starting up again in L.A., and they were looking for someone to head up their technical science division. As this was a chance to work with one of his idols, Reed Richards, Clark accepted the position.

Now the former Paragon, still a paraplegic, is the head of Armor's Tech-Ops, and twenty years after his time as Energon finds himself back in the hero business. But this time from his lab, where he feels, now, that he truly belongs.