Publisher: AMARA Entertainment
Created by: Roosevelt Pitt, Jr.
1st appearance: Purge #0, 1993
Nationality: African American
Team Affiliations: None
Legal Status: Single
Height: 5’ 8” Weight: 185
Eye color: Brown Hair color: Black
Known Relatives: Alice Johnston (Mother) Marlon Johnston (Younger Brother)
Carl Lawrence Johnston (Father) Marvin Kincaid (Adoptive Father) Lillie Kincaid Adoptive Mother
Skills and abilities: Richard in addition to his enhanced abilities due to his implant has extensive skills in Balin-chun-dojutsu and most all forms of martial arts and hand to hand combat. He also has the ability to flawless execute any and all fight maneuvers he witnesses.
Powers: As a child, Richard Kincaid was abducted by a clandestine international organization and subjected to experimentation involving lobotomy and surgical implementation. Richard was implanted with a subdermal micro-patch allowing him to deregulate the body’s predetermined limits for physical output. The procedure left Richard in a state of near mental retardation. Viewing the experiment as a failure, the organization placed Richard in foster care where he lived for several years before being adopted by the Kincaids. Though there’s no scientific evidence to substantiate such claims, but Richard theorizes the love shown to him by the Kincaids triggered his brain’s natural healing abilities. While under their care, Richard progressively regained his reflexes, sight, motor skills and ability to communicate
. During the healing process, Richard’s brain reconfigured its neural synapses to access the micro-patch. Suffice to say, not only did Richard fully recover but he was enhanced.
After discovering the patch, Richard turned his energies to removing it from his head. His research showed removal could result in returning to the near comatose state of his childhood. Seeing as how the patch could not be removed, Richard turned his energies to fully exploring the origins and capabilities of the patch.
Richard discovered the Patch is a device called the VALVE- its primary purpose is to allow the recipient to consciously control the body’s functions. Through use of the Valve, Purge can temporarily enhance his senses, increase the flow of adrenalin in his body upping his strength, speed and reflexes, enhance cellular reproduction to promote healing and build immunities, and temporarily increase his memory, intellectual capacity, and physical memory by increasing the percentage of brainpower he uses.
Biography:
The best way to describe Purge aka Richard Kincaid is to contrast him against the archetype of all urban vigilantes: the Batman aka Bruce Wayne. In my opinion, Wayne is probably a staunch conservative Republican and his outlook as a vigilante mirrors his political leanings. Kincaid, on the other hand, would probably be a liberal. Wayne is a third generation Robber Baron, his life more in keeping with the Rockefellers and Carnegies, where as Kincaid is more of a Pierre Omiydar (the creator of E-Bay). Kincaid made the bulk of his fortune when most liberal billionaires did, during the Information Technology boom of the 90s.
Kincaid’s vast fortune is comprised not only of patents he’s sold to the U.S. government (as shown in the earlier Purge Comic book series), but also his most commercially publicized enterprise- Internet Television (ITV). Kincaid Computer Analyst Corporation owns a subsidiary called “IT Works” (“I” “T” Works- it’s play on words) that acts as the public face for the multi-national conglomerate. Nestled in New Salem, North Carolina, IT Works is the broadcaster of ITV- the world’s only Internet based television network. ITV transmits webcasts directly from the news scene, uncut and uncensored. Due to its timeliness and accuracy, ITV has replaced both CNN and Fox News as the foremost news source in the United States. Additionally, due to its non-partisan, straight-forward style, ITV is becoming the no. 1 news source in international markets as well. Recently, Forbes Magazine described Richard Kincaid as equal parts Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch.
When Richard Kincaid isn’t running his corporation, he’s maintaining the status quo in New Salem as a costumed vigilante. Batman and Purge greatly differ in their methods as vigilantes. Batman defends the people of Gotham city from outsiders threatening to infiltrate the city with the goal of terrorizing citizens. Purge’s mission is totally different: he seeks to keep the threats growing under the shiny surface of New Salem from escaping and terrorizing the rest of the world. Batman fights to defend Gotham from evil. Purge fights to contain it.
