Hobart Brown (Earth-616)

Hornet
Name	Hobart "Hobie" Brown
Current Alias	Hornet
Aliases	Codenames: Prowler Nicknames: Spidey Impersonations: Spider-Man
Affiliation and Relationships
Affiliation	Beyond Corporation; Slingers formerly Fairgray Pay, Stark Industries, Great Game, Parker Industries, Wild Pack, Outlaws, Defenders for a Day
Relatives	Parents: "Tiger" Brown (father, deceased); Unnamed mother Siblings: Abraham Brown (brother); Seven other unidentified older siblings Spouses: Mindy McPherson (wife, separated) Other Relatives: Manny Lopez ("little brother" under Big Brother program, deceased); Prowler (clone, deceased)
Marital Status	Separated
Physical Characteristics
Gender	Male
Height	5′11″ (1.8 m)
Weight	180 lbs (81.65 kg)
Eyes	Irises: Brown
Hair	Black
Origin and Living Status
Origin	Human
Living Status	Alive
Reality	Earth-616
Place of Birth	The Bronx, New York City, New York
Personal Information
Identity	No Dual
Citizenship	American
Occupation	Inventor; former adventurer, body-double, head of Parker Industries' security, Great Game participant, freelance operative, pneumatic research and development at Bestman Laboratories, mercenary for Silver Sable, construction worker, window washer
Education	High School graduate, self-educated thereafter
Base of Operations	Mobile Formerly New York City, New York
Creators and Appearances
Creators	Stan Lee, John Buscema, John Romita, Jr.
First	Amazing Spider-Man #78 (August, 1969) (As Prowler) King in Black: Planet of the Symbiotes #2 (February, 2021) (As Hornet)
First	Amazing Spider-Man #78 (August, 1969) (As Prowler) King in Black: Planet of the Symbiotes #2 (February, 2021) (As Hornet)

 You! You weren't there for me, Abe! You were supposed to protect me! Dad was gone! Mom was lost in an alcohol haze. All I had to protect me was you! And you weren't there! That's it! That's why I really want to be a hero! The Prowler gives me control over my own life-- and power. Power I can use to protect the helpless. 

—Prowler

History

Hobie Brown was born the youngest of nine siblings, one of which was Black Tiger. His father, Tiger, left when he was a baby, and his mother soon succepted to alcoholism, leaving him and his siblings to essentially raise themselves. Although a clever inventor, Hobie found himself working as a window cleaner to pay the bills. While he was a window washer, he was caught in a battle between the Stilt-Man and Daredevil and was rescued by the latter. He was inspired by the Stilt-Man's Battlesuit enough to make his own secret identity.

Becoming the Prowler

In order to make his job easier, Hobie had invented special equipment such as wrist and ankle bracelets to hold cartridges of cleaning fluid, steel claws and special boots for climbing. When he lost his cleaning job, he decided to give crime a shot. He didn't want to hurt people, but he felt trapped by life. He modified the bracelets to shoot pellets filled with sleeping gas, made a hood, cape, and costume, and set out on his short-lived career of crime.

During his early career of crime, he encountered Peter Parker outside the Daily Bugle. Not wanting to reveal his secret identity, Peter did not use his full strength in the fight, and acted like Hobie had pushed him out the building. Peter managed to save his fall and hide, but Hobie thought he had killed him. Hobie felt terrible, and after a fight with Spider-Man, told him everything. Spider-Man let Hobie go, which Hobie held dearly in his heart.

The Prowler was discouraged from a life of crime, and reformed. His credits include impersonating Spider-Man to save Peter Parker's secret identity, attacking Spidey because he was appointed as responsible for the death of Captain George Stacy, and having his costume stolen by two different guys, who were stopped by Spidey. He married his girlfriend Mindy and started doing construction work. When his charge in the big brother program, Manuel Lopez, was killed in a gang incident, Brown attacked the White Tiger, whom the police believed responsible for the death.

For a time, he retired, but his Prowler equipment was stolen by the Cat Burglar under the orders of Belladonna to be the new Prowler. When Spider-Man was mistakenly accused of killing a guard who was accidentally killed by that Prowler, Spider-Man confronted Brown who finally learned of the theft of his equipment. Brown was eager to join the hunt for the new Prowler, but Spider-Man persuaded him to stay home so he would not be suspected of the felony murder himself. Eventually, Spider-Man captured both the Cat Burglar and Belladonna and returned the Prowler equipment to Brown.

Hobie worked for Silver Sable, and he also teamed up with several other rehabilitated villains (Rocket Racer, Will O' The Wisp, and Sandman) and with a not so rehabilitated Puma, to form the Outlaws. They, among other things, helped Spidey clear his name once, and helped Spidey against the Avengers.

When mercenary work got slow with the Wild Pack, Prowler and Rocket Racer sought sponsors for the Great Game and hoped to split the profits from staging a fight with one another. They were interrupted by the rogue player El Toro Negro, however, and Hobie was left paralyzed from the waist down for a time. While he was inactive, his Prowler gear was stolen again by an enterprising criminal, Rick Lawson. Hobie resurfaced with his mobility regained during the superhuman civil war. He was apprehended for violating the Superhuman Registration Act, and was among the escapees who fought in the final battle of the conflict.

After Peter Parker established his own company, Parker Industries, he was able to convince Hobie to impersonate him as Spider-Man to help hide his alter-ego. While infiltrated in New U Technologies per Parker's request to learn more about the company, the Prowler stumbled upon an experiment that was supposed to give Max Dillon's powers back to him, however, it was Max's former girlfriend, Francine Frye, who ended up becoming Electro instead. The Prowler was discovered and then chased down by Francine, who almost killed him in the process. The Jackal put a heavily burned Hobie Brown inside a healing pod to restore his body while a clone of him acted as a spy for the Jackal within Parker Industries.

The original Hobie Brown was eventually found fully recovered in one of the sub-basements of the Jackal's second headquarters following the deterioration of his clone. This episode and his continuing uncertainty for the future prompted Hobie to leave Spider-Man's side. Later, he was installed as the head of Fairgray Pay, a previously-shady crowdfunding organization, by Tony Stark.

Hobie adopts a new identity

When the symbiote god Knull invaded Manhattan, Hobie debuted his new costume, adopting the identity of Hornet. He helped fend off the symbiote invasion using hacked Starkphones to broadcast a high frequency music to repel the symbiotes away. This crisis prompted Hobie to plan the expansion of Fairgray's operations beyond normal crowdfunding, and set out to use his own intellect and his contacts in the superhero community to help people affected by such crises. Hobie's plans were halted when the giant Beyond Corporation bought-out and terminated Fairgray on the same day. Brown became suspicious of the egregious severance package all employees received, so he investigated Beyond to find their true intentions. His search was interrupted when the former Slinger Dusk sought his help to find her former teammate, Ricochet. They tracked him down to a Beyond facility, but were surprised to learn he had voluntarily joined Beyond's superhero division. After Hornet proved vital in helping Ricochet stop an outbreak of interdimensional monsters, he was offered a job at Beyond by one of the facility's operators.

Attributes

Power Grid

Powers

None. Being a normal human rather than a mutant or a mutate, Brown possesses the normal human strength of a man of his age, his height, and his build who engages in intensive regular exercise. His other known abilities are described below.

Abilities

• Genius-Level Intellect: Brown is a genius inventor, knowledgeable in pneumatic technology, despite having no formal education in the field. He built his first suit and his earliest weaponry entirely by himself, without assistance.
• Stealth: Brown is skilled in stealth. Having been an excellent criminal, he is able to sneak into high-security places.
• Olympic Level Athlete: Brown possesses the reflexes, agility, and stamina of an Olympic-level acrobat. He is physically very strong and athletic, and has great physical endurance.
• Expert Acrobat: Brown is a great enough acrobat to be able to mimic Spider-Man's movements. This has served Brown well whenever he has had to mimic Spider-Man for the purpose of preserving the secrecy Peter Parker maintains regarding his own dual identity as Spider-Man.
• Expert Martial Artist: Brown is an expert martial artist. He holds a Green Belt in Taekwondo, in addition to having years of street fighting experience.
• Computer Hacking: Brown has claimed to have been able to hack into Stark Industries's telephones since childhood.

Paraphernalia

Equipment

Prowler's Suit: The suit is a modified coverall and is armored like a military flak suit which protects him from high explosive weaponry like anti-aircraft artillery, grenades, shotguns, land mines, shell blasts, and rocket fragments. It protects him from falls from high places, like a New York City building. The costume's cape can expand with air giving it a rigid shape allowing him to glide for short distances. Spare Cartridges for gauntlets. The suit has a grappling hook. Rubber insulated pneumatic boots. The gauntlets have steel claws that facilitate climbing, and they can also be used as effective weapons in close quarters combat.

Weapons

The Prowler uses a costume equipped with specially-designed high-tech weapons based on pneumatic technology. Gauntlets that shoot an assortment of projectiles; Sleeping gas pellets, cleaning fluid, steel darts, gas canisters capable of producing a damaging compressed air blast, and magnesium flares. The gauntlets are also tipped with steel claws.

Transportation

Pneumatic glider cape. Pneumatics in the Prowler’s boots allow him to leap remarkable distances.

Trivia

• The Prowler was created due to a suggestion by then 13 year old John Romita Jr. Romita Jr.'s character design was unused, but his father did use the name, combined with the costume for the villain of the unpublished story "The Mystery of the TV Terror".
• Hobie has blue eyes in his very first appearance, but his eye color was changed to brown later on.

See Also

• 66 appearance(s) of Hobart Brown (Earth-616)
• 13 appearance(s) in handbook(s) of Hobart Brown (Earth-616)
• 11 minor appearance(s) of Hobart Brown (Earth-616)
• 12 mention(s) of Hobart Brown (Earth-616)
• 8 mention(s) in handbook(s) of Hobart Brown (Earth-616)
• 84 image(s) of Hobart Brown (Earth-616)
• 11 quotation(s) by or about Hobart Brown (Earth-616)
• 5 item(s) used/owned by Hobart Brown (Earth-616)

Links and References

• Hobart Brown on Marvel.com
• Entry at Spiderfan.org