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Jack-in-the-Box is a fictional character in the comic book series ''Astro City''. Created by writer Kurt Busiek and artists Brent Anderson and Alex Ross, Jack-in-the-Box is a prominent superhero of Astro City. He is motivated by a powerful desire for justice based on his own family history, with a strong sense of responsibility to society based on his expertise, capabilities and the sheer enjoyment of being a superhero. A conflicting sense of responsibility to his own family, however, combine with reminders of his own mortality to make him question his superheroic mission. ==Origin and History== Jack Johnson, an inventive genius, was one of the first African Americans to break the color barrier in the toy manufacturing industry in the early 1960's, winning a job with the Whamco corporation. Though he faced pay discrimination in comparison to his white colleagues, his true disillusionment came with the discovery that Whamco was exploiting his inventions for criminal purposes. His protests merely resulted in the termination of his employment in 1964, together with the kidnapping of his father to ensure his silence. Jack fought back by adapting his inventions into a personal arsenal and taking on the secret identity of the clown-costumed hero Jack-in-the-Box, in which guise he freed his father and other hostages and eventually exposed Whamco's criminal operations. By this time an established superhero, he continued his double life. Over the years, Johnson fought supervillains such as Steeljack, organized crime figures like the Underlord, and common criminals. Meanwhile, in civilian life, he established his own independent toy company, married and had a son, Zachary Johnson. For several years, he balanced his responsibilities to his family, career and heroic mission successfully, keeping his son and possibly even his wife ignorant of his secret identity. But his luck ran out in 1983, during a conflict with the villainous Underlord. He ended his career as he began it, rescuing innocents held hostage by criminals, knowingly entering a trap set by his enemy to do so. Caught in an explosion, his fate was a mystery, with the authorities and media speculating both that he might have been killed and that he might have escaped. As time passed and Jack-in-the-Box did not reappear, hope for his survival dimmed, though it was thought that he had at least taken his enemy down with him. In fact, Johnson had indeed perished, while his foe survived, retiring his villainous identity but continuing his nefarious activities in secret. In the Johnson home, Jack's wife held a funeral for her missing husband, and their son Zachary was traumatized by his father's mysterious disappearance. Only years later, after his mother died of cancer and he was settling the estate, did Zachary discover his father's paraphernalia and journals and discover that Jack Johnson had been the missing superhero Jack-in-the-Box. His father's journals also revealed the Underlord's civilian identity, from which Zachary learned that the villain was still alive. Determined to bring his father's killer to justice, Zachary adopted the Jack-in-the-Box identity and set about taking him down. Thus, in 1989, the harlequin crime-fighter returned. Despite speculation, the public at large remained in ignorance as to whether this was the original Jack-in-the-Box returned or a new one. Zachary purposely maintained the pretense that he was indeed the first Jack-in-the-Box come again. Zachary did indeed take down the Underlord, proving his ability to fill Jack Johnson's shoes. He continued to do so both as a superhero and a toy company owner, and later married television news personality Tamara Dixon. Mindful of the turmoil and stress his father's secret and disappearance had put him through, he was careful to make her his complete confidant. After many years as Jack-in-the-Box, Zachary was led to reassess his priorities and heroic career by his wife's pregnancy, coupled with visitations from the Box, the Jackson and Jerome Johnson, three alternate future versions of the child she might bear. Zachary's visitors indicated that he was soon to be killed in action, leaving his infant son to grow up fatherless as he had, but with far more tragic results. In two of the possible futures they represent, the boy becomes an insane super-vigilante; in the third, the "best" alternative, a lonely, emotionally crippled college professor. Zachary, unwilling to subject his family to a fate similar to what he had endured, ultimately decided to give up his role as Jack-in-the-Box. Equally unwilling to leave society defenseless against the threats from which he protected it, he simultaneously groomed Roscoe James, founder of the Trouble Boys, as his protégé to take over from him and become the third Jack-in-the-Box. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jack-in-the-Box (Astro City)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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