Engineer (comics) - The First Engineer

The First Engineer

The Engineer first appeared in the 1997 final story arc of Stormwatch volume 1, ("Change or Die" - Stormwatch issues #48-50), by Warren Ellis and Tom Raney. He was part of a superpowered group called the Changers, led by The High, who wanted to change the world by removing the structure of society itself. There would be no more laws, no authoritarian structures, no crime and no war. The Engineer's role in this plan was to seed nanotechnological oases across the planet. These oases would serve as "horns of plenty" providing every imaginable food, product and tool anybody needed. This first Engineer died with the rest of the Changers in issue #50 when Stormwatch, under the command of an increasingly maverick Henry Bendix, destroyed their base with Hammerstrike Deep Sanction missiles consisting of biowar payload and tailored acid bombs.

A later Stormwatch arc, collected as the trade paperback A Finer World (Stormwatch vol. 2 issues #2-4) explored this Engineer's legacy: the Nevada Garden, his first and sole surviving nanotech oasis, was secretly commandeered by the United States military and used for weapon creation. Apollo and The Midnighter destroyed the site on behalf of Stormwatch, and brought most of its nanotech 'trees' into Stormwatch custody.