Isaac Gwilim Maddox

Name: Isaac Gwilim Maddox

Work Place: Curator at the Gotham Museum of Fine Art (retired). Is now an independent work-from-home jeweler, making and repairing various items of finery and watches.

Age: 63; born October 1, 1947

Marital Status: Married to Verochka Celeste Maddox (nee Zelenko). Click for picture

Children: Brock (36), Jake (34), Zayne (30), and Rhodri (27) Maddox

Personality: Isaac Maddox is a fun-loving man that is mostly soft-spoken and mild yet friendly in demeanor. He is cheerful even to the random stranger on the street, and will not hesitate to smile and talk to them unless he is currently preoccupied. It is rare to see him truly angry, though when it happens he usually prefers to remain quiet until goaded into speaking. He is a devoted family man that tries to do the right thing by his family in any situation. Because of his past occupation as a museum curator, and now his independent line of work involving jewelry- and watch-making and repair, Isaac has a tendency to be rather finicky about everything from a perceived, “improper” cut in a gemstone to whether or not the foundation of his house is evenly set or not. He becomes rather irritated with himself when his achievements have not reached his standards of perfection.

He also has a great fondness of ships and the sea, being born to a fisherman father, collecting everything from shells, jars of sand from different beaches, other trinkets from the beaches, and ships in bottles. At the same time he also fears the water, because it was the sea that took his father from him and his mother years ago.

Spoiler:

Appearance:
Image too huge for forum. Click to view
[Gary Oldman]

Isaac is rarely seen these days without a monocular, a loupe, and/or a repair kit on his person.


History:
Isaac was born to Gwilim Jakob and Rachel Alexandra Maddox in the year 1947. He was very close his father, a fisherman, until the sea claimed the man when Isaac was 9-and-a-half. When Gwilim died, Isaac did his best to help his mother – a seamstress – provide for the two of them. His father had been a superhero with the ability to manipulate the wind, named Tornado. His mother, on the other hand, was a civilian.

During a storm a few years after Gwilim’s death, Isaac had gotten frightened when the power went out. Needless to say, he had been born with powers, for he provided himself and his mother with ample light to see and go about their business. His mother simply had to have a dress she’d been working on finished before her wealthy client stopped by early the following morning.

As an adult, Isaac became more and more interested in history and art, thus striving for his doctorate degrees required to become a museum curator. It was during the classes for these degrees that he met and fell in love with Verochka Celeste Zelenko, a Russo-Italian-American woman interested in culinary art, which was also being taught at the university. Eventually, at the age of thirty-one, he proposed to Verochka at a fine Italian restaurant. Without hesitation she accepted, with the wedding no more or less than six months thereafter.

Rachel Maddox, by this time a successful businesswoman and self-declared fashion designer, was well-off enough for Isaac to feel comfortable and able to move from Gotham to Superville with his new wife for to start this new chapter of their lives in a completely new and different place.

Verochka and Isaac would go on to be blessed with four sons: Brock in 1974, Jake in 1976, Zayne in 1980, and Rhodri in 1983. When they first learned they were to have a child, Isaac immediately hung up his Super suit and hid it away. He knew that there was a chance his children could be born without powers, and did not want them to feel any less for not having powers whilst he did. As it so happened, Isaac had successfully predicted that not all of his sons would be blessed with superpowers.

What he had not predicted, however, was just how abusive Brock and Jake would become toward Zayne and Rhodri while it seemed neither parent were watching. Although he had noticed it, and knew it was awful, Isaac did little in the way to get them to stop. Sure, he had tried talking... but it did little to divert them from harassing the younger pair of siblings. It has bothered Isaac since the bullying began that the family was not as close-knit as it could have been because of Brock and Jake’s actions. Yet, he supported each of the boys equally in what they decided to do.

Brock was a handful, what with his tendency to get involved with various girlfriends before he had even graduated from High School... sometimes having three or more at one time. By the third child that came of the various affairs Brock settled down. To say Isaac breathed a sigh of relief is an understatement; though he does sincerely love any and all grandchildren he has been and possibly will be blessed with in the future. He found it admirable that Brock managed to eke out a place for himself in law enforcement... though hopes it is not just an outlet for more ‘bullying’ towards the rest of the world.

Jake was perhaps one of the milder boys, when he wasn’t bullying his brothers. Isaac finds Jake’s decision to marry and for ten years already have stayed with the same woman (or so it feels to him) very refreshing given the commonality divorce was becoming amongst young couples. What irks him the most however is that Jake has taken a job with an insurance company, and keeps trying to sell him policies for things he already has coverage for. Despite it, Isaac is still respectful towards his second-eldest boy... and cautions all he encounters needing insurance that his son is in the insurance industry, though like with any sort of insurance all forms should be reviewed extra carefully.

While Isaac would never, ever, declare one of his children a disappointment, Zayne was certainly quite a bit more of a troublemaker than Brock was. Any limit that was set before the boy was tested and then swiftly broken in amusement. No amount of scolding seemed to deter Zayne from continuing upon his path, and his mischief escalated from harmless to the reckless... and then to the downright dangerous. Zayne was often in and out of juvenile facilities, and would often call Isaac as his first choice whenever he was jailed and needed bail money. Not often would the hidden hero allow his son to sit all night in a jail, though had tried the tactic once in hopes perhaps it would mellow him out. No such luck. It is Isaac’s hope that someday Zayne realizes that bad is not good and will turn from his villainous ways... although he realizes that it is a rather vain hope given what the boy’s rebelliousness since the cradle.

Rhodri is not-so-secretly Isaac’s most favored son. In a lot of ways, he sees himself in the young man. If you were to ask Isaac, he would tell you Rhodri is easily the most sensitive of the boys yet has shown great resilience in the face of being bullied. Rhodri is quite literally the son Isaac had longed to have: a child with superpowers, good personality, and interested in being a light in the darkness when all others have lost hope. Or, at least, this is the image he associates with this son. Considering Rhodri to be the most-worthy child to possess the Maddox family ring, he gave it to the young man on his graduation day. Isaac claimed it had belonged to Rhodri’s grandfather, who had been a Hero in his prime. While it was a truth, it was not the whole truth he longed to come out with. From that day forward, any questions Rhodri had for him concerning his powers were answered by Isaac hiding his own powers behind that of his father so that Rhodri would be none the wiser. He simply knew such things because of his own observations, according to the tale spun, even though Gwilim Maddox had died when Isaac was a small boy. None of the children know this, assuming their grandfather passed shortly before Brock’s birth. Rhodri is the only one to know Gwilim had been a Hero.


At present, Isaac has been retired from his former occupation as curator of Gotham’s Museum of Fine Art for a whole five years. He occasionally assists Verochka in her bakery. Mostly however he works independently as a jeweler and watchmaker, making, inspecting, and repairing various pieces at a client’s request for a reasonable price. He and his wife both live in Gotham, though do visit their sons in Superville from time to time.

((Expect a history update in the very near future!))