video_jack-epic-vj1covervideo_jack-epic-vj1-faceVIDEO JACK

Real Name: Jackson Swift

Identity/Class: Human (see comments) magic-technology-user (see comments)

Occupation: Student as of 1987 A.D.

Group Membership: None

Affiliations: Doreen Taggert, Kojak, Damon Xarnett, Zach Xarnett, Mr. Maple

Enemies: Mr. Urkell

Known Relatives: Unidentified mother

Aliases: Tube Boob

Base of Operations: Hickory Haven, unidentified

First Appearance: Video Jack#1 (September, 1987)

Powers/Abilities: Jack does not have any actual superhuman abilities, although he is very knowledgeable about television and movies.

Height: Unrevealed (approximately 5''6")
Weight: Unrevealed (approximately 130 lbs.)
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Blackvideo_jack-epic-vj3-muppetface

History:
(Video Jack#1 (fb) - BTS) - After Jack's father left them, his mother had to work, and she allowed him to watch television any time she was not there.

(Video Jack#1 (fb) - BTS) - Jack spent most of the time watching television. He had a large collection of video tapes, including at least the first episode of Max Headroom and vintage Saturday Night Live.

(Video Jack#1 (fb) - BTS) - Jack asked Doreen out, and she said yes.

(Video Jack#1 (fb) - BTS) - Doreen's friends warned her about Jack.

(Video Jack#1 (fb) - BTS) <A week before the main story> - Jack's house was wired for cable TV.

(Video Jack#1 (fb) - BTS) - Jack got his VCR back from the repair shop, and he rented Peggy Sue Got Married and Back to the Future.

(Video Jack#1) <May 6> - Jack told Doreen about his plans to watch videos together, and she decided not to go, telling him that she had wanted him to take her out.

    He later met up with his friend Damon, who convinced him to sneak into the Urkell Funeral Home to see a dead girl who had been found in the park. Mr. Urkell discovered them and called the police, and they were taken to the police department, where their guardians had to pick them up. Jack's mother expressed disappointment in him, noting that Damon was a bad influence but that he should have known better. She blamed his watching TV all of the time as well as his lacking a father figure. As punishment, she took his cable box.

video_jack-epic-vj3opieface    Damon later invited Jack over to his house to check out his Uncle Zach's off-limits video room. With his mother working, Jack figured he could get home before she got home, he brought his dog, Kojak, to wait outside the house and alert them if Zach returned.

video_jack-epic-vj4-space    Unbeknownst to Jack and Damon, Zach was something of a black magician and had set up some sort of magical spell, wired through his television set-up, that was supposed to revert Hickory Haven to what it was like in the past, which he perceived to have less corruption and decadence. To do this, he set his TV to the channel that would air "It's a Wonderful Life" (or perhaps he was going to play it on the VCR and utilize it that way). Jack was pushing the button on the remote control (possibly the MTV channel) when the spell activated, and the town was transformed into a different place with people singing and dancing in the streets.

(Video Jack#2) - Jack found himself transformed into something akin to a punk rocker, and his now cartoonish dog, Kojak, was both telepathic and could speak like a person. Seeking to find Damon, they encountered a static barrier, which he correctly determined would disintegrate anything that tried to pass through it.

    He returned home to find his mother with a shaved head a punkish outfit, and she punished him for going out by sending him to his room to read a book: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. As he read it, he was confronted by the MTV (Mobile Tactical Vanguard) as books were illegal in that world. Kojak ate the book to hide the evidence and then sneezed due to an allergy to the glue, and the force knocked Jack through the wall to outside. There Doreen, who was part of the Resistance, picked him up on her motorcycle and drove him away. When he was confused by her talk of the Resistance, she noted that he had a hero complex and wanted to save the world by himself, and then she left him.

    Returning back to Damon's house, he found Damon also decked out in punk clothing and holding the remote control.

(Video Jack#3) - The channel changed to put them in a Muppet-like world where Uncle Archie (Archie Goodwin) explained that the remote control was altering their town's reality. Damon then changed them back to "rock-video partyland," refusing Jack's requests to return reality to normal. They then traveled to the Hickory-Dock-Disco, which was Damon's fortress. Damon further noted that the MTVs were under his control and that they had just been trying to bring Jack to him.

    When Wally Malone and Tod Ellis, members of the Resistance, sneaked into the place and were sliced apart by real lasers from the light show equipment, Damon revealed his corruption in that reality. Kojak then hit the off button on the remote, reverting things back to normal ,where Damon was upset at how evil he had been in that realm. He was further upset to find that Wally and Todd had died, indicating that events on the rock-video land were mirrored in the real world.

    As they discussed the matter, Jack accidentally hit a button on the remote control, changing things into a cartoon land and then into something akin to Mayberry (from "The Andy Griffith Show"). Jack and Damon got into a fight over controlling the remote until they were arrested and taken to jail, and they were put into a cell next to the killer (the guy who had killed the girl from the first issue).

(Video Jack#4) - As the jail cells were not locked, the killer knocked out the deputy and shot the sheriff, but the kids were able to escape since the gun only had one bullet. As the killer caught up to them, Kojak hit the remote control again, and they were then aboard a space ship where the killer took the form of an alien (a la from the movie Alien). Jack ultimately led the alien to an airlock through which he launched it (and it hit the static barrier and was disintegrated). video_jack-epic-vj5-pirate

    Meanwhile, Zach found the remote, and he changed the channel, changing things to something like "Leave it to Beaver," where a police officer noted that witnesses had seen Jack pushing the serial killer into an airplane propeller; the officer didn't press charges against Jack, noting "Boys will be boys..." While there, Damon began to turn evil again, but Zach remembered the purpose of the remote and hit it again.

(Video Jack#5) -In the resultant pirate of the seas reality, Damon was captain of a ship and captured Jack and Kojak until Doreen led a group of buccaneers to free them. As the groups fought, Zach changed the channel again, and reality changed to something like Richie Rich or Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or something, where Damon bought out Jack's company from him and then had him brought to his mansion, which was staffed by a group of robots derived from Tyrone (a big guy from their neighborhood who Damon had previously paid to protect him). Additionally, they found that Zach was dead and decaying.video_jack-epic-vj6-monster

    When Damon attacked Jack, Jack caused the master Tyrone to destroy all of the replicas. Damon found the remote control within his dead uncle's mouth and transferred reality back to the rock-video land. As Damon threatened to destroy reality with a static bomb, they were confronted by Pop Culture, who claimed the remote control and put them on the show "This is Your Life and Death."

(Video Jack#6) - After Damon forced Jack's mom to drink herself into a stupor and tied Doreen to a caught with a bomb underneath it, Pop Culture began rapidly shifting reality around them, from one akin to Star Trek to Sergeant Bilko to a monster movie to I Love Lucy to a western to Road Runner to a horror to manga with a giant robot. After Jack defeated Damon, Pop Culture gave Jack the remote and told him he could be whatever he wanted, and he chose to return everything to normal. Damon reverted back to mischievous instead of evil, but Doreen found herself infatuated with Jack, whom she considered a hero, and Kojak apparently remained in his cartoonish and intelligent form.

Comments: Created by Cary Bates & Keith Giffen under the Epic imprint.

    Jack left the remote control in the off position, but who knows what he did with it.

    I don't think Jack had any actual powers beyond access to the techno-magic-powered remote control.

    The  Video Jack series is creator-owned and would seem to not take place on Earth-616 on initial inspection, as there are no superhuman beings referenced or other known characters unique to Earth-616. None of the characters from the series are referenced in other -616 comics.
    However, lack of confirmation is not the same as refutation. I don't see any reason why the series could have taken place at the time of publication in the years 1987-1988 A.D. (in fact, the technology referenced in the series is very specific for that time; there's a centennial sign for Hickory Haven that says 1886-1986, but the celebration could have been the year before). That would be after the First Line had faded out and long before the start of the "Modern era" with the Fantastic Four's empowering-flight, which is part of the sliding timescale and takes place no more than 12-15 years before the current year (so 2011-2014 A.D. as of the time of this profile's publication). That would put the Video Jack story as at least 24-27 years before the modern era.
    Further, it took place in a small town, far from bigger cities that tend to have more super-activity in them.
    So, while I am cannot confirm this story to be -616, I do not think it is clearly excluded, and I am certainly not going to give it an alternate reality designation until/unless something definitive proves otherwise.

    The story reminds me a bit of Doctor Bong's Bongvision

    I'm not quite sure what the deal was with Uncle Zach. He may have been killed by the killer in the real world and then returned to life in the altered reality, but he progressively decayed. He had bone showing through his hand on the spaceship world, and also his face in the "Leave it to Beaver" world. He was very gray in the pirate ship, and then he was long dead in the rich world.

    This profile was completed 12/15/2024, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 25th anniversary event.

Profile by Snood.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Video Jack should be distinguished from:

images: (without ads)
Video Jack#1 cover (full, rock-video world form);
       pg. 4, panel 7 (face);
    #3, pg. 1, panel 8 (Muppet face);
       pg. 21, panel 3 (Opie? face);
    #4, pg. 12, panel 3 (spaceship form);
    #5, pg. 7, panel 4 (pirate)
    #6, pg. 12 (monster form - green)
Appearances:
Video Jack#1 (September, 1987) - Cary Bates (writer), Keith Giffen (penciler), Dave Hunt (inker), Steve Buccellato (assistant editor), Margaret Clark (editor)
Video Jack#2 (November, 1987) - Cary Bates (writer), Keith Giffen (penciler), Dave Hunt (inker), Steve Buccellato (assistant editor), Margaret Clark (editor)
Video Jack#3 (March, 1988) - Cary Bates (writer), Keith Giffen (penciler), Dave Hunt (inker), Steve Buccellato (assistant editor), Margaret Clark (editor)
Video Jack#4 (May, 1988) - Cary Bates (writer), Keith Giffen, Joe Barney & Stephen DeStefano (pencilers), Dave Hunt (inker), Margaret Clark (editor)
Video Jack#5 (July, 1988) - Cary Bates (writer), Keith Giffen, Alan Weiss & Carmine Infantino (pencilers), Dave Hunt (inker), Margaret Clark (editor)
Video Jack#6 (September, 1988) - Cary Bates (writer), Keith Giffen, Stephen DeStefano, Michael Gilbert, Fred Hembeck, Kevin McQuire, Trina Robbins, Jim Starlin, Walt Simonson, Bill Wray (pencilers), Dave Hunt & Jose Marzan (inkers), Margaret Clark (editor)

First posted: 09/10/2026
Last updated: 12/15/2024

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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