Jackie

Origin

The Hamsters are all anthropomorphic and larger than normal hamsters. Jackie can be recognized by the dark patch around his left eye. Jackie is the youngest of his brothers ( Clint, Bruce, and Chuck). He often stands out from his brothers because of his noticeably more child-like attitude. He collects action figures like G.I. Joe and Transformers, as well as many other toys.

He has been electrocuted twice, experiences which have made his personality further unhinged. He often takes on an alternate persona, such as versions of Indiana Jones, the Badger, and Snoopy in his own guise as a World War One Flying Ace.

When Bruce seemed to die, and the Hamsters were separated, at the end of the original main series, Jackie reacted the most strongly, and seemed to grow up because of the experience.

Character Development

Original Series

Jackie and the others are originally mutated in the process of destroying a cloud of cosmic radioactive Jello for NASA. They are later trained in the martial arts by Tibetan monks.

When they return to the outside world, they beat up a drug dealer and steal his money. Then they defeat a group of hijackers on a plane. Jackie is cut in the face and knocked out by a hockey stick to the back of the head during the fight.

They land as heroes, but they almost immediately lose this status as they get into a variety of scrapes in New York. Jackie, Clint, and Bruce go to a club. There, Clint electrocutes Jackie to help him calm down and learn how to socialize, although really it starts him on the path to multiple personality disorder. Later, they go on a moralistic tear throughout the city, destroying anything they deem immoral, including the Statue of Liberty, which they think is a giant half-naked woman. At one point, Jackie dresses up as Indiana Jones while beating up some drug dealers.

They are caught by the police, and cause havok as they were processed into prison. Eventually they have lunch, which the prison made out of dog meat. Jackie gets sick, and is thrown in electric chair room to cool out. There, he inexplicably finds a Badger costume and electrocutes himself once more in the electric chair, at which point he thought he was the Badger. The others start a food fight in the cafeteria, and Jackie joins in. They eventually break out and meet up with Chuck and fled the state.

They are playing video games in a mall when they got in a fight with a bully. Clint tries to throw Jackie at him like an X-Men "fastball special," but misses, and tosses him through a game instead, almost electrocuting him again. Chuck finally beats the bully. A professional wrestling promoter, Vincent DeLuxe, saw the fight and signes them up to fight the world champion Mighty Midgets as a tag team. The Hamsters become famous and are all over TV. Finally the fight starts. However, the Midgets couldn't get to the arena on time, so they have to wrestle four huge guys instead. The Hamsters manage to win, and get DeLuxe to give them $5 million each because of the mix-up. Jackie buys his own Toys 'R' Us store with the money.

Driving an RV across the country, Clint reads Jackie a twisted bedtime story. Jackie dreams that the Hamsters go to Oz and the Star Wars universe, getting in all kinds of trouble before he wakes up.

They later end up at a toy store, where Jackie wants to buy the new hot toy, Flower Garden Folks dolls. He is almost in a frenzy about them, having been near-mesmerized by their ads. However, the dolls eventually go crazy and try to kill everyone. The dolls' radioactivity makes Jackie sick, but eventually he recovers. The Hamsters manage to destroy the dolls and rescue their maker.

They drive across country and stop in a rural area. Jackie runs off, thinking he is a WWI Flying Ace, and Bruce, Clint, and Chuck get into trouble in a convenience store. They are arrested, and then they are waylaid by the C.C.C., or Coo Clucks Clan, a religious/racist cult who worshiped Colonel Sanders and dressed up like chickens. They prepare to cook the hamsters over a cauldron.

Jackie has an extended fantasy about flying his Sopwith Camel (a dog house, a la Snoopy) against the Red Baron. Then he runs into the Heap, and they become friends. The Heap helps him find the others (although they destroy the RV on the way). With the help of the Heap, they quickly route the C.C.C. and escape.

They leave the Heap. They decide to go to Dizzyworld, which Jackie is very excited about. The P.L.O. has been released from jail on condition of finding and killing the Hamsters. The police try to waylay the Hamsters on the bus on the way to Dizzyworld, but pretend to be dogs with the help of a human friend, Randi. They arrive at Dizzyland, where Jackie is ecstatic to meet Rickey Rat and the other cartoon characters. However, the Hamsters soon run into the P.L.O., who has been tipped off about their destination.

Jackie and the others fight against the villains, but have a hard time until Captain Tree and Bush Boy arrive and save the day by sacrificing themselves in the act of killing the P.L.O.

The Hamsters take a vacation in Miami, where they run into a toe-sucking monster. The Hamsters retreat in one of Bruce's Ferraris, and eventually end up falling into a whirlpool while battling the Toe-Jam Monster. The whirlpool sucks then down into the lair of the villain Infidel Castro. Jackie is stuck inside a robot and nearly strangled by its wires, but is saved by Chuck. Clint, Jackie, and Chuck are reunited, but find Bruce too late--Castro kills Bruce with a harpoon. The other Hamsters are stuck in an undersea base and try to check Bruce's body in its hospital, but he seems to be gone. Jackie takes his death particularly hard. They end up having to leave his body behind as the base's self-destruct mechanism went off, and they barely escape in some sea sleds. However, the explosion separates them, and at the end of the original series, they are all left in separate situations. Jackie washes up on a deserted island in the Bermuda Triangle. He has the hardest time being separated from his brothers, as he is the youngest, but at the end he is able to take the initiative and make a new life for himself.

2008 Series

The 2008 series retcons much of the last issues of the original series. It simultaneously explains the Infidel Castro arc, and Bruce's death, as having been both a dream and having taken place in an alternate dimension. Whatever happened, the new series starts off with five new Hamsters ( Lucy, Jean-Claude, Steven, Arnold, and Rock) constituting an all-new team, and with the original four split apart--although in a different way, and for different reasons, than the split seen at the end of the original series.

Jackie is living with a group of samurai and mystics in Shangri La, a village hidden underneath Mount Fuji. He has been training intensely, and looks thin and very strong. We first see him climbing up the mountain by hand, with a giant dead panda on his back. He is bringing it to his fellow martial arts students for food, but they reject it, saying that only the samurai are allowed to hunt the panda. It is clear that Jackie misses his brothers, and that his new "family" isn't working for him. They get in a fight and Jackie beats them. The Golden Child, leader of Shangri La, tells him he must leave, but also that he has a phone call. It is Master Lock. He tells Jackie that the monastery has been taken over by a villain known as Genghis Khann, that all of the new Hamsters except for Lucy have been killed, and that he needs Jackie's help. When Jackie refuses, Lock lies to him and tells him that Bruce, Chuck, and Clint are already there. Jackie changes his mind, and Lucy comes to pick him up in their jet.

He visits Bruce and Chuck, who have been living in Texas, hunting Chupacabras. When he finds them, they are in the middle of a fight with one, and not doing well. Jackie rappels down form the jet and quickly takes out the Chupacabra. Bruce and Chuck have not been taking care of themselves nearly so well--they are overweight and look middle-aged. To Jackie, however, they are a sight for sore eyes, and they all happily reunite.

Meanwhile, Khann has been working on a secret plan. He somehow resurrected some of the new team of Hamsters and brainwashed them into working for him. He finds a computer room under the monastery which is tracking a cloud of cosmic Jell-o, just like the one that first mutated the original Hamsters. Then he and the zombie Hamsters catch Master Lock and get the codes to use the computer room.

Jackie, Bruce, and Chuck find Clint, who has also been living a very different lifestyle. He is now the doormat husband of an overbearing human wife. He works in a pawn shop. Jackie, Bruce, and Chuck come in to get him on the team again, but he pretends he doesn't recognize them. He is so stuck in his new pathetic life that he can't bring himself to admit that it was ever different. They all talk. It turns out that Clint was in love with Lucy, but she had a relationship with Chuck instead. The affair (which they liken to Yoko and the Beatles) made them all crazy and broke them up.

Clint refuses to understand any of this and kicks them out. Clint's neighbor, Richard, sees them and invites them in, but it's a trap: he's a sex fiend obsessed with animals. Lucy finally finds Clint and knocks some sense into him, and the two of them rescue the others. Jackie is elated, and wants them all to go save the monastery, but Clint says no--he wants to go back to his family; as horrible as they might be, they need him.

Without Clint, the others invade the monastery and are caught. Khann brags about his new plan to them, and points out the incoming cloud of space Jell-o. Then, without further explanation, he shoots Master Lock, Jackie, Bruce, Chuck, and Lucy in the head, killing them. It turns out that the cosmic Jell-o is the home for many other Hamsters, who are apparently alien, not mutant, in origin, and Khann uses them to take over the Earth. Clint eventually tries to get revenge on Khann, but fails, leaving Khann in complete control.

Powers and Abilities

Like the rest of the Hamsters, Jackie is a skilled martial artist. He usually fights with his bare hands. He has proven able to deflect arrows with his hands.

In his later years, he is strong enough to carry a panda on his back as he climbs up a mountain by hand. He had clearly improved his skills, defeating multiple samurai, and also a Chupacabra.