First Appearance: Spawn # 1.
What's the Story?:
It takes more than a 24-year marriage, seven kids and a bunch of ten-dollar words to make a good detective out of a skinny runt. In this case, it also takes a good partner.
Maximillion Steven Percival Williams has everything going for him except his name, physique, and voice. The only child of an heir to a housepaint fortune, he grew up in a loving, cultured environment. What he lacked in poise was buffered by the manners of genteel society.
At school, Max showed a talent for trigonometry, that study of the relationships of angles and trajectories. This worked to great advantage at skeet shooting, where he was steady as a rock. Otherwise, he was a goof. All through prep school, his name was Twitch. He hated it, and so was taunted all the more.
Finally, he'd had enough. It was time to take a stand. During the race for student body president, the posters that caught everyone's eye were the ones he put up himself: "Twitch Williams for President." He'd decided to live with the joke and use it for his own ends. The tension had been broken. He won handily. The remaining semesters went smoothly.
Then came the prom. Max was ready for his night of nights, and it went fine until he hit the dance floor. His awkward white-boy dancing quickly drew a crowd. What was the point of going on? And yet, he saw that a lot of the guys weren't even making the attempt. To the approval of the crowd, he grabbed the hand of the prettiest girl in sight and carried on.
Twitch and Helen were Prom Queen and King by acclamation. They were married three weeks after graduation.
At Harvard, his high test scores propelled Max through his Bachelor of Applied Sciences degree. He faced a certain career as a top mathematician, but on a whim he changed his major to Criminal Science. Whether to remove himself from a background where he was still a "geek", or simply be closer to the guns he loved, Max excelled in his courses. His parents were scandalized. They fumed, and pleaded, and then cut him off from the family fortune. His wife and rapidly growing brood, however, applauded his desire to give something to the world.
After university graduation, Max moved from Boston to New York, where he was accepted into the police force and became a detective. He was teamed with Sam Burke from the beginning and the two have been partners to this day. Burke was four years his junior but had gotten his job the hard way: this garnered respect and the title "sir". Max sees Burke's excesses with detached bemusement. The younger man fills the role of the exotic big brother Max never had.
Happy and surrounded by wife and kids, living in modest circumstances and doing a job he loves, Max was sure he'd finally left his life as a nerd behind him. Then, Burke intercepted a call at Max's desk involving a class reunion. The caller had asked for Twitch Williams. The old nickname has stuck ever since.
