Hector Chang was conceived during a one night stand between his Chinese mother, Jennifer Chang, and Captain Dynamo, who at the time, was disguised via his shapeshifting power as a chinese man. Jennifer never knew that the man was Captain Dynamo, and never saw him again. She raised Hector as a single parent, and although Hector's maternal grandfather has also been a positive presence in his life, Jennifer has lamented the lack of a male role model in Hector's life, as Hector tends to think of his father when Father's Day approaches.
Following the assassination of Captain Dynamo, the much-beloved superhero protector of Tower City, his widow, former government agent posing as a now-retired investigative reporter Maddie Warner, discovers from his personal effects that he had been unfaithful to her countless times over the years. Despite her devastation at this discovery, Warner realized that without a full-time protector, Tower City would be vulnerable to Captain Dynamo’s legion of super-villain enemies. She used her skills and the information she discovered to track down five candidates that could be Dynamo’s illegitimate children, thus her step children.
The first of Captain Dynamo’s children Warner contacts is 15-year-old Hector Chang, a Vancouver, British Columbia high school geek who bullied at school. When Warner appears before him offering to change his life, Hector is initially skeptical, stating that he had heard such things before from guidance counselors, but still accepts the invitation. Gathering all five of the children together, Warner exposes them to the same unidentified radiation that gave Captain Dynamo his powers forty years earlier, unlocking their powers. Hector, the youngest of the Dynamo 5 siblings,inherits his father’s vision-related powers. He takes the codename Visionary, and works to protect Tower City with his newly discovered brothers and sisters. The team learns later that they have another half sibling in Synergy, the daughter of their father's arch enemy Chrysalis. Working as a team they manage to defeat their sister (who has all of their powers) and her mother.
One month after gaining his abilities, Visionary and his siblings fought the paramilitary organization known as The Veil. Although he and the team acquitted themselves well against the Veil, Visionary himself was kidnapped during the fracas, and brought to The Veil’s base, where he was injected with a serum to make him amenable to interrogation by The Veil’s leader, who called himself The Superior. Visionary divulged everything about himself and his siblings, how they inherited their powers, and how Warner assembled them, but before The Veil could make use of this information, Visionary was rescued by Warner and the rest of Dynamo 5, who had tracked him using Scatterbrain's telepathy. His powers have also proven useful in reconnaissance, as when the team investigated the reappearance of the creature known as Whiptail, and as a weapon against adversaries such as Quake.
Despite never having known his father, he thinks of Captain Dynamo as "Dad", and a poster of Dynamo hangs over his bed.This is in contrast to his siblings, Bridget, Gage and Olivia, who were raised by adoptive fathers, or his brother Spencer, who, having wondered all his life who his father was, only to be disappointed to learn it was Captain Dynamo, thinks of the late superhero as "an enormous hypocrite and a horrible husband". After gaining his powers, Hector exhibits greater confidence in the face of bullies at school, but his social awkwardness and virginity is been a source of embarrassment, in light of his siblings' greater range of experience. Although Gage and Spencer place great importance on this, his sisters Bridget and Olivia are more understanding.
Hector's life as a costumed superhero creates difficulties for his home life, particularly when his capture, along with the rest of Dynamo 5, by the U.S. government superhero-monitoring organization known as F.L.A.G., keeps him away from home for two days, causing his mother to panic. She eventually discovers Hector's secret accidentally when she walks in on him as he attempts to use the teleportational device known as a Jump Portal, which the team uses to assemble for missions. Hector reveals the truth to her about Captain Dynamo, his siblings, and his superhero life. Jennifer is angered at learning that Maddie Warner exposed Hector to a heavy dose of radiation to unlock his powers, and after having Hector introduce them, she threatens to report Warner to the authorities for what she regarded as child endangerment and possibly kidnapping. Warner insists that because his children share Captain Dynamo's DNA, the radiation poses no risk to the children, and speculates that Jennifer's ire was motivated more from feeling abandoned by the man who seduced her, but Jennifer is not amused by this statement. Before this conflict could be resolved, Warner and Jennifer are taken hostage by the assassin, Widowmaker. In order to save her son's life, Jennifer tells Widowmaker about the Jump Station, which Hector later sees as an act of betrayal on her part. Despite the fact that Jennifer forbids Hector to continue his superheroics, he does so anyway.
Hector goes to support Gage at one of his football games but becomes angry with his brother when he realized that Gage is using his telepathy to read his opponents minds to win the game.
After meeting the Firebirds Hector becomes enamored with Emily Reed, the younger of the duo (the older, Rebecca Reed, being her mother). While the Dynamo 5 separate due to personal issues involving Myriad, Hector answers the call when the temporary Dynamo 5 need help. Hector visits Rebecca in the hospital and even brings her flowers, which scores brownie points with the enamored Emily Reed. Emily and Hector go on a date (initially bored with then mundane version) and then to the D5 training room for some fun. Their date ends in a kiss.
When Hector's half sister Synergy faces off against them again she managed to remove their powers. After being given a second dose of radiation Hector has acquired his sister Bridget's super human strength and durability. When the treat posed by Synergy and her benifactor are removed Hector returns to his life but plans some payback on the school bully. Gage and Bridget arrive and make him promise not to do anything as despite his intentions not to do the bullies any real harm, that he might serious maim them as he "doesn't know his own strength".
Hector now goes by the code name Smasher.
Sins of the Father
When Tower City was attacked by the Sons of Dominex, Hector was at the Reed Residence making out with Emily; he is worried that Rebecca can come back early and see them. Emily comforts him. When Hector answers Maddie's emergency call, Emily changes into Firebird costume and insists to go with him, reminding Hector that she is honorary member of Dynamo 5. During the battle Hector openly expresses interest in Angel Murphy, making Emily jealous. After Firebird was gravely injured, Hector teleported to Winterborne Institute and acquired the Strong-Suit. With his strength increased significantly by the suit, Hector was able to defeat the Sons of Dominex, killing them, including the last one who tried to surrender. After the battle he wants to go to the hospital to see Emily, but Bridget stopped him. expressing her concern for her teammate's disregard of human life. Hector replies callously, "They were't people, they were aliens", not noticing the hurt look on Spencer's face. Bridget asks him to take off the Strong-Suit, Hector denies that the suit can corrupt him and removes it. He rushes to the hospital to see Emily, who is still unconscious. Rebecca confronts Hector, asking what happened to her daughter, and slaps him when she learns about Dominex. Later, during the meeting of Dynamo 5 at The Aquarium, Hector tells them that he regrets what he did and asks to forgive him. But Spencer read Hector's mind and found out that his remorse wasn't sincere.
Hector has apparently returned to his normal self, a fact that worries his brother Spencer. The Dynamo 5 are tasked by Mattie to track down escaped felon Luminex. Hector, Spencer and Gage arrive at a supervillain dive and after one of the crooks gets in Hector's face the young man starts a bar fight. After coming up empty at the bar the super siblings find Luminex's daughter and begin to question her. The young woman freaks out and reveals that she has her father's powers and has taken the codename Lumina. Luminex arrives and during the fight Lumina threatens to kill Spencer but her father talks her out of it. Hector then helps convince Lumina that just because she can get revenge on the girls tormenting her at school doesn't mean it's right to do so. The Dynamo 5 let Lumina go, return a willing Luminex to prison and then proceed to have Christmas. Hector and his mother have Christmas with Olivia, her father and Mattie.
Hector Chang is the son of Captain Dynamo and upon being exposed to radiation gained super powers. Originally going by Visionary he had Supervision but after a losing those powers he was exposed to a second dose of radiation, gaining superhuman strength and invulnerability , but his levels are not yet known, his durability is still low level as a bully's punch still winded him, but for the most part his powers appear to function exactly as they did when his sister, Scrap, possessed them. Although Smasher has not been observed using these powers for long, when his sister employed them, she could lift tanks over her head, throw them the length of a city block, and destroy large powered armor suits by kicking them, without sustaining any injury. She could also shrug off automatic weapons fire, and on one occasion, fell off a skyscraper, was smashed through the street below, and endured further kicks to the abdomen by the superhumanly strong villain Synergy, without more than a moment's incapacitation. On the other hand, electricity of a sufficient power level could temporarily stun her, and a direct punch from the supervillain Brawn was able to knock her into unconsciousness or semi-consciousness for several moments.
He now has Superhuman Strength and Durability
As Visionary Hector had the superhuman abilities related to his eyesight, which include laser vision, X-ray vision, and telescopic vision. His laser vision is used as an offensive weapon, and can be used to neutralize human opponents, and large objects such as armored tanks, though unlike his father’s laser blasts, Visionary’s are yellow instead of red. His x-ray vision allows him to see through solid objects. His telescopic vision allows him to see great distances.The upper limits of each of these powers is not yet been revealed. The helmet Visionary wears includes a visor that focuses his laster blasts, making them more concentrated. This advantage served to nearly defeat his half-sister Synergy in when the two of them engaged each other in a laser vision standoff in Dynamo 5 #7, as she lacked such a device, though she was saved by the intervention of her mother, Chrysalis.