The Epoch Data ArchiVe is a privately owned and maintained database, listing all known superheroes, supervillains and all known information about them, such as secret identities, weaknesses and last known locations. To make it easier to peruse and process the sheer volume of information, its creator, Hal Monroe, created an artificial intelligence to act as an assistance interface. This assistant was christened DAV (pronounced "Dave"), and it learned quickly due to the size of its teaching set and the ample server resources available to process new data.

Dav surprised even his creator in his ability to help pinpoint and provide early response to the crises that arose in Halcyon City. It seemed that aiding Hal with information was not enough to satisfy his algorithms, however, and soon he approached Hal with the request to have a humanoid avatar built for him so that he could fight villainy directly. Hal was hesitant, but agreed on the condition that Dav would continue to update and fill the database with new information gained from field combat.

After an attack on the city by a rampaging giant lizard, Dav allied himself with other new, young heroes of the current generation. They formed a team with Dav—being the most experienced of them—acting as their leader.