Bullseye (comics)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bullseye
Bullseye Promotional art by Mike Deodato
Publisher Marvel Comics First appearance Daredevil (1st series), #131 (March 1976) Created by Marv Wolfman John Romita Sr.
Characteristics Alter ego Lester (full name unknown) Affiliations Thunderbolts, The Kingpin, Deadpool Notable aliases Ben Poindexter Abilities Perfect accuracy, Expert martial artist and hand to hand combatant, Enhanced durability

Bullseye is a fictional supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe who is primarily an enemy of Daredevil. He was created by Marv Wolfman and John Romita Sr., with Bob Brown drawing the character's first appearance, in Daredevil (1st series), #131 (March 1976).^[1]

Contents 1 Description 2 Fictional character biography 2.1 Greatest Hits 2.2 Further appearances 3 Other Continuities 3.1 Ultimate Bullseye 3.2 DC vs Marvel 4 Powers and abilities 5 Other media 6 Footnotes 7 External links

[edit] Description

Bullseye is a psychopathic assassin with the ability to use any object, such as a playing card, a shuriken, or even a pencil, and throw or shoot it with lethal accuracy. However, he finds Daredevil a frustrating target since the superhero's senses allow him sufficient time and information to determine where Bullseye is aiming his attacks and when he is going to launch them, thus allowing him to evade or block the attack most of the time.

He is one of Daredevil's chief and most personal foes, usually appearing as Kingpin's hired assassin and serving as antithesis to the hero in a much more direct way than the Punisher. Very soon the character was allowed to distance himself from completely embracing the gimmick (made up of his abilities connected to his name and costume) which helped elevate him to a greater role in the title 'Daredevil'. Bullseye being instrumental to some of the chief tragedies in Daredevil's life added a very useful personal connection which coupled with his place as a hired help for Daredevil's chief enemy Kingpin and explaining away some of the character's more outrageus personality traits and doings as part of the mental illness cemented him in the pseudo-realistic setting that has characterized 'Daredevil' for the last 20 years.

Bullseye's real name and origins are unknown. He has used the alias Benjamin Poindexter on several occasions; in the Ultimate Marvel Universe, this is his real name. Daredevil (2nd series), #49 (Sept. 2003) revealed Bullseye's first name to be Lester. The miniseries Bullseye: Greatest Hits (2004) developed the character's backstory, but also revealed that some or all of it has been fabricated by Bullseye himself.

The character's creator, Marv Wolfman is most famous for his run on DC's New Teen Titans which helped redefine DC's superhero universe, in which he introduced a somewhat similar character to Bullseye in Deathstroke the Terminator, a perfect assassin.

[edit] Fictional character biography

[edit] Greatest Hits

If Bullseye: Greatest Hits is to be believed, Bullseye grew up in The Bronx, where he lived with his brother and his abusive father. His brother's main form of recreation was playing with rifles, leading Bullseye to become an expert shot. When he was 10 years old, his brother started a fire in their home in an unsuccessful attempt to kill their father. From there, Bullseye was placed in a foster home, and became a baseball player in high school. Bullseye was an extremely talented pitcher, and was offered a scholarship, but instead, opted to enter the minor leagues. After three games, he was called up to play a sold-out Major League game. He had surrendered no hits the entire game, and in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs, he became bored, and requested the coach pull him from the game. The coach refused, and insisted that he finish the game, and out the final batter. The opposing team's batter mocked him, accusing him of cowardice. Bullseye threw the ball at his head and killed him. As the ball struck he said only one word: "Bullseye". He was barred from professional baseball and convicted of manslaughter. This is a retcon of a previous origin story from Elektra #2 which depicts Bullseye growing up as a below average student in a trailer park with an alcoholic, physically abusive father. In this version of events, Bullseye fakes his father's suicide using a handgun set off by a toy arrow. None or all elements of this version may also be true since it describes his father as possibly recovering from a recent divorce, fitting in perfectly with Daredevil's taunts in their confrontation during the "Hardcore" Storyline.

His cold demeanor and unique skills, however, meant subsequent recruitment by the National Security Agency as an assassin was inevitable, and he was soon assigned to train Contras in Nicaragua. By the time he arrived, however, he claims to have already been planning to leave the National Security Agency. He had planned on robbing the Contras blind and fleeing, but soon discovered they were actually desperately poor. Bullseye soon made the best of the situation: within seven hours of being informed of their poverty, he had led the Contras in seizing a landing strip that the Colombian cocaine smugglers were using as a staging area before moving on to the United States. Without use of the airfield, the smugglers were unable to send new shipments. Bullseye set Paolo, his hapless Nicaraguan translator, up as the leader of the new force controlling the airfield, and let the word spread around. However, Paolo was nothing but a patsy. Bullseye planned to invite several organized crime heads to the airfield to broker a new deal with him, Paolo's supposed "right hand man". He would take their money and disappear, presumably leaving Paolo to suffer the wrath of the Mafia, Russian Mafia, Yakuza, and various other criminal elements. This outcome is unknown, as before the deal could be finalized, the Punisher (Frank Castle) arrived.

Castle killed all the organized crime leaders in a fiery explosion that Bullseye barely escaped. The two engaged in a fierce battle in which Bullseye was able to wound the Punisher and evade or disable several of his weapons. Bullseye then used some blood-reddened mud to paint a bullseye on his forehead, mocking Castle's inability to hit him. The fight concluded when Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrived, and the Punisher fled. Bullseye turned himself in to the D.E.A. agents and soon was assigned to infiltrate the Kingpin's criminal empire. He obtained a costume, fled yet again, and became one of the most dangerous hitmen in the world.

All of the above information is given by Bullseye himself to the government agents interrogating him at a top secret prison facility somewhere in the United States. As he escapes his cell, Bullseye confesses he made up some or all of his story to amuse himself during the interrogation. He informs the agent in charge of the interrogation that he, not his brother, set fire to childhood home in an attempt to kill his father. Bullseye then searches the facility, where he finally finds his target. It transpires that the whole capture was planned by the assassin to gain access to that particular prison where his father is held. The story ends with Bullseye finally getting revenge on his father, leaving him to burn as the prison's security systems torch everything inside.

[edit] Further appearances

Although the character was created by Marv Wolfman, his most famous appearances are in the Daredevil stories created by Frank Miller.

In his earliest appearances, Bullseye was one of the more prominent enemies of Daredevil, frequently confronting the superhero. However, he was quickly established as insane, degenerating further when a brain tumor created hallucinations that everyone he met was Daredevil. As Daredevil was his arch-enemy, he began killing random people under the belief that he was killing his nemesis. Bullseye was humiliated when Daredevil saved his life, pulling him out of the way of an oncoming subway train after he had been knocked unconscious, and the tumor was removed which ended the delusions, his sanity remained tenuous at best.

Escaping prison after being cured and vowing revenge, he found that the Kingpin, his usual employer, had retained the services of a new assassin: Elektra, Daredevil's former lover. In one of the more famous deaths in comics history, the two villains battled it out, and Bullseye impaled Elektra on her own sai, in Daredevil #181, saying "You're good... but me, I'm magic", a line that made it to the movie incarnation of Daredevil.

Disguised as a morgue attendant, Bullseye attempted to kill Daredevil (in his civilian identity as Matt Murdock) with a thrown projectile, which Daredevil casually blocked with his cane. After reviewing the medical reports from Murdock's childhood accident, Bullseye became convinced that Matt Murdock was really Daredevil, and had been given superhuman powers by the chemical spill that blinded him.

Bullseye then attempted to sneak up on Matt and kill him in his own home, but was ambushed by Daredevil, who had fooled Bullseye into thinking that a dummy with an attached tape recorder was Murdock. Seeing Daredevil and "Murdock" at the same time, Bullseye was convinced that Daredevil was not Matt Murdock, after all. The battle ended up with the pair balanced on a telephone wire, from which Bullseye fell and was caught by his opponent. Bullseye screamed that he wasn't going to let the hero save him again, and tried to stab his rescuer, whereupon Daredevil simply dropped him. The multi-story fall broke Bullseye's back, paralyzing him.

Bullseye appeared in the Christopher Golden's Daredevil novel Predator's smile, which takes place just after Daredevil's iconic Born again storyline

His career seemed over, but he was given an adamantium spinal column which restored his mobility. Afterwards, he was mostly out of sight for a very long time except for the Captain America storyline Streets of poison which was continued on in the final issues of Ann Nocenti's five year long stint on Daredevil. It featured amnesic Daredevil leaving Bullseye to claim his identity. Being unsure what to do at first, Bullseye was impostor Daredevil goes on to try and destroy the hero's reputation. Eventually Bullseye has problems returning back to his own identity while Daredevil gets through a serious identity crisis that even had him thinking he was his own father the boxer Jack Murdock. Both hero and the villain switch costumes and fight, returning to their real identities but still painfully aware of their inherent similarity.

Bullseye later had another run-in with the Punisher when he was part of Frank's frame up scheme that ended with Bullseye losing a finger to Punisher's brutality. Bullseye encountered Deadpool and Gambit during another long interval in which the character was seldom used.

Some time later, in Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada authored storyarc Bullseye was hired by the villain Mysterio to attack and confuse Daredevil. In the course of their battle, Bullseye killed Daredevil's longtime love interest, Karen Page, with one of Daredevil's own billy clubs.

When the next battle between Daredevil and Bullseye took place the assassin collapsed in the middle of a fight, claiming that he had a brain tumor. He was brought to a maximum security prison, where he recounted his (at least partially falsified) origins to a federal agent (See Daniel Way and Steve Dillon mini-series Greatest Hits, as described above) who had been sent to interrogate him over the location of some radioactive materials that he had stolen prior to his incarceration. He manipulated another agent into attacking him until one of his teeth was knocked out. Bullseye used the tooth as a projectile weapon, killing the agent and working his way to the prison's infirmary, where he encountered and killed his father.

Under the new Daredevil creative team of authors Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev the Kingpin returned to New York to start over from scratch after he had been severely wounded in an assassination attempt and was left in a coma while his wife had sold off most of his funds. Bullseye offered to kill Daredevil for him, later entering Daredevil's apartment and attempting to kill his old enemy's new girlfriend, Milla Donovan. Enraged and already near the breaking point, Daredevil savagely attacked Bullseye and threw him out the window.

During the fight, the hero revealed to Bullseye that he knew his origin: that his real name was Lester, his mother was a prostitute, and that he never knew his father. This was supposedly first revealed in Kevin Smith's Daredevil: The Target miniseries which promised to explore Bullseye's origins, but had not yet been published past the first issue. He mocked the assassin's new 'Bullseye' tattoo and carved a new one over it with a rock.

Bullseye was one of the motley crew of villains in the Robert Rodi and John Higgins' controversial and infamous Identity Disc series.

Bullseye returned in the arc "The Murdock Papers", seeking purported documents confirming Daredevil's secret identity. After a brutal fight with Daredevil and Elektra, Bullseye fled into open traffic where he was hit by a truck, sustaining severe injuries.

In the next story arc, "The Devil in Cell-Block D", by the new creative team of Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark, Bullseye was imprisoned again at Ryker's Island, concurrently with Matt Murdock who was being held on federal charges after his identity as Daredevil was exposed. When the prison breaks out in riot, the Kingpin - who had foreknowledge of the impending attack - arranges for Bullseye to be released from his full-body-and-face restraints. Having previously cut a deal with Daredevil for mutual protection, Fisk plans to hijack a riot-squad chopper to escape the island. At the price of the deal, Matt Murdock finally refuses to let Bullseye leave prison. They fight, Daredevil dodging Bullseye's gunfire, which hits the Kingpin point-blank, and then beating Bullseye unconscious. Bullseye's involvement in the arc ended there, but a return in the pages of "Daredevil" is almost a sure thing at this point.

He, along with many other villains, was recently hired by Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic to hunt down anti-registration superhero in the Marvel Civil War storyline.

[edit] Other Continuities

[edit] Ultimate Bullseye

In the Ultimate Marvel continuity, Bullseye appeared in Ultimate Elektra as an assassin named Benjamin Poindexter. He works for the Kingpin and was his prime assassin until Elektra beat him in direct hand-to-hand combat.

This incarnation employs the use of disguises on his hits (he was seen masquerading as a police officer when he first appeared) and at one point donned a variation of his regular Marvel Universe incarnation's classic costume, sans mask. He has a bulls-eye tattoo on his forehead, similar to the tattoo and later scarring of the mainstream Marvel version, and the brand of the movie version. He also has a bulls-eye tattoo on his chest.

[edit] DC vs Marvel

In a cameo appearance in the "DC vs Marvel" storyline, Bullseye found himself suddenly transported to the Batcave in Gotham City, as several heroes and villains from both universes began spontaneously crossing over. His battle with the Batman was not one of his prouder moments, as the Dark Knight not only evaded a batarang thrown by Bullseye, but also knocked him out in one punch.

[edit] Powers and abilities

Bullseye has no superhuman powers, however, his uncanny abilities to use virtually any object as a lethal projectile makes him more dangerous than many characters who do have superhuman powers. While not superhuman, Bullseye can accomplish many feats with thrown projectiles that are impossible outside of fiction. Some of his accomplishments include: lacerate a person's throat with a thrown playing card, spit his own tooth through a human skull, toss a paper airplane to a distant rooftop, and kill a person with a toothpick thrown through a window from a hundred yards away. While incarcerated, Bullseye was diagnosed with a rare form of red/green colorblindness called protanopia.

Bullseye has exceptional physical conditioning, with the agility, reflexes, stamina, and speed of a professional or even an Olympic athlete. One result of his naturally perfect athletic gift for hand-eye coordination is that his reflexes are honed to a level well beyond that of any normal human.

Due to various injuries, many of Bullseye's bones have been reinforced with strips of adamantium with his spine now entirely composed of adamantium. This has increased his resistance to injury in unarmed combat. This reinforcement also allows Bullseye to utilize acrobatic maneuvers impossible for an ordinary human (as his bones are protected from fracture). Unlike Wolverine whose entire skeleton is laced with adamantium, it was not necessary for Bullseye to have a mutant healing factor to receive his as only a very small fraction of his bones have been entirely replaced and the rest of his skeleton is merely fortified with strips of the metal which does not interfere with his skeleton's ability to create blood cells. The details of this surgical operation granting him this adamantium have not been disclosed.

Aside from his ability to throw projectiles with lethal accuracy, Bullseye is also an expert martial artist and is extremely talented in the use of edged weapons and conventional firearms. Often, his outspoken attitude during combat about using his abilities seems to have become one of his favorite weapons: intimidation. As such, he believes that his attention in the media grants him more effectiveness in combat with a near flawless reputation, rather than an assassin who often uses fear of the unknown.

Bullseye has a compulsive need to study his targets' histories, abilities, and relationships before engaging them. As a result, he can anticipate his opponent's every move. This compulsion however, often crosses from the professional into the personal, such as Bullseye's obsession with Elektra.

[edit] Other media

• Actor Colin Farrell portrayed Bullseye in the Daredevil movie adaptation. Bullseye's traditional costume was dropped in favor of a biker/metalhead style appearance: a duster (trench coat), leather pants, black tank top, dark goatee, tattoos, multiple earrings, and a shaved head with a bullseye-shaped scar on his forehead, although he does request a costume from Kingpin, and Bullseye is given an Irish background for his history. He uses shurikens as a main weapon, although he uses many other weapons including peanuts, paperclips, playing cards, Daredevil's billy club, and a pencil. Shortly prior to the film's release, the comic-book version of Bullseye adopted a near-identical appearance. While the comic-book Bullseye has returned to his costume, he has retained the bullseye scar. In this movie, Bullseye was a hired assassin for the Kingpin. Bullseye's mission was to kill Nicholas Natchios. He successfully did, but encountered Daredevil, the vigilante of New York. But during his encounter, he used Daredevil's billy club to kill Natchios and had Natchios' daughter, Elektra, believe Daredevil killed her father. After Elektra nearly killed Daredevil in battle for revenge, Elektra came to realize the true murderer of her father was Bullseye. The two battled but Elektra failed to get her revenge and Bullseye killed her by using one of sais and stabbed it in her stomach (she would later be resurrected by Stick in the Elektra movie). Daredevil and Bullseye then battled in a church. But just before Bullseye could kill Daredevil, the Man Without Fear maneuvered Bullseye's hands into the path of a shot by a S.W.A.T. sniper's bullet, leaving him with wounds resembling stigmata. With Bullseye completely defenseless, Daredevil grabbed Bullseye and threw him out a window to crash onto the hood of a car, suffering multiple fractures. A later scene in the film shows him hospitalized but still able to fling a hypodermic needle with enough force and accuracy to impale an annoying housefly.

• Bullseye has had statues and mini-busts produced of his likeness, and one action figure in the Marvel Legends toy line.

• Bullseye was a villain in the 2005 Punisher video game for PS2 and X-Box. He is on the Fisk Industries level.

• Bullseye appeared as a villain in the video game Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. He is a comic book mission villain for both Daredevil and Elektra.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] External links

• Bulleyes at Marvel.com