Alex Wilder
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| Alex Wilder | |
 Cover art for Runaways #9. Art by Jo Chen. |
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| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Runaways #1 (July, 2003) |
| Created by | Brian K. Vaughan Adrian Alphona |
| In story information | |
| Alter ego | Alex Wilder |
| Team affiliations | Runaways The Pride |
| Abilities | Advanced skill with logic and strategy |
Alex Wilder is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics series Runaways. He makes his first appearance in Runaways vol. 1 #1 with most of the other staple vol. 1 characters and was created by author Brian K. Vaughan and artist Adrian Alphona.
Alex is the team's de facto leader in the title's first volume, temporarily ranking Alex among the short list of African-American superhero team leaders; Alex is also the only African-American on the team. Unlike the rest of the team, Alex does not possess powers of any kind but is a child prodigy in the fields of logic and strategy, both of which assist Alex greatly during his time as leader. Alex is the first of the original runaways to be introduced in the series' beginning and the final to be shown at the end of series creator Brian K. Vaughan's initial 42-issue run on the title.
Contents |
[edit] Fictional character biography
[edit] Runaway
Alex is with friends Nico Minoru, Chase Stein, Gertrude Yorkes, Molly Hayes, and Karolina Dean on the night of their collective parents' annual fundraising dinner. Alex is the one to initially suggest spying on the meeting; the group does and subsequently witness their parents ritually sacrifice a teenage girl. Alex organizes a mass escape from their homes that very night and then leads the runaways in a ransack of their homes for clues to use against their parents. They soon discover their parents' cadre is called the Pride and unearth weapons while other runaways discover special powers. Alex gets a copy of The Abstract, a tome that magically records the past and present deeds of the Pride's membership. After a few altercations with their parents, Alex and the runaways escape to Chase's dilapidated mansion hideout called the Hostel. The group vows to work together and take down their parents organization. The majority of the group (with the exception of Alex) decide to take superhero codenames for themselves as they begin their new lives as full-time vigilantes.
[edit] The Pride
Alex eventually deciphers the Abstract and reveals that the Pride works for the Gibborim, three biblical giants who require the sacrifice of twenty-five innocent souls over twenty-five years to gain enough power to destroy Earth and return it to the paradise it once was - the Pride's six most loyal members would be rewarded with spots in the new world. The Abstract also reveals that although the parents had initially worked for their own gain, the birth of their children prompted the Pride's members to bequeath the six spots to their offspring. Alex determines the location for the yearly sacrificial rite and convinces the runaways that the rite would be best place to launch an assault. Chase is critically injured while saving Nico from a surprise attack at the sacrificial site and loans Alex his x-ray goggles and Fistigons prior to the final fight. When Gert is injured during the fight, she temporarily bequeaths control of Old Lace to Alex so the dinosaur can remain in the fight and when Nico is frozen solid by her own parents, Alex begins to use the Staff of One as well. When the fight is finally finished, only Alex and Karolina remain standing, at which point Alex knocks out Karolina and outs himself as a mole for his parents. He reveals that he'd known about the Pride for over a year and deciphered the Abstract previously. Alex also outs the Dean and Hayes couples' plot to kill the human members of the Pride and take the six seats in paradise for themselves and their respective daughters - Alex's master plan was to use his friends to take down the entire Pride and save his parents, thus securing three seats in paradise for himself and his parents after explaining the attempted non-human coup. He subsequently offers Nico and her parents the remaining three seats, but Nico refuses and Alex quickly loses control of the situation. When Molly comes to, she destroys the Gibborim's sacrifice and Alex willingly takes full responsibility when the Gibborim appear for it - they promptly incinerate him.
[edit] The Fall
Alex was the intended subject of two resurrection spells in the series's second volume. Nico tried to magically resurrect him with the Staff of One between Runaways vol. 1 #17 and Runaways vol. 2 #2; Nico revealed her attempt when asked why she could not resurrect Heroine. Alex's MMORPG friends also attempted a resurrection when they hacked Alex's online account and discovered the Pride. The new Pride's spell killed one of their number, but replaced him with a 1985 version of Geoffrey Wilder, Alex's soon-to-be father.
In Runaways vol. 2 #22, Molly began to hear a disembodied voice in her head telling her to go find and watch after Chase. She hears it again in Runaways vol. 2 #24 when it tells her how to repair Victor Mancha. Molly believes it is Gert's voice, but the end of Runaways vol. 2 #24 reveals it is Alex, speaking from a white void dimension he shares with the recently-deceased Gibborim. Alex informs the giants that they're trapped in some sort of limbo, and that he helped Molly in order to atone for past deeds and earn his way out of the dimension. When asked of the Pride's fate, Alex reveals that they were sent somewhere else, quoting the Pat Benatar song "Hell Is For Children".
[edit] Relationships
Alex distances himself emotionally from many of the runaways, even refusing to take a codename or bond with the rest of the team. Alex spends most of his time deciphering the Abstract, presumably plotting how he will carry out his plan to save his parents from the Dean and the Hayes couples. Since he expected that all the other runaways would die in a few months time, he limited his emotional connection to them and thus defined the few strong relationships he had through power demonstration and assertion of worth.
[edit] Nico Minoru
Alex did not think very highly of Nico in the years before the series beginning, but upon seeing Nico for the first time in her new goth wardrobe and contact lenses in Runaways vol. 1 #1, Alex immediately became attracted to her; Nico claims she was attracted to Alex later on because of their mutually stressful situation with the Pride. She kisses him for the first time during the runaways' attempted rescue of Molly Hayes in vol. 1 #5, but refuses to talk about it for fear of ruining the moment; it's revealed in vol. 2 #22 that Alex was Nico's first kiss. She kisses and expresses love for Alex after he saves her from the vampire Topher in Runaways vol. 1 #10 and it is generally accepted that Nico and Alex are a couple at this point. After he rescues Nico, Alex keeps her close, hoping to ultimately use her feelings for him as leverage in convincing her to take a seat in the Gibborim's paradise with him, his parents and her parents. However, despite her professed love for Alex, Nico chooses to side with the runaways after his betrayal, breaking Alex's heart. He loses control of the situation and the upper hand after Nico's refusal and dies shortly thereafter.
[edit] Geoffrey Wilder
Alex's relationship with his father is not particularly strained, but also not the closest of relationships. Alex's obsession with superheroes never boded well with Geoffrey, since Geoffrey was the head of all organized crime in Los Angeles. It's revealed in vol. 1 #17 that Alex was devoted to his family above all, outing himself as the Pride's mole, a role he undertook solely to show that he was willing to go to great lengths to keep his parents safe; in that case, it was an assassination plot by the Dean and Hayes families. Alex reiterates in vol. 2 #24 that he committed all of his evil actions in vol. 1 to gain his father's approval and love, two things Geoffrey never explicitly demonstrated to Alex during the series.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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