| Donald Pierce | |
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Donald Pierce, art by Andy Park |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Uncanny X-Men #132 (Apr 1980) |
| Created by | Chris Claremont John Byrne |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Donald Pierce |
| Team affiliations | Purifiers Reavers Hellfire Club |
| Notable aliases | White Bishop, White King, Cyclops |
| Abilities | Cyborg body, Superhuman strength and reflexes, Mechanical genius Able to create numerous types of energy |
Donald Pierce is a comic book supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe. The character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #132. He was created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Donald Pierce is a cyborg.
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Donald Pierce was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pierce first appeared as a high ranking member of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, where he held the position of White Bishop, during that organization's first direct encounter with the X-Men. During this conflict, Pierce battled Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus, alongside Mastermind and the Inner Circle. When Wolverine nearly severed his arm it was discovered that he was a cyborg, and he was then defeated by Colossus. The Hellfire Club inner circle was eventually defeated and Donald Pierce fled with Sebastian Shaw down a hidden corridor of their headquarters.[1] As it turned out, Pierce was a raving, anti-mutant bigot. That hatred motivated him to act independently to kill mutants, working with three cybernetically-enhanced mercenaries (Cole, Macon, and Reese) who had been critically wounded by Wolverine during that first Hellfire club skirmish. Pierce was the CEO and principal shareholder of Pierce-Consolidated Mining, and was operating out of a mining and laboratory complex in Cameron, Kentucky. Pierce and the cyborg mercenaries kidnapped Professor Xavier and Tessa in a revenge plot against the Hellfire Club and X-Men, but were defeated by the New Mutants. Pierce was returned by Tessa to the Hellfire Club, and expelled from the Inner Circle.[2]
Later, he resurfaced as a professional criminal and terrorist with Lady Deathstrike and Cole, Macon, and Reese. All five characters were consumed by their desire for revenge against the X-Men and Wolverine in particular. To that end Pierce created an army of cyborgs out of low-life thugs and a few mercenaries. He named his army "The Reavers".
After rescuing the kidnapped banker Tyger Tiger from the Reavers, the X-Men expelled the cyborgs from their Australian outback headquarters, and appropriated the base for themselves (although Pierce was not present during this encounter, and had not yet been revealed as the Reavers' creator).[3] The surviving Reavers set out to defeat the X-Men, mounting a return to their old headquarters, this time with Pierce and Deathstrike, along with Cole, Macon, and Reese present, but after the X-Men had escaped through the Siege Perilous, they managed to capture only Wolverine, whom they tortured and crucified. Wolverine subsequently escaped with Jubilee, and Pierce attempted to track them.[4] Assuming they fled to Muir Island, Pierce and the Reavers attacked Muir Island, and battled Moira MacTaggart's "Muir Island X-Men" and Freedom Force.[5] With the Reavers, he also attacked a Frost Technologies plant in California.[6] At one point Pierce created two super intelligent sentient androids (Elsie-Dee and Albert), which he sent to kill Wolverine, but they developed ethics and turned on Pierce and abandoned the Reavers.[7]
A few years later a member of the Upstarts, Trevor Fitzroy, sent reprogrammed Sentinels to destroy the Reavers, as they were a threat to mutants and Pierce (as the former White King) was worth a lot of "points" in the deadly game the Upstarts played. Only Lady Deathstrike and Cylla escaped and it appeared that Pierce had been destroyed. Pierce attempted to escape to the Hellfire Club Mansion in New York City, but the Sentinels followed him there and electrocuted him. The other Reavers were completely annihilated.[8] Despite his seeming demise, he later resurfaced and troubled the X-Men once more. He started an anti-mutant hate group and enlisted several members. He revealed a plot to take militant terrorist actions against mutants and was thwarted by the X-Men. He was beaten by Wolverine in hand-to-hand combat even though he is several times stronger than Logan. It was revealed that very little (if any) of Pierce's human tissue remains, which explains how he was able to survive the massacre in Australia with only his head and portions of his upper torso intact.[9]
Pierce next tried to take over Sebastian Shaw's new Hellfire Club, launching an attack and slashing Shaw's chest. Though Shaw was left critically injured and later needed to be hospitalized, he was able to punch off Pierce's head.[10] Pierce appears to have survived though, as he would later appear in the third issue of the second X-Force series, having been forcibly recruited into the ranks of the Purifiers and infected with the Technarch transmode virus.[11] Being under the control of the mutant-hunting robot Bastion, he shows his mutant target, the newly formed Young X-Men.[12]
He appeared in a nightmare of the precognitive mutant, Blindfold, battling a not yet formed team of X-Men and killing one of their number.[13] It would later be revealed that Pierce himself recruited this team using an image inducer to pose as the leader of the X-Men, Cyclops. His reasons for recruiting these mutants as "X-Men" are not entirely clear, however, it appears that his primary focus is to eliminate the current Lord Imperial of the Hellfire Club, Roberto da Costa, and his former New Mutants allies. He also hired Ink to deliver Dani and Blindfold to him, misleading him. Following the confrontation with the Young X-Men, his face is scoured by Dust.[14]
With the synthetic skin on his face restored, he is kept captive by the Young X-Men. Ink's presence on the team is debated due to his connections with Pierce, though Cannonball expresses sympathy for Ink as he himself was originally lead astray by Pierce when he was a teenager.[15] Ink is allowed to stay on the team and despite contention from Rockslide, later apologizes to Blindfold for working for Pierce, who remains in X-Men captivity. Pierce and Dust have frequent conversations while he is imprisoned, despite his vocal hatred of mutants and derogatory remarks toward her faith in Islam, noting that his attitude reminds her of home. While they talk, Dust admits to Pierce that she is dying, as he is "the only one who won't care" and he agrees to share with her the secret information he has about her teammates. He tells her that Ink is the mystery "non-mutant" among them, which is later discovered by the rest of the team.[16] Also, he subtly tells her that three of her friends will die soon, referring to Boom Boom, Hellion and Surge, who were captured by the Sapien League and injected with a strain of the Legacy Virus.[17]
It was eventually revealed that Pierce only was captured to act as Bastion's mole inside the X-Men's headquarters, all the while building several structures that surround Utopia.[18]
Later after receiving the green light from Bastion to proceed with their plan, Pierce provokes an explosion that decimates all the X-Men's jets and the Blackbirds. Pierce stands amid the debris, and muses to the X-Men that he is sorry that he will not live to witness the decimation of the mutant race. Pierce was perfectly right as Cyclops quickly eliminates him with an optic blast, and alerts the X-Men to expect an attack.[19]
Donald Pierce is a cyborg originally with four artificial limbs, providing him with superhuman strength. His reflexes and agility are also inhumanly fast. These attributes are derived from his artificial body. His body has great resistance to damage and even if it is destroyed, as long as his head is intact he will probably survive. He had the ability to generate a shocking electrical current through his cyborg limbs or to hurl electrical force over short distances. He also had the ability to turn psionic assaults against the attacker to a limited degree. There is now nothing left of his original human body except the head, and how much of the head is even original is unknown. It is unknown if he still has his original brain or if he uploaded his memories, intelligence, and thought engrams into a cyborg computer brain. As a member of the Reavers, he wore body armor.
Aside from his physical advantages, Donald Pierce is a genius in robotics, cybernetics, and electronics. In these fields he has developed technology that exceeds that of conventional science by approximately two centuries. He also has vast financial resources (a prerequisite for membership in the Hellfire Club). He is a college graduate in geological engineering and business administration, and is an accomplished strategist and business administrator. He is a fair hand-to-hand combatant, but relied on his cyborg strength.
In the Age of Apocalypse, Pierce was the leader of the Reavers, a band of human assassins enhanced by Apocalypse's techno-organic virus. Thanks to the virus, Pierce and his band of assassins become cyborgs with regenerative abilities and the power to assimilate both organic and non-organic material to mutate themselfs. Pierce infiltrated the territory of the Human High Council in an attempt to destroy the Council fleet and later attempted to kill Gateway, an ally of the HHC. After the fleet was assembled for an attack on Apocalypse's empire, Pierce infected Carol Danvers with the remains of the Reaver Vultura to aid him in the destruction of the fleet. During his attack he also used Brian Braddock, who was under Apocalypse's mind control, to kill Emma Frost, though he resisted Pierce's orders, for which Pierce killed him. In the end, Pierce was destroyed by Weapon X.[20]
Pierce was however rebuilt by a human team known only as X-Terminators.[21]
In the House of M, Donald Pierce was a member of the Human Liberation Front, one of the many human resistance groups labeled as terrorists by the House of M. Alongside Seiji Ashida, the father of Surge, he was part of the HLF's base in Tokyo, which had targeted Project Genesis, a plan of Emperor Sunfire to forcefully mutate baseline humans.
Donald Pierce has not appeared in the Ultimate Marvel Universe yet; however, fans have noted the numerous similarities between Pierce and Ultimate Deadpool. In this incarnation, Deadpool is a mutant-hating cyborg who leads the Reavers, kidnapping Spider-Man and the X-Men to hunt for sport on Krakoa Island.[22]
Pierce’s name and appearance were initially modeled by John Byrne upon Donald Sutherland. The last name comes from Sutherland's character from the 1970 movie M*A*S*H, Hawkeye Pierce.[23]