Real
Name: Peter Paul Wisdom
Pete Wisdom
Real
Name: Peter Paul Wisdom
Identity/Class: Human mutant
Occupation: Spy
Affiliations: Excalibur; X-Force;
Shadowcat;
formerly Black Air
Enemies: Black Air, Scratch
Known Relatives: Romany Wisdom (sister, apparently deceased), Harold Wisdom (father), Tink (wife)
Aliases: Winston, Mr. W
Base of Operations: U.K.
First Appearance: Excalibur #86 (Marvel Comics)
Powers/Abilities: Pete Wisdom can generate "hot knives", semi-solid energy projections, from the tips of his fingers. He can use these as slashing weapons, but more commonly fires them off as deadly, high velocity, projectiles. Pete has excellent control of the power level of his knives, and can make them weak enough to purely stun, or (Pete claims) hotter than the heart of the sun.
History:
It's not clear how the chain-smoking, heavy-drinking Pete Wisdom became a
black ops agent of Black Air, Britain's nastiest covert agency. By the time
Pete came into the public eye, he had been a hardened agent for several years,
but he had finally sickened of the life and the killing that was part and
parcel of it. His bosses teamed him with the superhero team Excalibur on
a mission to Genosha. He provided intelligence based on previous dealings
with that nation, in return for being promised by his superiors that he would
be allowed to retire afterwards. However Black Air was being less than honest
with any of them, and Pete became allied with and then a member of Excalibur,
as his newfound allies took on his former employers. Early on during this
association he and the youthful mutant Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) became aware
of a strong attraction between them, and soon became lovers, much to the
consternation of their team-mates. While most of the men in Excalibur saw
fit to warn the hard-bitten older man to not hurt the (comparitively more)
innocent teenager, two of the men in Kitty's life took a harder view: her
ex-boyfriend, Colossus, lost his temper and nearly killed Pete, putting him
into a wheelchair for a few months; and her pet, an extra-terrestrial dragon
called Lockheed, demonstrated he was far more sentient than previously believed,
when he revealed to Pete (and Pete alone) that he could talk, when he promised
to kill Pete, destroy his clothes and hide his cigs.
Finally Kitty broke off their relationship, and Pete left Excalibur rather than be constantly reminded of the woman he loved, who had taught him to enjoy life again. He surfaced later to help lead and train X-Force during one of their times of crisis. He was sporting an eye-patch over his left eye, claiming he had lost it while trying to stop a rogue KGB cell from employing a germ weapon. He worked with them for a few months, before X-Force returned from a mission to discover what appeared to be his brutally murdered body. However it turned out that Pete had faked both the loss of his eye ("This is the eyepatch of love. Best thing I ever invested in. Gives me the mutant power of being horribly sexy.") and his death.
After the
Decimation event, where most of Earth's mutants were depowered, Peter worked
to convince Captain Britain to reform Excalibur, and joined the short-lived
new team. He also became the new head of MI-13, stopping an extra-dimensional
Martian invasion. When the Skrulls launched an invasion of Earth, Peter was
one of the U.K.'s leading superhuman defenders, and repelled the Skrulls
from Great Britain at the price of unleashing a horde of supernatural evil
on the country instead.
Comments: Created by Warren Ellis.
CLARIFICATIONS: None.
Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.
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