There are many villains in the Marvel Universe with odd backgrounds, and one such background is that of a holy priest who has since become an assassin. When an incident flipped his life upside down, this assassin, nicknamed as “Bushwacker,” was leading a devout life in the church.
After that, Bushwacker turned into a mercenary who killed mutants for cash and mostly engaged in combat with heroes like Daredevil and Wolverine. This 1987 creation of Ann Nocenti and Rick Leonardi was a mercenary with the peculiar ability to transform various portions of his body into weapons. We will look into Bushwacker’s history today and fill you in on every detail of this formerly pious individual who turned to crime.
How does a Catholic priest become an assassin?
When numerous young lads in his parish died from drug-related causes, Carl Burbank started getting involved in criminal activity. He was a former Catholic priest who joined the C.I.A. to learn more about the mystery surrounding these fatalities and even abrogated his vows while serving the agency.
There was no going back for Burbank once it had allied with the police forces. He soon adopted the alias “Bushwacker” when employed by the C.I.A. In order to increase his abilities, the agency also gave him a bionic arm, and Bushwacker started out as an assassin. After some time at work, he turned rogue and made the decision to cut all links with the C.I.A. and become a freelance assassin.
When there was a lot of prejudice against mutants, Bushwacker used this ‘mutant hysteria’ as a way of earning quite a sum of money from people who wanted to kill the mutants. Bushwacker began hunting mutants and mass-killing them in order to make money, and he finally caught the eyes of the Wolverine as well as Daredevil.
Wolverine set out to find Bushwacker, while the assassin’s wife also sought the help of the lawyer ‘Matt Murdock,’ also known as Daredevil. Bushwacker’s wife believed that her husband had gone rogue and that he needed medical intervention to treat his insanity.
Daredevil then located Bushwacker, who had been fighting Wolverine at the time. The two were fighting each other quite aggressively, and the fight would have ended in death if Daredevil had not intervened at the last minute. However, Daredevil’s appearance gave Bushwacker a chance to flee, and he managed to escape the situation. Both the heroes later found Bushwacker, and they roughed him up pretty badly. He ended up with many scars on the right side of his face, and the two heroes even took Bushwacker to the police.
Bushwacker was later released from prison and joined hands with many of Daredevil’s enemies, including ‘Typhoid Mary.’ They made a plan to defeat Daredevil and later parted ways after Mary took it upon her to take care of Daredevil’s body. Later, Bushwacker was approached by the drug lord ‘Nick Lambert’ to track down a reporter named ‘Ben Urich.’
Ben had gotten some inside information regarding Lambert’s business from a mole in his gang, and Bushwacker did his job and tracked down the mole. He murdered the mole and later came across Urich, who had some incriminating pictures of Lambert being involved in drug activities.
Bushwacker realized that Nick Lambert was involved in the drug-related deaths of the young parishioners in his church, and he refused to work for the drug lord anymore. Bushwacker changed sides and helped Urich bring Lambert to justice, and the drug lord was then summoned to court. However, Lambert was soon released due to a lack of evidence. Bushwacker finally took matters into his own hands and brutally murdered Nick Lambert on his own.
Ever since, Bushwacker worked as a freelance assassin with various crime lords, which often caused some run-ins with superheroes. He fought Daredevil in many instances, and he was once even imprisoned by S.H.I.E.L.D. Bushwalker also had run-ins with the Avengers; on one mission, he was hired to monitor and kill the Hulk. In one such encounter with the Hulk, Bushwacker was critically injured and even killed at the hands of Bruce Banner. However, for unknown reasons, Bushwacker was brought back to life, and his character then returned from the dead without any scars from his previous life.
The first comic book appearance explored
Bushwacker made his first comic book appearance in Daredevil comics #248 in the year 1987. This issue titled ‘A Cage in Search of a Bird’ marked Bushwacker’s first encounter with the Daredevil as well as Wolverine.
The comic begins with former lawyer Matt Murdock, dressed up as Daredevil, as he plays with some kids known as the Fatboys. He later pays a visit to his partner ‘Karen Page,’ and she tries to get Murdock back in his office. Karen has rented a new office space, and she is trying to recruit Matt to at least work there as an informal consultant.
Matt retaliates by saying that he hasn’t felt this free since being disbarred and does not intend to return to the office. Just then, Karen receives a call for help from some worried tenants who their landlord is kicking out over rent rates. Matt overhears their conversation and then declares that he does not wish to help in this case. Karen tries to convince him and tells him that he has a duty to protect these people not as Daredevil but as Matt Murdock, attorney at law. Matt finally leaves the office, but he later decides to visit the tenant’s house anyway.
He appears at the scene in his Daredevil costume but soon realizes that there is nothing he can do for the poor tenant. The landlord seems well within his rights to kick him out, and the Daredevil backs away. He later walks across a bridge in New Jersey when he sees a young boy playing with a toy boat. He senses that the child’s heart is beating too fast, and he decides to check up on the kid.
The boy tells him that he made the boat himself, but it wouldn’t float in the water. Just then, the boat starts floating, and the boy steps into the dirty water to retrieve the boat. Matt then realizes that the water has a strange chemical smell and that it seems to be infected with toxic chemicals. The child’s eyes soon start burning due to exposure to contaminated water, and Matt rushes to rescue him from the water.
The toxic water is blinding the child, and Matt refuses to let this happen to the kid since he himself lost his eyesight due to radioactive waste. Matt rushes the child to the hospital and later investigates the cause of these toxic chemicals in the water bodies. Matt traces these toxins to a plant called ‘Kelco’ whose faulty chemical systems are polluting the waters. Matt switches to his Daredevil persona and breaks into the office to steal their official files.
He realizes that in order to bring this company to justice, he needs to return to his law practice. Just then, the Kelco office’s security system detects a breach and activates robots that try to spray tear gas at the Daredevil. However, this gas does not affect him since he is already blind, and Daredevil soon defeats these robots.
The next day, he visits the police station as a witness for the young boy who was blinded by the chemicals. However, the police refuse to accept his testimony since he is unable to read some official documents, and they realize that he is blind. Matt cannot risk blowing his cover and declaring his secret identity as the Daredevil, and the young boy begs Matt for some help.
In a different part of the city, Bushwacker visits a young girl in her home and prepares to kill her. He transforms his right hand into a gun and thinks about seeing the look on her face when she knows that these are her last moments. As the young girl is taken aback to see a strange man with a hand made of a gun, Bushwacker takes his chance and shoots the girl. He seems to be making money off killing young mutants but is not very satisfied with the nature of his job. Bushwacker expresses that his killings end way too soon, and they leave him emptier than ever.
He leaves the room while thinking about having stayed as a priest but soon dismisses the idea since killing mutants is a better-paying job. Later in the day, Bushwacker visits his wife, who is upset over him for not staying at home enough. She tells him that she is worried about him and even confronts him about some bullets that she found under their bed. Bushwacker grabs those bullets from her and tells her to mind her own business.
In the meantime, Wolverine’s sense of smell leads him to the murdered girl’s apartment. He is furious over the sheer number of mutants that Bushwacker is killing, and he expresses a desire to slice him to shreds. Since Wolverine himself is a mutant, he seems very disturbed over the murders of his kind, and he swears to find Bushwacker and kill him.
Later that night, Matt Murdock goes through some paperwork and finally figures out a way to hold the Kelco company accountable for its actions. He is pretty confident that he could have put the company’s owners behind bars if he was still a lawyer, but now he has two different personas that need to work together.
Matt also picks up some real estate law readings and finally figures out a way to protect the tenants from being kicked out. The next day, he visits the office that Karen had rented out for them and starts working as an informal consultant. Though he cannot defend anybody’s case in court, Matt Murdock walks them through the procedures and offers them guidance every step of the way.
One of his clients turns out to be Bushwacker’s wife, who begs Matt Murdock to help her husband. Matt asks her to sit down, and she tells him that her husband seems to have gone crazy. She also tells him that a strange man, who we know as Wolverine, visited her house while tracking her husband and said that he would kill him. She also tells Matt all about the bullets she found under their bed and asks Matt for help in navigating such a situation. Matt Murdock asks her to calm down and promises to do his best in helping her husband and making sure that nobody hurts him.
What makes him so powerful?
Carl Burbank’s body was cybernetically enhanced by the C.I.A. when he joined the agency as ‘Bushwacker,’ making him a pretty powerful foe. His cybernetic enhancements gave him numerous physical abilities that were beyond the functions of the human body. Some of these powers included superhuman strength and durability, which immensely helped him while fighting any opponents.
Bushwacker’s bodily limbs were replaced with very advanced cybernetic components, which resulted in him gaining superhuman strength. His skin was also replaced with an artificial layer of plastic skin that was quite durable. This layer of skin was much more resistant to injuries than the human body, and he could not be easily injured in combat.
Additionally, his mutation gave him a regenerative healing factor, and he could quickly recover from any injuries within no time. His bodily components were replaced with a polymorphic elastoid substance that healed even the most severe wounds in no time.
Bushwacker’s most special powers lay in his ability to transform his body parts into weapons. His skin was made of malleable plastic materials that could take the form of a wide range of shapes. His cybernetic limbs consisted of a variety of firearms and weapons, and by changing his bodily shape, he could fire any desired weapons of his choice with his hands.
Though both his hands can be transformed into weapons, he mostly prefers to use his right hand if the circumstances are not too serious. His arms usually remain in an ‘arm mode,’ wherein they retain qualities of a functional human arm. However, his arms can also transform into a ‘pistol mode’ and a ‘machine gun’ mode. In the pistol mode, Bushwacker’s fingers become hollow, and they start firing small-caliber handgun rounds.
In the machine gun mode, Bushwacker’s entire forearm transforms into an automatic machine gun that comes with both a handgrip and a stock for support. In this mode, his hand can fire armor-piercing bullets through four different barrels at the same time. Bushwacker’s body also stores ammunition and later ejects the casings of the bullets while the machine-gun mode is activated.
While working for the C.I.A., Bushwacker was highly trained in combat, among other skills, and he was especially skilled in assassinations and espionage.
Conclusion
To sum it up, Bushwacker is a pretty powerful villain who has been in some exciting story arcs. He has very interesting origins, and there is much room for this character to be explored even further. Hopefully, Bushwacker’s character might even be brought in for a cameo in any upcoming movies and series, and we look forward to this happening someday!