The mutant Black Swan is raised in the Bavarian Alps as an assassin, his aristocratic family’s profession for roughly 300 years. The Swan gains a reputation as a top gentleman assassin, and a snob intolerant of rudeness.
Hired alongside Taskmaster and Canadian mercenary Tyrell Farsa to take down revolutionaries in Zaire, the Swan takes care of his part of the assignment before returning to the drop point. Angered by Farsa soiling one of his silk handkerchiefs, the Swan uses his powers to damage Farsa’s mind, leaving him permanently unable to take care of himself.
Telepathic Hacker
The Black Swan possesses telepathy that he visualizes as akin to a hacker invading a computer, using it to alter a target’s perception of him, allowing him to “hide” in plain sight before killing. He could create psonic “viruses” in others that could delete memories, impair motor skills, and corrupt basic bodily functions, sometimes permanently. He could also “rewire” brains to cure mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
He can transfer and/or copy skills and powers to and from himself. With Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool’s healing powers enhancing his own abilities, the Swan can regenerate missing body parts, fully function with a hole in his spine, levitate, create bulletproof shields around himself with concentration, and cause aneurysms from hundreds of yards away.
The Swan has several silver-topped canes, including some sword canes, which he uses to incapacitate foes. He’s an expert marksman and swordsman, and can speak fluent English.
Personal Force and Foes
The Swan employs a staff that carries out his bidding. Offended by the mask-wearing buffoon Deadpool and taking his antics as an assassin as a personal affront, the Swan punishes the Merc with the Mouth by having his staff beat him to the point of death over and over again. The Swan also teams up with Nijo, AKA Agent X, to stop Deadpool from defiling his noble profession, though he ultimately betrays him.
An Impeccable Career
The Swan accepted a contract he intended to use as his “swan song” to cap his career: to assassinate the heads of the Four Winds. However, the hit was accidently interrupted by the mercenary Deadpool, who was publicly given credit for the kill. Desiring revenge for this, The Swan teamed with Nijo, brother of one killed in the hit, to destroy Deadpool’s reputation permanently. Tricking Deadpool into entering his German castle, the Swan implanted a psonic “virus” in his brain, causing Deadpool to allow himself to be beaten almost to death by the Swan before returning him to America with his memory of the last several hours wiped. Using Nijo to monitor Deadpool’s activities, the Swan was increasingly angered to learn that his mind virus was not destroying Deadpool’s career as quickly as he hoped. Relearning who had attacked him, a mentally deteriorating Deadpool confronted Nijo and the Black Swan in his castle, watching Swan kill Nijo during a confrontation before Deadpool used a bomb threat to force Swan to cure his schizophrenic assistant Erik Nicieza, AKA Ratbag. Swan fought Deadpool, ransacking his mind to gain the bomb’s deactivation codes. However, the Swan pushed his powers beyond their previous limit, enabling Deadpool to access his mind as easily as he accessed Deadpool’s, who then overpowered the Swan and threw him into a fireplace grill before the bomb went off, seemingly killing both men.
Surviving by instinctively copying Deadpool’s healing factor into himself, Black Swan soon realized his powers had also scrambled the abilities of himself, Deadpool, and the dead Nijo, merging them and his facial scarring into Nijo’s revived corpse and leaving Deadpool a seeming shell of his former self. Swan found himself unhappily burdened with Nijo’s strict sense of honor, while Nijo, taking the name Agent X/Alex Hayden, had Swan’s marksman skills, and violent intolerance for rudeness. Tracking Hayden to Los Angeles, the Swan arrived with Deadpool in tow, intending to switch everyone’s abilities back to their rightful owners. Linking all three minds together, the Swan restored everyone’s rightful abilities, but then absorbed everyone’s powers into himself, greatly increasing his own abilities. Drunk on his newfound power, the Swan briefly held his own against Agent X, Deadpool, Outlaw (Inez Temple), business associate Sandi Brandenberg, and Taskmaster, before they overwhelmed him. Agent X forced the wounded Swan to reabsorb his scarred face before the others shot him to death. Fearful that the Swan’s healing factor could kick in once more and resurrect him, the five had the Swan’s corpse stuffed, and then took it on vacation with them.
Though he was somehow revived and well and hired by mutant Garabed “Gareb” Bashur, AKA Black Box, to take out Deadpool. But in a turn of events, the Swan asked the crude mercenary to be his partner at a time when he could be killed. The Swan realized that the mercenary landscape had changed and markets were closed to him, but a partnership with Deadpool could work in his favor. But Deadpool vehemently refused and threatened him.
