MAVERICK: Page 4 of 4

BIOGRAPHY - Page 4

North remained active as a mercenary, even using the Agent Zero identity when he successfully collected a bounty put on the head of Victor von Doom by Interpol after Doom was framed for a terrorist attack. [Doctor Doom #1-2] However, he returned to the Maverick identity when he founded the Mercs. These mercenaries were brothers-in-arms, soldiers from around the world who discharged from their respective armies due to a lack of action. They became independent contractors, owing loyalty to no one except the almighty dollar and the terms of their current contract. In his mind, Maverick wanted to recreate Team X, coloring his own recollection of that time as his glory days.

When Krakoa was founded, all Decimated mutants were welcome to emigrate and seek the Crucible to restore their powers, including Maverick. Instead, North saw the new nation’s wealth and political enemies as an opportunity for fat paychecks for the Mercs. His team worked for groups like Xeno and the Flower Cartel, conducting raids on Krakoan pharmaceutical plants for data and materials. [X-Force (6th series) #4-5] Maverick himself didn’t come to Krakoa’s attention until a job for Legacy House. The blackest of black-market auctioneers, Legacy would sell anything (or anyone) for the right price. They contracted the Mercs for recovering mutant memorabilia for resale. When Maverick brought in an old memory suppression machine from a Team X black site, though, Legacy got greedy and used it on him.

Around the same time, X-Force alerted Wolverine about the Mercs’ break-in at the old Team X site, and Logan reasoned out that North was responsible. After interrogating some of the Mercs for confirmation, Wolverine infiltrated a Legacy House auction, where they put the mind-controlled Maverick up for sale to the highest bidder. Logan was spotted, but he used old Team X-era conditioning triggers to break through Maverick’s haze and help restore his mind. Logan and North escaped from Legacy and reconnected with a waiting Mercs team. Maverick convinced Wolverine to join them on a job raiding a Legacy storage site for revenge and profit. Logan, in turn, persuaded North to visit Krakoa with him for the first time. North scoffed at the idea of a peaceful Shangri-La for guys like him and Logan and would rather be his own boss while performing wetwork for the highest bidder than join some mutant “cause.” Logan and North parted knowing they were comrades, brothers and likely future opponents. [Wolverine (7th series) #8-10]

Once they had been approved for access, even depowered mutants like Maverick could use the Krakoan gates whenever they wanted. He found his way into Forge’s armory and stole a biotech surveillance device. Planted at Krakoa’s Green Lagoon, the “bug” picked up dozens of conversations of potentially interesting foreign intelligence. Maverick made a deal with Delores Ramirez of the CIA’s X-Desk to pass on a bug once a week. However, he also wound up in bed with his old employer and captor, the Legacy House. Maverick apparently lied to Legacy’s Merchant that Wolverine was solely responsible for raiding their black site, but the Merchant still wanted compensation. To settle their ledger, Maverick began selling intel to both parties at once.

When Logan spotted North at the Green Lagoon, he offered him a paid mission with X-Force. They sabotaged a ship planning to dump defoliant into Krakoa’s path. Wolverine’s CIA contact Jeff Bannister happened to spot Ramirez at Maverick’s drop point and intercepted the biotech “bug.” Either the Legacy House or the Mercs shot up Bannister’s CIA office in an attempt to retrieve the bug, putting him on the run with his daughter. Logan came to the rescue and stopped the Mercs from killing the Bannisters to retake the bug. Logan realized Maverick couldn’t be trusted on Krakoa anymore, so he cut off his access to the gates. Maverick finally recovered the bug when Bannister set up a meeting with Ramirez, cutting ties with her in the hopes of a bigger payday from Legacy House. Logan and Forge anticipated this, however, and they emptied the drive before sending Bannister back out into the field. Maverick ended up empty-handed and with a very unhappy customer when he met with Legacy House. [Wolverine (7th series) #17-18]

As a mercenary, Maverick was a consummate opportunist. At the Moth in Las Vegas, he visited the Weasel to get hooked up with weapons and tech. Weasel’s frenemy Deadpool stopped by and blabbed about a big score he was going to steal from the CIA, so Weasel recruited Maverick to team up and steal the prize from Deadpool, splitting the profit. They rigged Deadpool’s teleporter to bring him back to Weasel’s workshop inside an Adamantium cage, with Wolverine and the prize in tow. However, the nascent AI in the briefcase proved capable of defending itself and it ultimately escaped from North, Logan, Wade and Weasel. [Wolverine (7th series) #21-22]

Beast finally recognized that the best way to keep Maverick and the Mercs out of Krakoan business was to put them on the payroll. His increasingly shady activities needed an off-site headquarters, and so McCoy diverted funds to engineer a shadow prison moon to serve several interests. Manned by the Mercs, it kept them paid, happy and far from Krakoa’s other interests. It also allowed Beast to imprison various offenders without alerting the Quiet Council or the rest of X-Force. He could then experiment on them to learn the extent of Krakoan biotech resources. Maverick and the Mercs collected targets and deposited them on the moon’s penal colony without adherence to Krakoa’s laws, oversight or decency. Solem Silver-Skin of Arakko infiltrated the shadow prison and freed his mentor and sometime ally, Sevyr Blackmoore. Together, they orchestrated a prison break that overwhelmed the Mercs. Maverick extracted his surviving men and left Beast to face his victims. McCoy tried to barter for triple his fee over a comm link, but Maverick was comfortable that Beast deserved to be left behind, no matter the price. [X-Force (6th series) #34-35]

His contract with Beast reopened Maverick’s access to Krakoa’s gates, allowing him to operate the portals without showing up on Sage’s transit network. He exploited that advantage to the fullest for the Mercs. They joined the black market of stealing and redistributing Krakoan drugs, with the Mercs’ entire submarine mobile base able to use underwater gates for easy and discreet movement around the world. Maverick focused on Great Britain and other countries that publicly rejected Krakoa’s sovereignty as clients to move his product. They might stand on principle in the public eye, but there was a profit to be made for drug trafficking behind the scenes.

However, Beast also went completely ‘round the bend, abandoning the Quiet Council and X-Force to independently pursue his own vision of Krakoa’s defense. He engineered a Krakoan kaiju as a mobile base of his own, using clones of himself for tactical analysis and clones of Wolverine as a cognitively-neutered savage arsenal. Beast considered the Mercs a potential threat (not to mention his need for revenge) and he attacked their submarine. All the Mercs onboard were killed, and Maverick barely escaped with one of the Wolverine clones as a hostage. When Beast’s forces attempted to recover their missing Weapon of X, Maverick triggered the self-destruct mechanism in the fallen submarine, killing one of the Beasts and a number of Wolverine clones.

At his safehouse in Greenland, Maverick ran into the real Wolverine. Beast tried out the savage regression and control collar protocol on the actual Logan before moving on to clones, and Wolverine was aggressively seeking revenge. North and Logan hunted down Beast’s mobile base, but Jeff Bannister and the CIA also came after Beast Prime. McCoy managed to escape with Bannister as a hostage, limiting what Logan could do to him. However, Maverick did recognize that his captive Wolverine clone was slowly getting smarter. It seemed the lobotomy process McCoy used to control his clones would eventually be overcome by their inherent healing factor. When Beast reached out to exchange Bannister for his captive “Weapons of X,” North and Logan exploited this discovery. At the meeting, Maverick shot off the clones’ control collars, correctly deducing they would choose to attack Beast for mistreating them. Bannister was saved and Beast lost the majority of his resources before escaping with his life. [Wolverine (7th series) #32-35]

Maverick and the Mercs’ next job came just before the Lord of the Vampires called Varnae ushered in an eternal night on Earth. Alyssa of the Siren Sect believed a war for supremacy would follow after Varnae conquered the humans, so she wanted to recruit mercenaries in advance. Alyssa seduced Maverick, promising to make him her king, and turned him and his men into nightwalkers. Maverick told his new lover he knew of an unconquerable warrior who would serve her well in the battles to come. North arranged for a meat grinder of killers and assassins to attack Logan, showing off Wolverine’s prowess to his new queen.

Maverick used drones and pirate comms to keep track of Logan during this gauntlet, offering to make him a willing partner for the vampire nation. He expected Logan to decline, so Alyssa’s allies in the Claw Sect and Aquos Sect prepared their base on Santa Cruz Island for Wolverine to hunt them down. Maverick had promised Alyssa a general, but even he was surprised when Wolverine’s healing factor failed to counter a vampire’s bite, turning him temporarily. Alyssa no longer saw a general but a better king, and compelled Wolverine to try to kill Maverick for her, seeing which man was truly better. North was genuinely surprised that Alyssa turned on him, but he held his own until Logan’s mind cleared of Alyssa’s lies and his system purged the vampire toxin. Wolverine’s secret ally Nightguard staked Alyssa, ending her line and changing Maverick back into a human as a consequence. Logan accepted North hadn’t been acting on his own accord, and they parted without any further bad blood. [Wolverine: Blood Hunt #1-4]

With the submarine attack and the thresher of Wolverine’s gauntlet, the brothers-in-arms who served as Maverick’s Mercs lost significant numbers. He was last seen working as a solo operative once more. Maverick is deliberately concealing the fact that his mutant powers remain Decimated, but for how long this will be effective is unknown. [Mystique (2nd series) #1]