Bullseye (comics)

Template:Superherobox Bullseye is a fictional character, a supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe who is primarily an enemy of Daredevil. He was created by Marv Wolfman and Bob Brown in Daredevil volume 1 #131 (March 1976).

Bullseye is a psychotic assassin with the ability to use any object, frequently an ordinary playing card, and throw or shoot it with lethal accuracy. However, he finds Daredevil a frustrating target since the superhero's senses allow him sufficient time and information to determine where Bullseye is aiming his attacks and when he is going to launch them, thus allowing him to evade or block the attack most of the time.

Bullseye's real name and origins are unknown. He has used the alias "Benjamin Poindexter" on several occasions; in the Ultimate Marvel Universe, this is his real name. Daredevil volume 2 #49 (September 2003) revealed Bullseye's first name to be Lester. The miniseries Bullseye: Greatest Hits revealed much of the character's history prior to his first appearance, only to reveal some or all of these revelations to be fabrications created by Bullseye.

If Bullseye: Greatest Hits is to be believed, Bullseye grew up in The Bronx, where he lived with his brother and his abusive father. The brothers' main form of recreation was playing with rifles, leading Leonard to become an expert shot. When he was ten years old, one of the brothers (probably Leonard) started a fire in their home in an unsuccessful attempting to kill their father. Leonard was placed in a foster home, and became a baseball player. He found validation in the game, even becoming a professional pitcher, until he became bored in the middle of a game and announced his resignation to his coach. When the opposing team's catcher mocked him, Leonard threw the ball at his head and killed him. He was quickly recruited by the National Security Agency as an assassin, and was assigned to an operation involving drug smugglers in Latin America. The Punisher came upon the scene, and killed all present save for Leonard. During their fight, Leonard used some blood-reddened mud to paint a bullseye on his forehead, mocking the Punisher's inability to hit him. The fight concluded when government agents arrived and the Punisher fled. Soon, Leonard was assigned to infiltrate the Kingpin's criminal empire. He obtained a costume, split from the NSA, and became one of the most dangerous hitmen in the world.

In his earliest appearances, Bullseye was one of the more prominent enemies of Daredevil. However, he was quickly established as insane. His sanity was not improved when a brain tumor caused him to hallucinate, particularly when he began hallucinating that everyone he met was Daredevil. As Daredevil was his arch-enemy, he began killing random people under the belief that he was killing his nemesis. Although the tumor was removed and the delusions ended, his sanity was still tenuous at best.

Although the character was created by Marv Wolfman, his most famous appearances are in the stories created by Frank Miller, the most notorious of which follows: Bullseye was humiliated when Daredevil saved his life, pulling him out of the way of an oncoming subway train after he had been knocked unconscious. Vowing revenge, he escaped from prison, only to find that the Kingpin, his usual employer, had retained the services of a new assassin: Elektra, the former lover of Daredevil. In one of the more famous deaths in comics history, the two villains battled it out, and Bullseye impaled Elektra on her own sai, killing her.

Soon after, Daredevil, angry over the murder of his one-time lover, ambushed Bullseye. The battle ended up with pair balanced on a telephone wire, from which Bullseye fell and was caught by his opponent. Bullseye screamed that he wasn't going to let the hero save him again, and tried to stab his rescuer, whereupon Daredevil simply dropped him. The multi-story fall broke Bullseye's back, paralyzing him. His career seemed over with his maimed body, but then he was given an adamantium spinal column which restored his mobility.

Years later, Bullseye would be hired by the illusionist Mysterio to attack and confuse Daredevil. In the course of their battle, he killed Daredevil's longtime love interest, Karen Page, with one of Daredevil's own billy clubs. During the next battle between Daredevil and Bullseye, the assassin collapsed in the middle of a fight, claiming that he had a brain tumor. He was brought to a maximum security prison, where he recounted his (at least partially falsified) origins to a federal agent who had been sent to interrogate him over the location of some radioactive materials that he had stolen prior to his incarceration. He manipulated another agent into attacking him until one of his teeth was knocked out. He used the tooth as a projectile weapon, killing the agent and working his way to the prison's infirmary, where he encountered and killed his father.

Actor Colin Farrell portrayed him in the Daredevil movie adaptation. In this version, the traditional costume was dropped in favor of the character wearing street clothes and sporting a bullseye shaped scar carved into his forehead. Shortly prior to the film's release, the comic book version of Bullseye adopted a near-identical appearance, although given the poor reception of the film by both critics and comic book fans, this new look may not last for long.