Real Name: Dane Whitman

Class: weapon specialist

Occupation: scientist , adventurer

Affiliations: Avengers , former member of the Heroes for Hire ,. current leader of the the Knights of Wundagore

Scale of Operations: nationwide

Powers: Dane Whitman wears a mystical pendant given to him by Avalon's Lady of the Lake. When Dane touches the pendant and invokes the name of Avalon, he conjures up his armor, his sword, his shield and a magical winged horse, Strider. The armor and weapons are extremely lightweight but supernaturally durable. His Shield of Night not only protects him from most attacks but also absorbs the energy of the forces directed against it. He can then release that stored energy in the form of power blasts from his blade, the Sword of Light. His horse, Strider, can fly at great speeds and is even capable of travel underwater. While riding Strider, Dane is magically able to breathe regardless of his environment.

Dane's past weapons include the ebony blade, his power lance and his laser sword. The ebony blade, created by the wizard Merlin, is an indestructible, enchanted sword that can cut through any susbstance; it can also deflect, disrupt or penetrate energy fields, including mystical forces. The ebony blade was Dane's principal weapon for years, but he abandoned it since its cursed nature posed a variety of mental and physical dangers to its wielder. It has since been adopted by his former friend Sean Dolan, who has become the murderous Bloodwraith under the blade's influence.

Dane's original weapon was his power lance, a device adapted from the designs of his criminal uncle; it was a lance outfitted with a variety of hidden weapons, including heat beams, force beam projectors, gas emitters and bolas that could enwrap opponents. He has very seldom used the lance since adopting his various swords.

His laser sword, also known as his neural sword or photonic sword, is a hand-held device that generates a "blade" of light; this blade could be adjusted to various settings, including a penetrating laser that could cut through almost anything, and an immaterial energy column that could disrupt a victim's nervous system without doing physical damage.

Before acquiring Strider, Dane rode Aragorn, Valinor and an atomic steed. Aragorn is a horse whom Dane gave wings and the power of flight through genetic engineering techniques created by Dane's late uncle, the previous Black Knight. When Dane's first time trip to the era of the Crusades separated him from Aragorn, the horse was adopted by another adventurer, Brunnhilde the Valkyrie. Aragorn remains in Valkyrie's custody to this day, with Dane's blessing. During his time in the Twelfth Century, Dane adopted a mystical winged horse named Valinor. Unfortunately, Valinor was stolen away by Dane's former friend Sean Dolan, the Bloodwraith, and remains in Dolan's custody. For a time, Dane used an atomic steed, one of the mechanical flying vehicles manufactured and employed by the High Evolutionary's Knights of Wundagore. He has since abandoned it, though, and left it in storage at Avengers Mansion, where it was used by the second Swordsman.

History: A scientist of some repute, Whitman was accidentally responsible for bringing Magneto back to Earth through his scientific experiments during a time when the mutant villain was believed lost in space. However, Whitman knew himself to be a descendant of the medieval heroic Black Knight (Sir Percy of Scandia) and nephew of the modern-day criminal Black Knight (Nathan Garrett). Having inherited the paraphernalia of both men, Whitman decided to use his late uncle's high-tech weapons and his flying steed Aragorn to become a modern-day, heroic Black Knight in an effort to atone for the sins of his uncle. Whitman aided the Avengers against Magneto, who fled.

As the Black Knight, Whitman was contacted to join the Masters of Evil team by the robot Ultron, who was unaware of the villainous Knight's demise. Whitman agreed to join the team with the hopes of infiltrating their ranks, and he helped the Avengers defeat them. Whitman began working with the sorcerer Doctor Strange and soon established his reputation as a hero.

Shortly thereafter, Whitman was contacted and advised by the spirit of his ancestor Sir Percy of Scandia, the original Black Knight; and was awarded the mystical ebony blade by Sir Percy. He began using the weapon in lieu of his uncle's power lance.

Whitman became a frequent ally to the Avengers. After rescuing the team from the time-travelling villain Kang, Whitman was made a full member but he opted for reserve status since he resided in England at the time, having inherited his family's ancestral castle, Garrett Castle.

Whitman later fell under the spell of the wicked Enchantress, who turned him to stone after she no longer considered him useful. His spirit was somehow cast back to the time of the Crusades, where he inhabited the body of his ancestor, Eobar Garrington, the Twelfth Century Black Knight, and fought on behalf of King Richard. When Garrington's body finally died in battle years later, Dane's spirit returned to his present-day body, which was restored to its normal state by the wizard Amergin. During his time in the past, he gave his winged horse Aragorn to the hero Valkyrie, whose team, the Defenders, had aided Whitman in his twelfth century adventures. Upon returning to his rightful body, he found a new steed in the winged horse, Valinor.

Whitman soon rejoined the Avengers as a full-time member. However, over time Whitman began experiencing an increasing madness and bloodthirstiness. Doctor Strange revealed that the ebony blade had been cursed by its original owner, Sir Percy of Scandia, by spilling blood when he was in possession of the blade. Doctor Strange contacted and appealed to Sir Percy's spirit, allowing it to reside in the blade, and thereby removed the curse, warning Whitman not to inflict the sword with any curses of his own. During this time, Valinor had lost his wings and was retired. Ultimately, Whitman would leave the Avengers as a reserve member.

Nevertheless, Whitman soon took on full active membership again, during which time he began riding a mechanical "Atomic Steed" for his mount. He also developed a romantic crush on his fellow Avenger, the Wasp, but she didn't share Dane's feelings and he was soon forced to abandon his intentions. He did, however, became romantically interested in his admirer, the female Yellowjacket.

Sometime later, his personality seemed to grow more medieval and archaic. When the Avengers' associate, Marrina, underwent her own transformation into a huge savage sea creature resembling the mythical Leviathan, she began sinking several fleets of ships and ravaging the undersea world of Atlantis. The Avengers hunted her down, but ultimately it was her husband, the Avenger known as the Sub-Mariner, who took Whitman's ebony blade from him and dealt a mortal blow to Marrina. Whitman immediately felt the effects of the blood-curse on the blade, which took the effect of slowly transforming him into a living extension of his ebony blade. As such, he began to cut people and objects he touched and gradually found it harder to move.

Whitman was forced to leave the Avengers in the company of his teammate and Asgardian thunder god, Thor, who hoped to find a cure for Whitman's condition in the realm of Asgard. However, at the time Asgard became embroiled in a battle against the Egyptian death god Seth and his army. Ultimately, the Knight's cursed, blade-like body was used to kill Seth.

Thor then took Whitman's body back to Earth, stuck it in a time warp for awhile, and then later dropped him off to be helped by Doctor Strange. Whitman was restored to normal through the combined efforts of his friends Victoria Bentley, the caretaker of Garrett Castle, who purchased the Castle herself during Dane's years in the Crusades to prevent the British government from seizing the property for failure to pay taxes; Sean Dolan, a young Irish orphan to whom Dane became a guardian and mentor; and Doctor Strange, using the spirit of Sir Percy to inhabit Whitman's body for a while.

Dane returned to the Avengers, having abandoned his ebody blade in favor of a high-tech laser sword. More determined and driven than before, Whitman grew into one of the Avengers' most prominent members, even serving as unofficial field leader under the Black Widow. His drive in the Avengers led him to become more ruthless than before, even to the point of advocating the assassination of the alien Supreme Intelligence for its role in sparking war between the Kree and Shi'ar alien races. Also, Whitman began neglecting Valinor, his squire Dolan, and his benefactor Victoria Bentley.

Sean Dolan was later possessed by the blade and transformed into the demonic Bloodwraith, killing Victoria Bentley and stealing Valinor for himself. Unfortunately, Whitman and Bentley had just begun to entertain a potential romance before her death. Whitman defeated the Bloodwraith, but Dolan escaped, becoming one of Whitman's most bitter foes.

Whitman soon found himself in a love triangle involving himself and two of his teammates, the Inhuman, Crystal, and the Eternal, Sersi. Dane was in love with Crystal, the estranged wife of longtime Avengers member Quicksilver, but was also strongly attracted to the mentally unstable Sersi, who was madly in love with him and forced Whitman to mentally bond with her. When Quicksilver returned to the group and seemed prepared to reconcile with Crystal, Dane unselfishly renounced his feelings for her. About the same time, the Avengers were attacked by Whitman's counterpart from another dimension, the Proctor, who was determined to kill Sersi in revenge for what her counterpart had done to him, including the mental-bonding process. Whitman helped defeat the Proctor and resigned himself to accompany Sersi in her exile to another dimension as her growing mental instability made her too dangerous to remain on Earth.

During their adventures in other dimensions, Sersi regained her emotional stability and Dane spent some time with a super-team called Ultraforce, even becoming its leader. He and Sersi eventually decided to return to their own Earth, though, and managed to do so after an accidental side trip to the Crusades, during which Dane earned the friendship and enmity of Bennet du Paris, a power-mad knight who survived into modern times as the super-powerful mutant terrorist Exodus, leader of the Acolytes. On returning to present-day Earth, Dane and Sersi split up. The Avengers were temporarily disbanded at the time, so Dane found a new home and new employment at Oracle Incorporated, joining the company's new super-team, Heroes for Hire. At about the same time, Dane was contacted by the Lady of the Lake, who informed him that he was fated to be the champion of Avalon, the mystical Celtic realm Dane had been allied with during his time in the Twelfth Century. The Lady of the Lake gave Dane a new magical winged steed and mystical weapons to better battle evil in Avalon's name.

Dane continued to battle evil as a member of Heroes for Hire and as an inactive member of the Avengers, until Heroes for Hire’s disbanding. In one of the team’s final missions, they encountered on Mount Wundagore the humanoid animals created by the villain known as the High Evolutionary. The Black Knight elected to stay on Wundagore to lead these "New Men."

Dane later began to break away from the New Men on occasion, in order to join his fellow Avengers in various adventures. One such adventure brought the Black Knight to the country of Slorenia, where his former protégé Sean Dolan, now the villainous Bloodwraith, was ravaging the land. Whitman hoped to remain near Slorenia to finally defeat the Bloodwraith, but he rejoined the Avengers during their war against the Kang, who nearly succeeded in conquering Earth. Whitman parted company with the Avengers yet again after the battle with Kang was over, presumably returning to his detached service assignments.

Last Update: 9/15/01

Real Name: Nathan Garrett

Class: weapon specialist

Occupation: scientist , criminal

Affiliations: Masters of Evil

Scale of Operations: nationwide

Powers: As the Black Knight, Garrett wore a full suit of chain mail armor for protection and carried a hi-tech weapon in the form of a lance, which was capable of firing concussive blasts, lasers, and smoke grenades. He also rode a winged horse capable of flight.

History:British scientist Nathan Garrett discovered the tomb of the original Black Knight, Sir Percy, beneath his ancestral home called Garrett Castle. Garrett saw the Ebony Blade in a scabbard near the tomb, but being unworthy of wielding it, could not draw the sword. Garrett, inspired to become a new Black Knight nonetheless, used his scientific genius to mutate a horse ion a winged mount and created a lance-like weapon. Garrett used the identity of the Black Knight to commit crimes in order to finance his further scientific research. He was opposed on separate occasions by the scientific adventurer Henry Pym, in his early career as Giant-Man, and later, joined with the villainous Baron Heinrich Zemo in forming the Masters of Evil to fight the Avengers, a new super-team co-founded by Pym.

While in aerial combat with the Avenger Iron Man, Garrett was unseated from his horse and was mortally wounded in the fall. He managed to contact his only living relative, his nephew Dane Whitman, also a scientist. On his deathbed, Garrett told Whitman that he regretted the wrongs he had committed and wished for his nephew to put his discoveries to good use.

Real Name: Eobar Garrington

Class: weapon specialist

Occupation: knight

Affiliations: ancestor of the current Black Knight

Scale of Operations: England , the Holy Lands, 12th century AD

Powers: As the Black Knight, Garrington wore a full suit of chain mail armor for protection and carried the magical Ebony Blade. The sword, forged with magic from metal found in a mysterious meteorite, appears virtually invulnerable and able to cut through almost any material. In addition, magical spells enchant the blade, making it able to dispel other magical barriers, attacks, and enchantments, as well as deflecting, absorbing, and re-directing other energy attacks. Other users of the blade have proven able to summon the blade to their hand if separated, and even if out of line-of-sight.

The Ebony Blade contains at least two known mystic curses. One, if any enemy picks up the blade, it will inflict the evil user with great pain. The more prominent curse is the "blood curse," where if any user takes a life by using the Ebony Blade, great tragedy would befall him, such as becoming a bloodthirsty berserker.

History:Eobar Garrington, knight of the 12th century and ancestor of the original Black Knight, assumed the guise of the Black Knight in order to fight in the Crusades. Dane Whitman, Garrington's 20th century descendant, co-occupied Garrington's body for the last five years of his life.

Garrington-Whitman, as the Black Knight, defeated the enemies of King Richard the Lion-Hearted (Mordred, Prince John, and the Arabian wizard Chandu.) Following the Crusades again, the Knight met Amergin, High Druid of Avalon, which was being attacked by the ancient Celtic monsters known as the Fomor. The Knight offered his services to aide Amergin, who also managed to contact Whitman's allies in the 20th century, the super hero team called the Avengers, who helped defeat the Fomor. The group also sealed off Avalon from Earth, but in the process, Garrington's body was slain.

Real Name: Sir Percy of Scandia

Class: weapon specialist

Occupation: knight

Affiliations: ancestor of the current Black Knight

Scale of Operations: Arthurian England

Powers: As the Black Knight, Sir Percy wore a full suit of chain mail armor for protection and carried the magical Ebony Blade. The sword, forged with magic from metal found in a mysterious meteorite, appears virtually invulnerable and able to cut through almost any material. In addition, magical spells enchant the blade, making it able to dispel other magical barriers, attacks, and enchantments, as well as deflecting, absorbing, and re-directing other energy attacks. Other users of the blade have proven able to summon the blade to their hand if separated, and even if out of line-of-sight.

The Ebony Blade contains at least two known mystic curses. One, if any enemy picks up the blade, it will inflict the evil user with great pain. The more prominent curse is the "blood curse," where if any user takes a life by using the Ebony Blade, great tragedy would befall him, such as becoming a bloodthirsty berserker.

History:Sir Percy adopted the guise of the Black Knight in order to serve his king, King Arthur of the Round Table, in a dual capacity: as an unassuming man of the royal court, and as a mysterious avenging champion. King Arthur's court magician, Merlin, gave Percy the Ebony Blade after enchanting it himself.

As the Black Knight, Sir Percy's greatest foe was Mordred, nephew of King Arthur, and for years, Percy tried to gather evidence of Mordred's treachery, to no avail. Soon after the fall of Camelot, the wounded Mordred dispatched his men to ambush the Black Knight using a dagger constructed of the same meteoric ore as the Ebony Blade. Sir Percy was slain, but Merlin, however, cast a spell upon Percy's spirit, enabling it to return to the earthly plane when the spirit of Mordred threatened the world again.

Years later, when Percy's distant ancestor had taken the guise of the Black Knight and fallen victim to the Blade's curse, the sorcerer supreme, Dr. Strange, appealed to Sir Percy's spirit, allowing it to reside in the blade, thinking this would obliviate the curse. Whether or not Percy's spirit remains in the Blade, and whether or not the curse had been truly lifted, remains to be seen.