Taskmaster

Taskmaster
Portrayed By	Ray Park
Gender	Male
Date of Birth	Unknown
Age	Late 30s
Zodiac Sign	Unknown
Aliases	Tony Masters, Kouji Kantoku
Place of Birth	The Bronx, New York
Current Location	The Bronx
Occupation	Martial arts trainer, Mercenary
Known Relatives	None
Significant Other	None
Identity	Taskmaster
Known Abilities	Photographic Reflexes
First Appearance	Avengers #195

History

There's little known about Taskaster's childhood. What we do know is this: He grew up in The Bronx, and that he discovered his unusual abilities by watching cowboys on TV and being able to mimic the various stunts they were able to perform. We know that he quickly learned the limits of his abilities when he copied an Olympic diver without ever learning how to swim. Even though he was able to perfectly mimic the dive, he nearly drowned because of this mistake. This didn't deter him to use his abilities. Quite to the contrary, in High School, he used it to learn how to play football by watching NFL games and quickly became a star quarterback. Soon he realized that he could do much, much more than just be popular at school: He could be a superhero.

Or he could do something that actually paid instead of running around in silly spandex and getting little more than a bit of fame and glory while he struggled to make ends meet by delivering pizzas. Because, let's face it: Sure, the chicks dug the superhero type, but it just don't pay the bills. That's when he came up with a perfect scheme. Super-villains always had henchmen. Lots of henchmen. He could train these guys for a premium, and hire them out to the highest bidder. Kind of like a temp agency for thugs. It was going to be a sweet, sweet deal. All he needed was a little starting capital, getting himself into top physical shape, and finding every Kung Fu movie, taped superhero/villain archive and karate instructional video he could lay his hands on and he was set.

The plan worked like a charm, at first. He pulled a few heists to gain some starting capital, and soon was making a name for himself in the underground community. One of his first commissions was to train Jessica Drew for Hydra, and for the most part it went well, save for the embarrassing part where he underestimated her powers and ended up being skewered by his own sword. This was the first time he trained a metahuman, and learned some very valuable lessons, once he got out of the hospital. Still, he considered it a minor setback, all in all.

His first major setback, however, was when the Avengers first ran afoul of one of his training camps. He nearly was able to take them down single handedly if it wasn't for the untimely intervention of Jacosta, whom he couldn't read at all. He managed to escape, but the Avengers shut down his camp. While the disbanding of one camp in and of itself wasn't major, the fact that he was now on The Avenger's radar was enough to cause considerable trouble for him for the rest of his career.

Over the years, as his reputation grew, he started getting more and more hands on with his work. He'd done contract work with some of the most nefarious characters out there. The longest contract he ever was on was when he worked for the Red Skull. The main reason why he stayed on was mostly due to the fact that it was a very lucrative contract, but, in the end he left due to The Skull's ever increasing instability.

It was about this time that the Avengers started to take a more proactive approach to their operations, and was actively hunting down The Taskmaster and his schools. Over the last few years, Taskmaster has found himself spread too thin to keep all of his schools intact, and the loss of revenue from them has recently prompted him to put himself into the market as a mercenary.

Training petty thugs and punks had become more and more of a bad investment since they usually die before they can pay off the debt they owe him. Now, armed with some new technology recently stolen from SHIELD, he's returned to New York with a crafty plan. He's going to go legit. Okay, not really, but he's going to open a legitimate dojo that caters to exclusive clientele while working as a high priced mercenary on the side. After all it's not illegal to train people various martial art styles since it's not HIS responsibility for what they do with that knowledge afterwards, and this new business model should help him stay under the Avenger's radar.

Powers

Photographic Reflexes: Just by observing, Taskmaster is able to mimic, perfectly, the movements of the person he's observing. For example, if he sits and watches enough Kung Fu instructional tapes, he'll be a Kung Fu master in a matter of hours. Note that while he's able to mimic the movements of those that he observes, he's not able to mimic their powers. So, let's say that he's studied Colossus' fighting style. He'll be able to mimic the moves perfectly, but they'll be utterly ineffective since he doesn't have the raw strength that powers that style. One of the side effects of this talent, is that with a little bit of studying, he's able to read a person's body language and accurately predict the moves that they're about to take. He's also able to use this power to be able to mimic the body language of any of his subjects, as well as their voices. He's successfully fooled the Avengers at one point, making them think he was Captain America, for example.

Photographic Memory: Taskmaster has a photographic memory. He's able to recall, with perfect clarity, anything that he's observed.

Timeline

• What's happened since you've been approved?

Quotes

• "I said it!"

Trivia

• Amazing thing!
• Amazing thing!
• Amazing thing!
• Amazing thing!

Gallery