Bullseye is an arch villain to the blind superhero Daredevil. In the world of Marvel Comics, Bullseye has made himself a reputation for being a ruthless and highly effective killer for hire.
Bullseye from Daredevil in Marvel Comics
Being a hired killer is just about the best line of work that Bullseye could have gone into. He gets a great deal of job satisfaction and he is really effective at completing his missions.
Table of Contents
Bullseye and Daredevil
Unlike many of the characters Bullseye does not have any special powers, yet he is so effective when using weapons that this does not present with any serious problems.
He does all these killing jobs just as much as a hobby that he gets paid to do in any case.
He earns money, does what he enjoys while aiming towards settling his personal feud with the Daredevil.
Bullseye has appeared in comics, films and TV programs since his debut in 1976 in Daredevil # 131. From then on Daredevil was always considered his main enemy.
Alongside the Daredevil, Bullseye would also count the Punisher as being a major foe. Unfortunately for anybody that is targeted by him, Bullseye has honed his combat skills on his vendattas with those two.
Being called Bullseye is very apt, as he is exceptionally accurate with any kind of weapon that he aims, fires or throws.
Bullseye was portrayed by Collin Farrell in the 2003 movie, and by Wilson Bethel in the Netflix TV series.
A Biography of Bullseye
Nobody is completely sure of what Bullseye’s real name is. Although he has been referred to by a few names, yet none of these seem to reveal his true identity.
At various points he has been called Benjamin Poindexter, and later on he has been called Lester.
Yet nobody is any wiser to who Bullseye is. Further personal details were revealed in 2004, yet once these details were looked into it seemed these were made up.
It is most likely that the false information was put out by Bullseye himself.
At one point Bullseye was captured and held in a high security jail in the United States, and he gave investigators further details about who he was and when he had been a child. Yet he was not in jail for long, and he informs the investigators that everything he had told was a lie.
Short of putting him in front of a lie detector, there is very little prospect of Bullseye ever telling anybody the truth about who he actually is, and where he comes from.
Even his hatred of Daredevil and the Punisher have been revealed by his actions as much as anything that he has ever said.
At the point of his brief capture and stay behind bars he was calling himself Norman. He mentions that he was given the name of Bullseye after he had painted a target on his father’s head then fatally shot him.
However in later stories he claimed that his father had been inside the same prison that he had escaped from. To make good his escape, he had set fire to it.
He escaped in the chaos caused by the fire. The fire led to a few deaths including he claimed that of his father.
Whatever the truth about when and where his father had died, it seems that Bullseye was responsible for that death, and that he felt no remorse whatsoever.
It has been suggested, yet cannot be comfirmed that Bullseye had a short career as a professional baseball player.
It could have had a longer career yet his homicidal leanings apparently got the better of him.
It was Bullseye himself that confessed that his short stint in Major League Baseball was ended as he found that throwing no hitters to the hitters was simply not interesting or indeed violent enough for him.
With the very last ball that he pitched he decided to use his accuracy to kill the unfortunate hitter with the baseball.
Instead of playing baseball for money Bullseye found that being a member of the United States special forces was far more to his liking.
As a soldier Bullseye got to engage in his favorite past time of killing people and being paid handsomely for doing so. It was during an operation with the special forces that he found out he was gifted at killed people by throwing weapons.
His gun jammed during a firefight and he had survived by throwing and hitting his opponent with a bayonet.
Bullseye as a Criminal
At some point Bullseye decided that being a master criminal would make him more money than being a member of the special forces, or a mercenary.
Perhaps surprisingly the early stages of his criminal career did not revolve around killing people.
To begin with Bullseye attempted extortion in New York City although he also had enough time to carry out some murders whilst he was there.
Instead of wanting to stay unknown he preferred to be interviewed but not identified by the Daily Bugal.
Eventually his attempts at extortion and the murders he had done got him into a fight with Daredevil. It was Daredevil that put an end to his attempts at extortion.
By chance, Bullseye was later hired to kill a well known lawyer, Matt Murdoch (who is actually Daredevil).
It is his failure to kill Daredevil that leads him into regarding the hero as being his arch enemy and he concentrates all of his efforts into defeating Daredevil.
Around this time, Bullseye has a tumor in his brain that makes him see things, or more precisely he keeps seeing other people as Daredevil.
This is a serious problem as everyone he believes to be Daredevil he attempts to kill. Eventually Daredevil defeats him and the brain tumor is removed.
Bullseye continued his career as a hired killer whenever he has not been thrown in jail by Daredevil.
Although he is an effective assassin he is not loyal and will work for the highest bidder. He proved that when he was hired to kill the Kingpin.
Instead he is offered more money by Kingpin and decides to work for him. Before he can kill the target given to him, Daredevil puts him in prison. Kingpin still wanting the selected target hires Elektra.
When Bullseye finds this out he kills her. It just so happens that Elektra was the girlfriend of Daredevil who decides that he wants his revenge.
They fight over the skyline, and Daredevil believes that he has seen Bullseye fall to his demise.
Perhaps Daredevil should have known that Bullseye would not die so easily or neatly. It is The Japanese crime lord, Lord Dark Wind that assists Bullseye in a complete and highly unlikely full recovery.
Lord Dark Wind, has his bones laced with a chemical that aids recovery yet is supposed to make Bullseye follow his orders and carry out killings.
However Bullseye had other plans, and Lord Dark Wind’s attempts to control do not work at all. Instead he decides to work for Kingpin again.
Kingpin wants to be sure that Bullseye is fit enough after recovering and to prove it by fighting Deadpool. He succeeds in demonstrating his recovery by beating him.
Bullseye and the Thunderbolts
Bullseye was recruited into the Thunderbolts during the Avenger’s civil war.
Although Iron Man and Mister Fantastic included him in the Thinderbolts they do not trust him entirely and have fitted with a device that gives him a powerful electric shock should he attempt to disobey their orders.
When the team is later put back together again by Norman Osborn he brings Bullseye back into it.
Songbird then gets Bullseye into a fight that almost resulted in his death. He goes out to fight American Eagle after been lied to that the nano chain has been switched off and will not give him a severe shock.
As soon as the fight begins, Bullseye finds out that Songbird had lied to him, and that the fight almost turns out to be fatal for him.
A combination of American Eagle’s brutal assault and a severe electric shock leaves Bullseye severely disabled and with a broken neck.
Thanks to advanced nano surgery techniques Bullseye makes a full recovery after his operation. To celebrate that recovery he decides to find out how many people he can kill at random using scalpels.
Bullseye is part of the Thunderbolts group that fight the Skrulls after they have reached Wasington D C.
During that fight he kills Andrea before the group goes to New York to join in the main battle.
The battle takes place in Central Park. It is Bullseye that prevents the Skrull from killing other heroes after using a rocket launcher.
He also has an opportunity to kill Songbird during the fighting, yet the Swordsman intervenes before he can deliver the fatal blow.
The Dark Avengers
Bullseye was then made a Dark Avenger as a reward for what he had achieved in his time with the Thunderbolts. For his new role he is provided with a costume and given the name of Hawkeye.
On his first as a Dark avenger, Osborn orders Bullseye to kill his old partner and more recently enemy Deadpool. However he is not able to do so and Deadpool escapes.
Later Bullseye joins in with the efforts of the Dark Avengers to stop a robot that has malfunctioned from harming anybody.
Although Hawkeye manages to stop the robot he does so at a cost. After stopping the robot it crashes to the ground and it kills 36 people when it does so.
Instead of being praised for bringing the robot down, Osborn partly blames Hawkeye for the death of innocent people.
After this incident he rescues a woman being assaulted by three men. He kills the men and then later the woman after she offended him by referring to Osborn as being Hawkeye’s boss.
Bullseye then spots a news team recording what he done with the woman from a helicopter. To keep his actions secret he then shoots down the helicopter, killing every body on board.
Bullseye is next in action after Osborn orders him to kill Deadpool. However things do not go as planned as Deadpool defeats Bullseye by using a meathook to stab him through the chest.
He later tracks down Deadpool and lies to him to prevent Deadpool killing him by paying him to go away and saying that Osborn had cancelled the hit.
The next target named by Osborn is far more tempting for Bullseye, his old enemy Daredevil.
They are fighting in a building that Bullseye has filled with explosives, During the fight he sets off the devices and kills 100 people inside. He then taunts Daredevil for his inability to save those people.
Off to Shadowland
Bullseye is sent to prison by Daredevil after the ‘previous fight, but he never gets there as he kills his guards and escapes.
After escaping he goes to Shadowlands, the estate where Daredevil lives.
This time the fight is lost by Bullseye as Daredevil stabs him in the heart.
However he survives due to his iron lung. Daredevil was attempting to copy the way that Bullseye had killed Elektra all those years before.
Bullseye Returns
The iron lung kept Bullseye alive and it allowed him to return. Still disabled he organizes an attack against Daredevil.
That attack is defeated and as a result radioactive waste is unleashed that scars Bullseye for live.
Later Bullseye appears in the Infinity Wars and also the Secret Wars story lines.
The Abilities and Powers of Bullseye
Unlike many of the heroes and villains he fought alongside or against Bullseye never had any superpowers.
What he did have was the ability to hit anything that moved with a knife, arrow or bullet. Basically if he had a clear shot at any target, that target would end up dead.
He also had operations that kept him alive when most would have died, the operation by Lord Dark Wind saved his life.
