Wesley Gibson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Wesley Gibson | |
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| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Top Cow |
| First appearance | Wanted #1 |
| Created by | Mark Millar |
| In-story information | |
| Team affiliations | The Fraternity |
| Notable aliases | The Killer |
| Abilities | Superhuman accuracy. Proficient use of hand to hand combat, and firearms. |
Wesley Gibson is the fictional protagonist of the 2003 limited series Wanted, by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones, as well as the 2008 film inspired in the comic. In both incarnations, Gibson is a milquetoast office worker with a failed life who discovers that he has superhuman abilities, and becomes an assassin.
[edit] Comics
Wesley Gibson has a boring life, until one day he discovers that his recently assassinated father was a super-criminal called The Killer, and that Wesley has inherited his superhuman accuracy and mastery of weapons. Wesley enters a new life, and must deal with the most dangerous and powerful people in the world — whose ranks now include Wesley himself. After being approached by the Fox, another super-villain, Wesley quits his job and joins the Fraternity. He goes through a period of training, in which he is desensitized to violence and given license to fulfill every desire, including rape, racially motivated violence and random murder. Wesley then goes on to sever the last connection to his previous life by breaking up with his girlfriend, knowing she cheated on him with his best friend, whom he has already killed. Wesley is a shooter that even didnt know his own father.
Gibson's design was based on rapper Eminem. He is most likely based on assassins Deathstroke, Deadshot, or Bullseye.
[edit] Film
In the 2008 film, Wesley Gibson is portrayed by James McAvoy. He is dissatisfied with his life, until one night at a pharmacy, a mysterious woman named Fox tell Wesley that his father was a recently murdered skilled assassin called "Mr. X", and the killer, Cross, is behind him. After Cross and Fox engage in a shoot-out followed by a car chase in the streets of Chicago, Gibson is brought to the headquarters of The Fraternity, a thousand-year-old secret society of assassins. The group's leader, Sloan, explains that Wesley's panic attacks are actually the untrained expression of a rare superhuman ability; when stressed, the drastically increased heart rate and adrenaline levels result in bursts of superhuman strength, speed and reflexes. To demonstrate it, Wesley is sent into a panic attack which causes him to shoot off the wings of flies. The Fraternity can teach him to control this ability, so Wesley can follow in his father's footsteps as an assassin, beginning by inheriting his fortune. Wesley is initially reluctant and returns to work, only to finally snap when discovering over 3 million dollars in his bank account. He tells off his boss in front of the entire office and on his way out, hits his "friend" Barry in the face with a keyboard. Fox is waiting outside to take him back to the Fraternity headquarters - an unassuming textile mill.
Wesley is then subjected to brutal training; he is taught various forms of combat by other Fraternity members, such as the weapons specialist Gunsmith and the knifework specialist Butcher. Wesley also learns to curve bullets fired from smoothbore firearms around objects. Afterward, Wesley is shown the Loom of Fate, a loom that gives the names of the targets through binary code hidden in weaving errors of the fabric. Those the loom identifies apparently will cause tragedy in the future; but only Sloan sees and interprets the names "Fate" wants to kill. After two routine missions, Wesley has a chance meeting with Cross, who shoots him in the arm with a traceable bullet. Wesley asks Sloan to go after Cross and finally avenge his father - and Sloan fulfills his wish, telling him that Cross' name had come out in the Loom. But he also gives Fox a secret mission to kill Wesley, whose name had also come up. Wesley reaches Pekwarsky, the inventor of Cross's curving bullet, and Fox intercepts him as he tries to kill Wesley. He leads Wesley and Fox to Cross on a train. The train collapses down a mountain and Wesley shoots Cross while he was trying to save him. Cross, dying, tells Wesley that he's his son. After falling from the train, Wesley survives and stages a final coup against the Fraternity. He blows up the Loom, kills hundreds of assassins and is only stopped when Fox sacrificed herself to kill numerous assassins (including the Gunsmith). At the end, he finally manages to kill Sloan with the same sniper used by Cross in the beginning, while he breaks the 4th wall by saying "What the fuck have you done lately?"
