The Reavers are a team of criminal cyborgs (human beings with mechanical parts in place of some of their organic ones). The current team of Reavers are dedicated to the destruction of the mutant X-Men, and a number of them especially want to take revenge on one particular X-Man, Wolverine.

The first of the Reavers to encounter any of the X-Men was Donald Pierce, the former White King of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, who bears a cyborg arm. Once, when Wolverine broke into the Club's Manhattan mansion, he severed Pierces cyborg arm from the rest of his body, Months later, Pierce rebelled against the rest of the Inner Circle, which was dominated by mutants led by Black King Sebastian Shaw. Pierce abducted Shaw's aide Tessa and held her captive. However, Pierce was thwarted by Professor Charles Xavier and his new team, the New Mutants. Tessa regained her freedom, and Pierce was expelled from membership in the Inner Circle.

Three other members of the Reavers, Cole, Macon, and Reese, were formerly mercenaries employed by the inner Circle. On the same night that he first met Pierce, Wolverine also encountered a squad of Hellfire Club mercenaries who had been sent to find and kill him. Wolverine lashed out at three of them--Cole, Macon, and Reese--with his adamantium claws, leaving the three of them severely wounded. The Inner Circle then had the three man converted into cyborgs. Cole, Macon, and Reese took Wolverine prisoner when the Inner circle attacked the X-Men's Westchester County headquarters months later, but Wolverine overcame the three men once more.

Yuriko Oyama was the daughter of Kanji Oyama, alias Lord Dark Wind, a former Japanese kamikaze pilot during World War II who had survived his suicidal assault on an American battleship. Kanji Oyama felt shamed by his survival. His face was scarred by the crash of his plane, and he likewise scarred the faces of his two sons and his daughter. Lord Dark Wind developed a means for bonding the virtually, indestructible steel alloy adamantium to human bone, with which he hoped to create an army of superhuman soldiers for Japan. However, his notes were stolen, and it took him years to rediscover the process.

Lord Dark Wind despised postwar Japanese civilization. He had the assassin Bullseye, many of whose bones had been shattered in a battle with the crimefighter Daredevil, brought to his island off the Japanese coast. There Dark Wind replaced some of the Bullseye's broken bones with adamantium substitutes, hoping that in return Bullseye would assassinate Japan's minister of trade for him. Arriving in Japan intent on recapturing Bullseye, Daredevil encountered Yuriko Oyama. She sought vengeance on her father, both for scarring her and for the deaths of her, brothers, who had somehow perished in Lord Dark Wind's service. Moreover, the young man Yuriko loved, Kira, served in Dark Wind's private army, and she did not want her father to cause him harm. Yuriko guided Daredevil to her father's private island. Bullseye escaped from the island, and Yuriko herself slew Lord Dark Wind just as he was about to kill Daredevil.

But after Daredevil himself left, Kira committed suicide in despair over Lord Dark Wind's death. The shock of Kira's death radically altered Yudko's outlook on life. She came to adopt her late father's points of view. She became convinced that Wolverine had gained his own adamantlure-laced skeleton by the process stolen from her father. Hence, garbed as a female samurai and calling herself Lady Deathstrike, Yudko led a number of her father's warriors to Canada where they confronted and tried to kill Wolverine. Lady Deathstrike herself wielded a sword that gave off destructive energy. However, Lady Deathstrike was defeated by Wolverine's friend Heather Hudson, the second Vindicator.

Lady Deathstrike was herself transformed into a cyborg by the other dimensional being called Spiral. She then led Cole, Macon, and Reese in an unsuccessful attempt to slay Wolverine in Manhattan.

A criminal gang of cyborgs known as the Reavers and led by the cyborg Bonebreaker operated from a small otherwise deserted town in the Australian outback. By threatening to destroy his people's holy ground, these Reavers forced the aborigine Gateway to teleport them to and from the scenes of their robberies throughout the South Pacific. The origin of the members of this original group of Reavers is not known. On one occasion these Reavers robbed the Hoar International Band in Singapore, murdering most of the Hoar family, and abducting Jessan Hoan, who was an executive working at the bank. (Jessan Hoan would later become the crime lord Tyger Tiger.). In response to the assault on this bank, the sorceress Roma transported the X-Men to the Reavers' base. There the X-Men defeated the Reavers in battle. Three of the Reavers--Bonebreaker, Skullbuster, and Pretty Boy--escaped by having Gateway teleport them away. The X-Men persuaded the remaining Reavers to pass through Roma's Siege Perilous, a mystical doorway. Those who step through it, like, the Captured Reavers, are judged by higher powers and are given a chance to redeem themselves. Exactly what happened to the Reavers who passed through the Siege Perilous is unknown. The X-Men then adopted the Reavers base as their own new headquarters.

As for the three Reavers who escaped, Bonebreaker was a cyborg who had no legs but instead traveled on wheels, Skullbuster had robotic legs, and Pretty Boy had robotic arms that could greatly extend in length. Pretty Boy could also project fiber-optic filaments from his eyes that could reach into a victim's brain and reprogram his or her mind, altering his or her personality.

Pierce reorganized the Reavers under his own leadership as a team consisting of himself, Lady Deathstrike, Cole, Macon, Reese, Bonebreaker, Pretty Boy, and Skullbuster. They returned to the original Reavers's Australian base, ambushed Wolverine when he returned there, and crucified him. Wolverine freed himself, recovering by means of his mutant healing factor. Ultimately he and his X-Men allies defeated this new team of Reavers.

Pierce and his Reavers orchestrated a number of attacks against Wolverine and his allies, all of which failed. Shortly thereafter, the Reavers were attacked and annihilated by giant robot Sentinels controlled by the mutant time-traveller Trevor Fitzroy.

Pierce, Deathstrike, and Skullbuster have since reappeared, apparently being the only members of the Reavers to have survived Fitzroy's assault.