HISTORY: Pete Wisdom's parents divorced by the time he entered his 20s, perhaps earlier. His father Harold had been a Detective Sergeant in New Scotland Yard, specializing in profiling serial killers, but by his retirement he had apparently gone slightly insane, believing in various bizarre occult-related conspiracy theories. Pete's mother informed her son over the phone that she had never loved Harold, and never wanted Pete, prompting a huge argument; Pete never told his father his mother's comments, though she wasted no time in telling Harold of the horrible things Pete said to her. Pete was due to visit her a week later, but decided not to bother: unaware her son wasn't coming, she stood waiting for him by the front window. That day a spree killer decided to walk round her quiet village and shoot anyone he saw. Pete blamed himself for causing his mother's death; so did Harold, leaving a permanent gulf between them.

Both Pete and his elder sister Romany entered the intelligence community. Romany maintained a cover as an eccentric occult specialist while rising to run her own above-top secret organization, while 20-something Pete joined the Secret Intelligence Service, MI-6. He became involved with contract killer Sari St. Hubbins: they promised their work would never come between them, but when Sari planned assassinating Queen Elizabeth II, Pete turned her in. "It needed doing:" Those three words became Pete's mantra. Between his dysfunctional family life and working in a duplicitous profession, Pete put up emotional barriers, hiding behind a cynical front, but underneath he remained a good man, and would risk his life without hesitation when the right thing needed doing.

Pete transferred to Black Air, a Ministry of Defense unit charged with recovering unusual artifacts for weapons research. Pete was one of their killers, though he tried to stick to slaying other killers, people in the lifestyle. For a time Pete was partnered with Ed Culley, one of his few friends in Black Air. Pete was sent in alone to Cold Grey, a fortress in British Antarctica taken over by terrorists armed with unusual technology; under orders, Pete slew everyone, but was haunted by memories of spilled entrails steaming in the snow. One of Pete's old MI-6 friends, Archie Fogg, a research scientist, killed himself testing a new device to duplicate people's neural patterns into a computer, surviving as a computerized brain; he designed an android body for himself, but before it was completed, Black Air installed him in the Faraway, an experimental satellite with a sub-space engine. Pete promised Archie he would ensure he got his new body when he returned. Pete built a network of friends in other agencies, including Pitman at MI-5; MI-6's Doyle, whose life Pete saved when Doyle's appendix burst; and Jardine, head of Criminal Intelligence, after he saved Jardine's photojournalist daughter Amanda from gunmen. Alongside other Black Air operatives, including his then¬ superior officer, the volt casting Scratch, Wisdom monitored a supposedly magical Scottish cairn. Unaware of their presence, members of fellow UK intelligence agency WHO approached the cairn during war games with the X-Men. Not wanting any interference with their mission, Black Air (including Wisdom) slaughtered the WHO agents, then fought the X-Men, but the bloodletting released N'Garai demons from the cairn; the Black Air agents worked with the X-Men to drive them back and destroy the cairn. Scratch and Wisdom, the only Black Air survivors, then escaped. Pete subsequently posed as a WHO agent, to enlist aid from Sean Cassidy (the X-Man Banshee) to take down Justin Hammer's European Sentinel like hounds operation. As his doubts grew about the people he worked with, Pete's relationships with other Black Air operatives became strained; learning Scratch had slaughtered everyone in a remote Norfolk School while retrieving an alien artifact which had come down near there, Pete punctured Scratch's lung and tore half his face off before other agents stopped him. Increasingly disillusioned, things worsened when Black Air took over from WHO (Weird Happenings Organization) as British Intelligence's paranormality specialists.

Things came to a head after Pete killed everyone at a terrorist training camp in Ronsaphan, Thailand. Vowing his killing days were over, he agreed to one final Black Air mission. His superior Michele Scicluna assigned him to accompany mutant super-team Excalibur to Genosha to locate British-manufactured anti-mutant ammunition. Excalibur disliked the acerbic, chain-smoking spy, especially Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde), ten years Pete's junior. Instantly annoyed by his demeanor, she hid her attraction to him beneath verbal jabs at his faults, which Pete reciprocated. After Genosha, Pete returned with Excalibur to their base on Muir Island, Scotland; receiving a message from Culley begging for help, Pete requested to borrow Excalibur's plane to get to London. Kitty offered to pilot it, wanting to keep an eye on Pete. Finding Culley dead of an unidentified contagion, they followed the trail back to RAF Utterleigh, codenamed Dream Nails, where Black Air were developing a stress-activated flesh-eating virus, Blood Eagle, extracted from alien bacteria taken from the Uncreated. With Kitty's help, Pete destroyed both base and virus, resigning from Black Air. Having seen through Pete's façade, Kitty gave in to her attraction; Pete reciprocated, though terrified of being hurt again.

Kitty suggested Pete join Excalibur, and only a couple of days later they informed their teammates of their relationship; while the Excalibur women found the revelation romantic, Captain Britain and Nightcrawler were less certain, but accepted Kitty's choice after they warned Pete of dire consequences should he ever hurt Kitty. Later that night Kitty's superhumanly strong ex-boyfriend, Piotr Rasputin (Colossus), arrived at Muir Island in time to see them kissing; already somewhat irrational, Piotr brutally assaulted Pete. Severely injured and hanging on to life by a thread, Pete used the last of his strength to down Piotr when he thought he was threatening Kitty. Pete narrowly survived, and was confined to a wheelchair for three weeks; recognizing Piotr had been unstable at the time of the assault, Colossus was allowed to join Excalibur while they monitored his mental state. Kitty's pet alien dragon, Lockheed, also disapproved of Wisdom and began stealing the spy's suits and cigarettes.

After learning Black Air were helping the London Hellfire Club seize control of the U.K., Pete's insider knowledge proved vital in thwarting them; with Lockheed's assistance, Pete also settled accounts with Scratch at the same time. When Jardine asked for Pete's help in finding Amanda, who had gone undercover trying to find a mutant serial killer, Kitty got to meet Harold and Romany as Pete turned to them for their respective expertise. Shortly afterwards, Captain Britain cajoled Pete into admitting to Kitty that he loved her; however, remnants of Black Air plotted assassinating Excalibur. They sent Sari St. Hubbins after Pete, but he overpowered her and sent her back with a warning that if any of Excalibur went down, Pete would ensure Black Air went next.

Kitty was unexpectedly called away to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. temporarily, leaving Pete mid-argument. In her absence Pete wondered if he was any good for her or Excalibur; she had helped him reclaim his soul, but in return he felt all he had done was endanger them. Kitty returned from S.H.I.E.L.D. hiding guilt over nearly cheating on Pete; sensing she was shutting him out, Pete tried to talk to her about their relationship, but was interrupted when Nightmare attacked. Nightmare tried to play on Pete's fear that he was making Kitty grow up too fast and that she would one day hate him for it, but the dream lord found Pete unaffected, as he was already living that terror and it couldn't get any worse. With Nightmare driven off, Kitty admitted her indiscretion to Pete but assured him nothing had happened; heartbroken, and certain he was bad for her, Pete broke up with Kitty and left Excalibur.

Pete began working with other disillusioned intelligence operatives and techno-anarchists such as Abel, Baker and Charlie, trying to make up for the things they did during their service, cleaning up some of the dirtier spy secrets around the globe. Learning the Faraway had crashed back to Earth near Genosha, Pete enlisted X-Force's assistance stealing Archie's brain before Genosha's ruler Magneto learned what he had in his possession. They succeeded, and Pete successfully transferred Archie's mind to an android form. Discovering his sister Romany's agency was plotting to modify humanity to make them more compatible with an alien World Engine, Pete approached the nominal head of British paranormal intelligence, Alistaire Stuart, making him aware of her plans and enlisting his aid. X-Force, having kept in touch following the Genoshan escapade, asked Pete if he could train them to be a more proactive force; after six months teaching them new uses for their powers, he took them to Russia to destroy Meatspore Stormtroopers, then to San Francisco to disable a Cold War bioreactor which was transforming the citizenry into murderous mutates. While X-Force were dealing with the bioreactor, Pete was confronted at gunpoint by its creator, Dr. Niles Roman; when X¬-Force returned to base, they found Pete's corpse, seemingly shot dead; however Pete had survived and faked his death. Spurred by Wisdom's seeming demise and guided by files he had compiled over the years regarding crimes against mutantkind. X-Force eventually faced Romany and her Worldengine, which they destroyed.

Possibly at Alistaire's behest, Pete returned to British intelligence, now working for MI-13, the department of the British National Intelligence Directorate Responsible for Enhanced Human Affairs. In the wake of M-Day depowering most of the world's mutants, causing widespread instability in the superhuman community, and threats to national security such as Earth-6141's Shadow Mob, Pete decided Britain needed back both Excalibur and Captain Britain. With some minor manipulating he achieved both goals, in time to confront Black Air when they resurfaced. As well as his public Excalibur missions, Pete has recently led a covert MI-13 combat squad to Othenworld to stop a faerie invasion, a mission which ended with Pete's arranged marriage to the faerie kings daughter.

NOTE: Romany claimed that Prior to working at Black Air, Pete was with the Factory, a covert unit whose remit was to extract data from genetic anomalies such as mutants, until the work became too much; unable to resign, his employers tortured him until he suffered a breakdown. Romany nursed him back to health, and once he recovered he launched a single-minded crusade to atone for his sins; however, she was trying to dissuade his X-Force protégés from continuing the investigations that ultimately exposed her World Engine when she said this, it seems unlikely Black Air would recruit someone who had already suffered a breakdown over immoral working methods, and Pete's actions while working for Black Air do not fit with someone on an atonement crusade, so it seems probable Romany was lying when she discussed this aspect of Pete 's past.

HEIGHT: 5 ft. 9 in.
WEIGHT: 158 lbs.
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Black

ABILITIES: Pete can generate "hot knives;" plates of plasma force hot as the heart of the sun. He can fire these likes bullets, hold them on his finger tips like claws, generate burning shields to destroy incoming missiles, or deploy them beneath him as he falls to create thermal updrafts to slow his descent to safe speeds. While he usually produces these from his fingers, he can generate them from any part of his hands.

NOTE: The above information was copied from “All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #12”