When police officer Brian DeWolff perishes in the field, his father gets help resurrecting him, simultaneously strengthening him with superhuman abilities. But an accident links their minds, allowing Phillip to control Brian for a time. Eventually escaping his fathers hold, Brian takes vengeance on criminals as the vigilante known as the Wraith!
Becoming the Wraith
Born to Celia and Phillip DeWolff, Brian is raised by his father following his parents divorce. He follows family tradition and becomes a cop, graduating from the police academy with record scores. Rapidly promoted, he was in line to be a captain but an ambush and a shot in the head leaves him comatose. His father, Captain Phillip DeWolff, arrives first on the scene and overcome with grief he removes Brian’s body. He carries it home where wealthy friends Max Vorster and Karl Bonn help him invest in a revitalizer to restore his son and grant him superhuman psionic powers. However, Phillip’s backers turn out to be criminals, and the angry Phillip attacks them, falling into the revitalizer as it is activated, linking his mind to Brian’s, enabling him to control Brian’s comatose body. Phillip’s sanity quickly deteriorates due to the revitalizer’s effects; he retires from law enforcement and uses Brian as an avenging Wraith to attack criminals the law couldn’t touch, but soon extended the Wraith’s missions to enemies that only existed within Phillip’s mind. Afraid his former backers could expose him, Phillip sends Brian to bomb Vorster’s house and Bonn’s bank, killing both men and numerous innocent bystanders. Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, and Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, investigate the bombings, as does Brian’s sister Jean, now a police captain at Phillip’s old precinct. Acting independently, all three discover Phillip’s involvement, and with the aid of Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, and a S.H.I.E.L.D. designed telepathy-blocking alpha-jammer, they expose Phillip and Brian and arrest them. Despite being placed on trial, Phillip overcomes the jammer sufficiently to convince a technician to unplug it. During an escape attempt, he and Brian are accidentally electrocuted, and Phillip gains the Wraith’s powers, plus the ability to place his consciousness within his son’s body. Iron Man and Spider-Man stop Phillip and the Wraith, and Strange uses his mystical and surgical knowledge to remove the bullet, which kept Brian comatose. This mystical intervention breaks Phillip’s control (and apparently ends his access to Brian’s powers). While Brian is cleared of all crimes, Phillip gets sentenced to a long prison term.
Psionic and Telekinetic Abilities
The Wraith possesses a variety of psionic powers that increase in strength when he apparently dies. He can read thoughts, and control the minds of several victims at once. He can cast illusions indiscernible from reality into multiple minds; he frequently employs illusion-casting to make himself appear invisible, to override Spider-Man’s spider-sense, and to induce mental pain to simulate physical injuries caused by the illusions. He can also telekinetically levitate smaller objects. He sometimes wields a smoke pistol of unrevealed origin.
Blood Relatives and Bad Blood
Despite his parent’s divorce, and his father’s dislike of his daughter, Jean, for joining the police force, Brian and Jean remain close. Phillip, however, doesn’t hold any ill will against Brian when he joins the NYPD. Later, when an accident merges Brian’s mind with Phillip’s, Phillip controls him, making him take the law into his own hands, he has Brian as the Wraith kill the criminals who helped save him. Whether controlled by his father or when he’s himself, Brian often goes up against Spider-Man and Iron Man.
When Brian’s powers destabilize his mind, he ends up joining the Maggia and being party to crime for a time. His sister, Jean, plays a pivotal role in bringing him out of it. When she’s murdered, Brian takes it out on the NYPD as the Wraith, blaming them for her death.
When Brian dies, he is later resurrected by the Hood and joins his army to take out Frank Castle, AKA Punisher.
A Woeful History
Brian slowly adjusted to his new powers, and when the criminal Mordecai Midas took over Stark International, he gathered several of Iron Man’s friends to aid him. They enabled Iron Man to defeat Midas, though Brian, Jean, and most of the others were temporarily paralyzed by Midas; Iron Man restored them afterward. Brian’s powers eventually began to destabilize his mind, and he turned to crime, eventually being placed by the Maggia’s Frank Farnum, AKA Big M, as a New Jersey section leader. He and his underling Mark Scarlotti, AKA Whiplash, conflicted with Iron Man and Spider-Man again, but it was Jean who brought him to his senses, after which he pledged never to use his powers again for fear of going insane as he had before.
While Brian was in California, his sister was murdered by Stanley Carter, AKA Sin-Eater. Since Carter was a policeman, Brian blamed the entire NYPD for her death. Donning the Wraith costume, he returned to Manhattan, but before he could start his crusade, he was shot dead by the Scourge of the Underworld.
Due to his psionic powers, Brian’s spirit transcended death and he soon found a new host in the Vampire’s Lair’s leader. Retaining his host’s knowledge, Brian psychically manipulated the Vampire’s Lair members into fulfilling his vengeance against the NYPD, but Michael Collins, AKA Deathlok, and Dr. Michael Morbius, AKA Morbius, the Living Vampire opposed this scheme. Morbius killed the Wraith’s host body, apparently releasing Brian’s spirit from the earthly plane.
Parker Robbins, AKA the Hood, later resurrected the Wraith along with 15 other Scourge victims and sent them after the Punisher. The Wraith soon fell victim to a well-placed arrow to his heart, shot by the Punisher himself.