DEVIL-SLAYER

 

DEVIL-SLAYER

Real Name: Eric Simon Payne

First Appearance: Marvel Spotlight (Vol. 1) #33, April 1977

Powers: Originally a baseline human with no superhuman powers, Eric Simon Payne had his latent psychic potential unlocked by a cult of demon worshipers. As a result, he has various limited telepathic and telekinetic skills. He can cast illusions in order to render himself invisible or disguise his appearance and garb, and assimilate a language simply by being in the presence of someone who speaks it. With concentration, he can infiltrate the thoughts of others to retrieve information, and project his own thoughts into their heads. His telekinetic powers are limited to lifting and manipulating matter weighing less than what he can physically lift himself, roughly 300 lbs. Similarly, the amount of psychic force he can direct at an object is limited by the amount of physical force he can produce when throwing or striking an object. Thus he cannot lift a car with his mind nor project enough telekinetic force to knock over a tree. He mostly uses his telekinesis as a minor aid in combat, sending small objects hurtling about, tripping up his opponents, retrieving his weapons if they are dropped, and so on.

The Devil-Slayer wields a Shadow-Cloak, which opens up into an extra-dimensional crossroads, letting him use it for transportation and procurement. By wrapping the cloak around himself, Payne is able to teleport by entering that crossroads and then relocating to a new point before returning to our dimension. Like Nightcrawler, distance and time work differently in the Shadow-Cloak dimension, allowing Devil-Slayer to travel miles away in this world in a matter of moments by moving only a few feet in his crossroads in a matter of seconds. Unlike Nightcrawler, though, Devil-Slayer is fully aware of his time in the crossroads, and the teleportation "bounce" through his dimensional hub doesn't happen automatically. Still, this also works to his advantage since he can "spy" into our dimension before reopening his cloak to return to it, allowing him to teleport to places he has not physically seen before. He is able to accommodate up to around five people at once when teleporting, but presumably could transport hundreds if they traveled into his cape's dimension one at a time. The Shadow-Cloak also gives Devil-Slayer access to a near infinite supply of weapons. Its cross-dimensional nature allows Payne to reach into the folds of his cape and pull out any number of items from different countries, dimensions, and possibly time periods as well. He keeps a personal cache of weapons inside his cloak's dimension (including various swords, spears, staves, axes, guns, etc), but can also call up different or more exotic weapons as well. He has summoned everything from computer-guided wrist rocket launchers to mystical glaive staffs which render the wielder invincible.

A former United States Marine, he is a highly trained combatant, marksman, and assassin.