BIOGRAPHY - Page 7
Personal matters remained tense around the mansion as Quicksilver convalesced with the team while recovering from Exodus’ attack. Pietro sensed the chemistry between Dane and Crystal and he and his estranged wife struggled to navigate their feelings. Sersi also felt isolated during the drama, even as her Gann Josin bond with Dane grew stronger. Merely by wanting him around, she inadvertently sent out an irresistible call that forced Dane to rush to her side in order to alleviate his mental pain. Dane tried to be compassionate towards Sersi while still retaining his independence of self. Their conversation was interrupted by a new group of Gatherers trying to kill Sersi before she brought about Armageddon. This was news to Sersi, as the Avengers had kept Proctor’s warnings from her to avoid unsettling her further. After the Gatherers teleported away, Sersi compelled the Black Knight through their bond to reveal all he knew.
Dane and Sersi returned to Avengers Mansion only to find detectives from the NYPD looking to arrest Sersi on homicide charges. A series of young men had been murdered over the past few 
months in New York and traces of unstable molecule fabric were found on their bodies. This led a pair of NYPD detectives to Avengers Mansion while the team was in the Andes and Sersi was the last person they spoke to before their bodies were found weeks later in the East River, transfigured into stone. The accusations drove Sersi into a frenzy and she destroyed Avengers Mansion before flying away, while Dane was helpless to resist the pull to follow her. Atop the Brooklyn Bridge, Sersi’s anger fed her madness and she influenced Dane into joining her to seek revenge on the Avengers for turning on her.
Sersi and the Black Knight were confronted by the Avengers on the bridge and Dane fought against his friends as Sersi’s mania overcame them both. Crystal made a plea for sanity that cut 
through the red haze in Dane’s mind, however, and he broke the Gann Josin link with Sersi. More infuriated than ever, Sersi destroyed the bridge and nearly killed the Avengers as she fled the scene. Dane and the Avengers recovered with the help of the visiting Eternals Thena and Sprite and they began to unravel the threads of the mystery. The Eternals determined the stone detectives were actually alive and reversed the transfiguration affecting them. The officers revealed their attacker wasn’t Sersi, but Proctor. The Avengers deduced that Proctor had been killing men who passed through Sersi’s life for months in order to frame her and that her “madness” was his doing. Sersi wasn’t suffering the Mahd W’yry, but was being driven insane by Proctor using the Gann Josin bond he once shared with his world’s version of Sersi, who shared the same brain wave patterns. Even closer to home, the Black Knight’s analysis showed that Proctor was actually his own doppelganger, the Dane Whitman of another world.
Proctor’s mad scheme was fully revealed as he captured Sersi. On his world, Proctor was the Black Knight and leader of the Avengers who fell in love with and married Sersi. After she abandoned him, he was driven mad by rejection and jealousy. The continued presence of the Gann Josin combined with embracing the curse of his Ebony Blade transformed Proctor into the powerful being he was today. Proctor killed his Sersi and enslaved the Watcher for further power, hunting versions of Sersi throughout the multiverse, using the Gann Josin to drive them mad, 
painting them as evil before indulging his vengeance again and again on the woman who scorned him. Proctor kept his Gatherers in the dark as he caused one apocalypse after another by manipulating Sersis, until finally locating the Prime Earth in Dane’s reality. With the Prime Sersi and Ute the Watcher’s power, Proctor intended to collapse all realities and destroy every remaining Sersi throughout the multiverse to get his final revenge.
Black Knight and the Avengers engaged the Gatherers one last time as Proctor’s mesmerized pawns fought by his side. Dane approached his doppelganger directly as Proctor summoned the Ebony Blade of his world to fully duel Dane as his dark mirror image. With everything out in the open, Proctor was now obsessed with why Dane’s Sersi truly loved him, while Proctor’s Sersi rejected him. He fought with the strength of a madman and overpowered the Black Knight. Despite their rivalry for Crystal’s affections, Quicksilver stepped in to save the Black Knight when Proctor attempted to Gather his doppelganger onto himself. Sersi and Ute escaped the force field Proctor was using to contain them and she used the Ebony Blade to avenge herself and all her fallen counterparts by killing Proctor.
Unfortunately, Proctor’s death did not end Sersi’s madness. The damage he had done to her psyche was irreversible and her descent into insanity seemed inevitable. With his final breaths, Ute the Watcher tried to reverse much of the damage done to New York by Proctor’s schemes and he opened a portal to a pocket dimension where Sersi could live out her final days without threatening others. Black Knight stepped forward and agreed to accompany her into this realm. 
Crystal and Quicksilver objected, for fear that Dane was doing it because of them. Although the Gann Josin was severed and he hadn’t loved Sersi the way she loved him, Dane still loved her regardless and couldn’t let Sersi go into exile alone. He stepped up to be the partner she needed and the two Avengers said their good-byes before departing that plane of existence, possibly never to return. [Avengers (1st series) #372-375]
In time, Black Knight was separated from Sersi in dimensional transit and emerged in the reality of the Ultraverse, alone. His sudden appearance got him into a fight with Prime and Prototype of UltraForce, but they quickly made peace. Dane was adopted as a member of this reality’s team of heroes as he sought clues on Sersi’s location and how to return home. [UltraForce (1st series) #8-9] In the Manhattan of this Earth, the Black Knight and UltraForce found the Dark Shoppe, a nexus of magic that sensed his coming and that of others. Diane, the Shoppe’s custodian, showed him what was at stake. The Infinity Gems had also come to the Ultraverse and Loki came in search of them. Diane gave Dane a mystical connection to warn the Avengers what he had learned, but Sersi found them first. [UltraForce (1st series) #10, Avengers (1st series) #380]
After arriving in the Ultraverse separate from Dane, Sersi had become possessed by the Ego Gem, a previously unknown seventh Infinity Gem that carried the sentient mind which once inhabited the united gems. The Black Knight tried to reach Sersi, but she remained caught between her own madness and the influence of the Ego Gem. [UltraForce / Avengers Prelude #1] Through the Grandmaster, the Ego Gem and Sersi manipulated Loki into a game with the six Infinity Gems on the line. The Black Knight was held in stasis as the parties pitted the Avengers and UltraForce against each other. The whole contest was a ruse for the Ego Gem to get close enough to reclaim its siblings. Sersi was freed as the seven gems were reincarnated as the god-like being Nemesis, who sought to create new worlds by destroying the old ones. [Avengers / UltraForce #1]
New, mixed incarnations of the Avengers and UltraForce sprang into existence thanks to Nemesis. Dane was forced to face a new incarnation of Proctor and kill his doppelganger with the 
villain’s Ebony Blade, risking its curse once more. As the heroes of two worlds reassembled, Dane had a brief reunion with Crystal before facing off against the power of Nemesis. The Black Knight made the final strike against Nemesis, severing the physical Infinity Gems from her crown and depriving them of sentience once more. In the reality quake that followed, Dane was sent back to the Ultraverse with UltraForce while the Avengers returned to their Earth. [UltraForce / Avengers #1]
These events, known as “Black September,” reorganized the history of the Ultraverse. One of the major consequences was the retroactive disappearance of several UltraForce members including their leaders, Hardcase and Contrary. A young and inexperienced team to begin with, the remaining members of UltraForce quickly accepted the Black Knight as their field leader, calling upon his years of tactical experience from the Avengers and the Crusades to help them gel as a team. UltraForce received government support and credentials to deal with Ultra threats, but the team soon became concerned that a scared humanity might be more threatening towards innocent Ultras. [UltraForce: Infinity]
With support from the White House and America’s covert Ultra operations bureau in Aladdin, Black Knight and UltraForce were set up in a private compound at Headless Cross, Arkansas. A former CIA investigator named Cromwell was begrudgingly named their support staff. Their first major case involved a manhunt for an Ultra responsible for bombings around Manhattan. UltraForce caught the bomber, nicknamed Wreckage, but the situation became complicated when they learned his motivations. Wreckage was a former FBI agent horribly mutilated in a sting against the Commission, New York’s mob. The Commission used an insane Ultra murderer named Bonehammer for the job and Wreckage bought Ultra body-modifications on the black market to seek revenge. His targets in the bombings were all Commission safehouses where Bonehammer 
might be sequestered away between jobs. New York’s mayor and governor were itching to put an Ultra in the electric chair for political clout, but Black Knight and UltraForce decided to give Wreckage a second chance. They recruited him and a bounty hunter named Lament to complete his mission and bring the mass-murderer Bonehammer to state justice instead. [UltraForce (2nd series) #1-3]
Despite establishing himself in this new universe, Black Knight was continually reminded of his old home. A contingent of X-Men arrived in the Ultraverse hunting an insane Phoenix Force, joining forces with UltraForce and other Ultras. UltraForce also worked with Spider-Man and Green 
Goblin when a group known as the Shifters tried to orchestrate a war between the two universes’ governments. Even with these different breaches as a possible way back to the world he remembered, Dane chose to remain committed to UltraForce instead of returning home. He still thought of Sersi from time to time, but the distance between them hadn’t nurtured his feelings in her absence. [Phoenix Resurrection crossover, UltraForce / Spider-Man #1A-B, UltraForce (2nd series) #4]
Dane struggled to impose Avengers values on some of UltraForce’s members, though. After a particularly sinister bit of spy games with a corrupt Senator and an Aladdin cover-up, Black Knight saw his teammates being reckless, aggressive, even murderous. He ended up firing half the team in an effort to impose discipline and order. [UltraForce (2nd series) #5-7] Black Knight tried operating with a streamlined team for a few weeks, but his connection to the Ultraverse began to feel strained. When an entity named Maxis demonstrated space-warping capability, Dane asked it to send him back to his home dimension. [UltraForce (2nd series) #8-12, Ultraverse Unlimited #2]
[Note: Continuity surrounding the Marvel/Malibu Comics merger grew hazy, apparently due to legal issues behind-the-scenes. Sersi supposedly returned to Marvel after Black September, but that wasn’t reflected in the Avengers line, and Dane's return following Ultraverse Unlimited #2 was never shown at all. As a result, the following stories act as if Dane and Sersi hadn't appeared since Avengers #375, and ignore the Ultraverse entirely.]
Dane and Sersi’s time spent in exile was a strange one, from which they occasionally attempted 
to escape. On one occasion, Sersi opened a dimensional portal for them to pass through, but it went awry. Dane found himself back in the Crusades in the body of Eobar Garrington again. His mind possessed the body of his ancestor during a period when he already inhabited it, but the Dane Whitman of the past was only a faint echo in Eobar’s mind at this point in time. Eobar and his friend Bennet du Paris had strayed from the quest for the Holy Land to pursue tales of a Tower of Power in Egypt, at the domain once called Akkaba. Paris had had a vision of what awaited him at the tower and Eobar supported his friend on this personal quest. At first, Dane’s mind was doubly suppressed within Eobar’s as he awoke in his past twice over. Besides a gnawing sense of déjà vu, he moved through the sands as Eobar did. He did not even recognize Sersi at first when she found his encampment.
Still, Dane’s influence led Eobar to reject the quest of power for power’s sake that Paris was on and the two friends parted poorly as Paris pressed onwards without him. Eobar pursued Paris and Sersi felt compelled to accompany him until they could reawaken Dane’s true memories. Dane eventually did resurface thanks to his connection to Sersi, but by that point they were upon Akkaba. Dane and Sersi soon realized that Bennet du Paris had become Exodus, the mutant megalomaniac they fought in Genosha months earlier. His latent mutant abilities had been unlocked by Apocalypse, but now En Sabah Nur insisted his Exodus slay Eobar to cut all ties with 
his past life. Paris was power-hungry, but in the end he still relented rather than kill the one he remembered as a friend. Disappointed in his new puppet, Apocalypse entombed Exodus alive in a state of suspended animation. As Eobar, Dane found Paris’ resting place and arranged for two Crusaders to guard the tomb for generations to come. With that, Dane left behind the body of Eobar Garrington and returned to his travels with Sersi through time and space. [Black Knight: Exodus, Cable (1st series #30]