BIOGRAPHY - Page 2
One of Taskmaster’s academies was situated in Southampton, Long Island beneath the façade of the Solomon Institute for the Criminally Insane. Taskmaster’s administrator Dr. Pernell Solomon took some liberties with the scientific equipment and staff on-site that had unexpected consequences. In possession of a weak heart, Solomon arranged for a younger clone of himself to be made as a compatible donor. This sentient man, nicknamed Selbe, escaped the institute temporarily and managed to alert the Avengers to his plight. The Wasp traced Dr. Solomon and Selbe back to his institute and was soon followed by her husband Yellowjacket and their friend, Ant-Man. Taskmaster arrived for an on-site visit just in time to find his academy crawling with super-heroes. [Avengers (1st series) #194-195]
After subduing the trio, Taskmaster amused his captives with a story about his background that he probably made up on the spot. He intimidated Dr. Solomon into a heart attack that solved one problem but failed to anticipate that one Avenger inevitably leads to more. The full roster of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes burst into the Solomon Institute, giving Taskmaster a chance to test out the enhancements provided to Hammerhead’s new goons, Cyber-Squad X. Unfortunately, the goons weren’t up to the challenge. Taskmaster held off Captain America and Iron Man simultaneously and had a moment of moxie, thinking he could beat the whole team.
The risk versus the reward was too great, though, and Taskmaster took off running instead. His own weaknesses became apparent when he was nearly stopped by Jocasta, the Avengers’ newest associate. Taskmaster had no footage or data on the robotic woman, leaving him unprepared and outmatched. He used a magnesium flare to blind the rest of the Avengers when they caught up and made his escape. Taskmaster had to abandon a lot of men, equipment and money in Southampton, however, severely setting back his business interests. [Avengers (1st series) #196]
Still, Taskmaster had designed his Academies with raids like this in mind, and he was prepared to restart his operations at new locations when the heat got too strong. Taskmaster rebuilt, setting up a discreet new academy in Manhattan at a seemingly abandoned warehouse. He began recruiting from local gangs and street toughs to replenish his stock of pupils. The location came to the attention of Spider-Man, who infiltrated the base. However, Taskmaster saw an opportunity and the web-slinger was turned into a training dummy for the edification of Taskmaster’s students. Once Taskmaster lured Spider-Man onto the training floor, he put on a full demonstration of his skills for his class in order to establish his credentials. Taskmaster could only duplicate Spider-Man’s agility and acrobatic maneuvers up to the human threshold, but he could still read and anticipate familiar moves which he couldn’t mimic himself. Taskmaster beat Spider-Man with style and earned the applause of his trainees and the "proof of concept" that his training program could work.
Instead of killing Spider-Man, Taskmaster trussed him up on display for the new class of goons as 
“proof of concept.” However, Taskmaster’s prior foe Ant-Man was also snooping around, and he managed to free Spider-Man while Taskmaster was off on a field exercise. Spider-Man and Ant-Man caught Taskmaster overseeing the theft of nuclear materials and worked over his class of trainees. When Taskmaster kept anticipating Spider-Man’s moves, Scott Land realized he was too new at being Ant-Man for the villain to have studied him much. He reasoned Taskmaster was prepared for what Hank Pym would do, but not a brazen ex-con like him. Ant-Man suddenly turned his Pym Particles towards summoning a giant ant, a surprise which led Spidey to get the upper hand long enough for Taskmaster to cut his losses and flee once more. [Marvel Team-Up (1st series) #103]
With his stationary academies starting to feel the heat, Taskmaster came up with the idea of a mobile recruiting and training academy. He and his men strong-armed their way into control of the Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders. Taskmaster effectively kept Marcella Carson and her loyal roustabouts hostage until Marcy sent a plea for help to their former archer, Hawkeye. Barton had heard of Taskmaster from the Avengers, but he wasn’t prepared for the villain’s arsenal of skills and got himself captured. Ant-Man also happened to be at the carnival that day and freed Hawkeye from the lion cages. Together, they made life miserable for the Taskmaster until he abandoned his goons and the carnival to restart again somewhere else. [Avengers (1st series) #223]
Taskmaster’s normal M.O. was to train thugs as generic henchmen, then engage in a “job matching service” for his graduates with requests from various masterminds. On one occasion, though, he was hired by the Black Abbott as liaison to directly engage with local Manhattan gangs and recruit them for the Abbott’s service. During Taskmaster’s recruitment speech to the gangs, however, Spider-Man and Nomad came upon the scene. Taskmaster tried giving the punks a crash course on combat tactics, but it only went so far. When Black Abbott injured himself trying to kill Spider-Man, Taskmaster remembered he had already collected his fee and made himself scarce as well. [Marvel Team-Up (1st series) #146]
Taskmaster didn’t give up on the idea for a traveling recruitment center, and later set himself up with another circus. However, he ended up having to make a noticeable number of people disappear when they started asking about his past. These disappearances led a special agent named Lauren Anderson to infiltrate his circus. A passing involvement from Ben Grimm and Vance Astrovik left Taskmaster unable to defend his investment, and he was finally arrested by federal agents. [Thing (1st series) #26] Taskmaster was too useful to remain in lock-up, so the Commission on Superhuman Activities made a deal with him to cut several years off his sentence. A new Captain America named John Walker needed training in using the Captain’s shield. Taskmaster demonstrated his talent as a teacher by breaking down the original Cap’s fighting style into a series of katas for instruction. He gave Walker a genuine tutorial on reverse-engineering the unique style of shield-wielding. [Captain America (1st series) #334]
Taskmaster reopened his academy once the deal with the feds came through, renovating a mausoleum in a derelict Brooklyn graveyard. Some of his trash talk made it to the wrong ears, though, and Spider-Man crashed the academy, thinking that Taskmaster was gearing up a revenge plot against him. Peter Parker’s wife, Mary Jane Watson-Parker, had been kidnapped, and Spider-Man believed the abduction was targeted at him. Taskmaster had no godly idea what 
the wall-crawler was talking about, but he went through the motions of fighting a super-hero once one got in his face. On his way out the door in another daring escape, though, Taskmaster made a half-way decent gesture of sincerely informing Spider-Man he had no idea who “Mary Lou Wilson-Picket” was, and the web-slinger better divert his energies elsewhere if he wanted to find her. [Amazing Spider-Man (1st series) #308]
Sometimes, Taskmaster prepared special commissions at his academies rather than just an elite class of faceless goons. On contract from Justin Hammer, Taskmaster held a competition to choose a new Spymaster to replace the original who died months earlier. This was truly an “anything goes” contest, where the competitors were encouraged to sabotage or even murder 
each other as the actual training progressed. Eventually, the final three fought one another blindfolded until only one man remained. The new Spymaster was given a final test to rob from the Stark International Christmas party, and Taskmaster satisfactorily turned his latest pupil over to Justin Hammer as a contract successfully completed. [Iron Man (1st series) #254]
Taskmaster still occasionally took mercenary assignments for himself, often times when he saw an opportunity to learn new skills on the job. The ninja guild called the Hand wanted a specific list of individuals killed off and made it a contest between Taskmaster and the marble assassin, Tombstone. Their score card came to the attention of both Daredevil and Punisher, making it a three-way fight, as Daredevil tried to apprehend them and yet keep Punisher from murdering the villains at the same time. Daredevil even used a bullet to divert Punisher’s throwing knife from finding Taskmaster’s heart. It still pierced the mercenary’s abdomen and Daredevil had to let the others get away in order to save Taskmaster’s life. [Daredevil (1st series) #292-293]
He later escaped from the prison hospital at Bellevue in time to overhear a death’s bed confession 
by Slick Jimmy and clues to the location of $500K in… grease? Along with the other eavesdroppers like Pete London, Stilt-Man, Tatterdemalion and the Wildboyz, Taskmaster got deep into a comedy of errors over which Daredevil could barely contain laughing. [Daredevil (1st series) #317-318]
Despite some setbacks, Taskmaster fulfilled a niche role in the super-villain community that earned him the respect of many players in the industry. He earned a seat at the Red Skull’s table of division chiefs and allies, which included informants and operators from Hydra, the Watchdogs, the Secret Empire, the Resistants, Sisters of Sin, the Scourge of the Underworld, Power Broker, 
Inc. and other figures, such as Arnim Zola and Minister Blood. [Captain America (1st series) #394] Mother Night enlisted Taskmaster to help train Cutthroat, the newest member of the Skull’s Skeleton Crew. This private tutelage was specifically engineered to present Cutthroat with moves and countermeasures to Captain America, bringing Taskmaster full circle to his training of John Walker. [Captain America (1st series) #396]
Another special training project for the Red Skull included evil versions of the Avengers, whom Taskmaster named Death-Shield, the Jagged Bow and the Blood Spider. When Spider-Man and the anti-terrorist Solo began sniffing around the Skull’s America Day operation, he diverted them 
towards Taskmaster’s training ground in Alexandria. The trainees had only been prepped for fighting Spider-Man, however, and showed little adaptability. Taskmaster fled the engagement and was forced to make recompense to the Red Skull for the inadequate showing of his protégés. [Amazing Spider-Man (1st series) #366-367]