Hello and welcome to Comic Drake, where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake!
Alex Wilder was the leader of The Runaways and one of the most important character of
the entire series, but there’s more to him that a lot of people who just watch the Hulu
show might know so let’s dive into him!
Alex Wilder was a brilliant kid and spent almost all of his time playing video games.
Like most geniuses though, Wilder was a bit of a loner and only had two social circles,
his team in the superhero MMO that they played, and the children of his parents’ friends
that he begrudgingly spent time with every year at a “charity event” hosted by his
folks.
Well one year, Alex got bored of the other kids and discovered a secret passage in his
game room that allowed him to spy on the parents.
This is how he discovered that they were members of The Pride, a criminal organization in Los
Angeles.
Naturally, this was a bit of a shock, but Wilder began spending his free time by sneaking
into his basement and learning everything he could about The Pride, including the fact
that they were working for some evil godlike beings and discovered that he actually believes
in The Pride’s idology himself.
However, when Alex overheard that some alien and mutant members of The Pride were going
to turn on their human partners, the child hatched a scheme.
At the following year’s “charity event”, Alex showed the rest of the kids the secret
passage, revealed The Pride’s existence, had the team run away from home, and manipulated
the events of the original Runaways series so that the other children could discover
the abilities and weapons that made each of them special, but at the same time, made them
unknowingly become soldiers in Alex’s army.
Despite Wilder being the only member of this group of Runaways to not have powers, telepathic
dinosaurs, or advanced weaponry, he became the team’s leader with his genius level
intellect and knack for strategy.
He also entered into a relationship with the team’s dark witch, Nico Minoru, who ended
up being the only member of the group that he truly cared about.
Wilder’s plans culminated in The Runaways having a final encounter with The Pride and
Alex completely betraying the other kids.
With his teammates knocked out, Wilder was in control of the aforementioned telepathic
dinosaur, Nico’s magic staff, a pair of fire manipulation gauntlets, and some x-ray
goggles which needless to say… is pretty intimidating even for a damn teenager.
But why betray the team now?
Well you see, the evil gods that The Pride was working for were going to ravage the world
and were only going to spare six members by transporting them to a paradise.
The Pride decided to forfeit their claim and instead pass the spots onto their children,
but in helping defeat The Pride’s aliens and mutants, Alex and his parents were going
to take the spots and extended the remaining three to Nico and her parents.
Despite Wilder doing his best to try and get Nico on board, she refused and rescued the
rest of The Runaways.
At this time though, the evil gods were summoned and instantly killed Alex for disrespecting
them.
Over the years, Nico would go on to try to resurrect Alex multiple times even though
he wronged her and the entire team, but Wilder’s soul was trapped in Hell.
But of course, even death couldn’t stop Alex from honing his mind and he took this
opportunity to learn from some of the world’s greatest criminal leaders including Al Capone
and Sun Tzu.
So if it isn’t obvious, Alex came back to life.
If he didn’t, this video would be over.
Now a LOT happened between his death and rebirth so if you want to know more, I recommend watching
the history video that we did on Nico Minoru to catch up.
Anyway, Nico and a bunch of other young heroes ended up working for a criminal organization
called the Masters of Evil and one of their main member was Daimon Hellstrom, the literal
son of Satan, who took Nico under his wing.
However, his tutelage wasn’t enough so Daimon decided to resurrect Wilder to help with Nico’s
training.
Despite the fact that Nico was older, had gotten over him, and was justifiably pretty
pissed off about him nearly killing her friends, Nico DID end up working with Alex and used
him for hate bangs.
In the end though, it turns out that Nico and the other kids only joined the Masters
of Evil so that they could take them down from the inside and it… actually worked!
Wilder on the other hand was able to escape and wasn’t seen again for a few years.
The last time we’d see him was in a pretty significant role as the main villain of the
Power Man and Iron Fist series.
Wilder started making a pretty good name for himself in the criminal underworld of Harlem
where he formed a group of former Luke Cage villains that he dubbed the New Pride.
Apparently between leaving the Masters of Evil and this point, Alex had learned magic
by bonding a demon to his body.
Not only that, but he was also attempting to become the grandmaster of street magic,
poorly regulated and extremely dangerous black market magic.
To accomplish this, Wilder got his hands on the Supersoul Stone, a magical necklace of
nearly unlimited power and started cornering Harlem’s drug trade by selling a separate
demon’s blood as a narcotic.
This ended up biting him in the butt when the demon that Alex had been harvesting got
loose smack dab in the middle of a fight with Luke Cage and Iron Fist.
Hoping to not be dragged back to Hell though, the demon Wilder had bonded with severed their
connection, leaving Alex unconscious and defeated.
As of the time of this recording, Alex Wilder has not been seen since, but after dealing
with the forces of magic and tangling with both Iron Fist AND Luke Cage, I think he’s
very poised to be a significant villain moving forward and I am very excited to see what
happens next.
But if you liked this video then why not consider subscribing or even watching another one?
In fact, if you liked this then you might be interested in our playlist that we did
on the history of every single member of The Runaways.
So that just makes a little bit of sense.
Anyway, I hope you learned at least a little something new and maybe I’ll see you next
time!