Harry Leland

Superherobox|

caption=
comic_color=background:#ff8080
character_name=Harry Leland
real_name=Harold Leland
species=Human Mutant
publisher=Marvel Comics
debut="Uncanny X-Men" #132 (April, 1980)
creators=Chris Claremont
John Byrne
alliance_color=background:#c0c0ff
alliances=Hellfire Club's Inner Circle, X-Humed
aliases=Black Bishop
powers=Able to increase mass|

Harry Leland, also known as the Black Bishop is a Marvel Comics supervillain, and an adversary of the X-Men.

A mutant, Leland possesses the ability to increase the mass of an object or person, making it extremely heavy. Thanks to his allegiance to Sebastian Shaw, he attained the rank of "Black Bishop," of the Lords Cardinal of the New York branch of the The Hellfire Club, an exclusive secret society bent on world domination. In civilian life, he was a corporate lawyer.

Publication history

Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist/co-writer John Byrne, Leland first appeared in "Uncanny X-Men" #132 (April 1980).

Artist John Byrne based Leland's appearance on actor-director Orson Welles, and the name refers to two characters in Welles' films: Harry Lime from "The Third Man", and Jed Leland from "Citizen Kane". [http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2006/03/30/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-44/]

The character subsequently appears in "The Uncanny X-Men" #132-135 (April-July 1980), #152 (December 1981), and #208-209 (August-September 1986), in which he died. Leland made subsequent posthumous appearances in "Classic X-Men" #7 (March 1987), "Sensational She-Hulk" #34-35 (December 1991-January 1992) , "Marvel Super-Heroes" #11 (October 1992), "Generation X" #-1 (July 1997), "X-Men: Hellfire Club" #4 (April 2000), "X-Men Unlimited" #6 (February 2005), and "House of M: Avengers"#5 (2008).

Fictional character biography

Hellfire Club

Little is known of Leland's past before encountering the X-Men, however he did encounter former teammate, Emma Frost before she was inducted into the Hellfire Club. At the time, Emma was homeless and using her powers during a Hellfire Club meeting to gain information about stocks, Leland took an interest in her but came on too strongly, which made Emma run away. Shortly after, he accompanied Sean Cassidy and his NYPD partner to an incident behind the club which involved Emma. Emma, having met and repaired the fractured mind of the Dark Beast with her powers, mind-wiped all three men into forgetting the incident and that they had ever met ["Generation X #-1"] .

Later, Leland first encountered the X-Men when the X-Men invaded the New York headquarters of the Hellfire Club. Leland caused Wolverine to become super-heavy and fall through the floor into a sub-basement. In the rematch, Wolverine attacked Leland from above. At that moment, Leland foolishly used his mass-increasing powers against his opponent a second time, resulting in Wolverine crashing through the floor again, only this time with Leland beneath him as Wolverine intended. All evidence to the contrary, Leland survived this incident.

Alongside the Hellfire Club, Leland later battled the X-Men in New York's Central Park. Leland used his power to sink Colossus hundreds of feet underground. When Nimrod attacked the assembled mutants, the X-Men and the Club joined forces to battle Nimrod. Against considerable resistance by the robot, Leland increased Nimrod's mass to move it towards the ground and thus become more vulnerable to attack. Overweight and in poor health, the effort caused Leland to have a heart attack. Then, at Storm's urging, Leland increased the mass of Sebastian Shaw (who had been sent hurtling towards outer space by Nimrod), causing Shaw to crash into Nimrod's body on the ground. Leland succumbed to his heart condition and died.

X-Humed

When the supervillain Black Talon revived Leland's body (as well as the bodies of three other deceased mutants) as a zombie ["She-Hulk" vol. 2 #34] , his motives for doing so were unspecified. After She-Hulk's defeat of the Talon and his "X-Humed", Leland was reburied. Precautions were taken to ensure that he never would come back, among them filling his mouth with salt and sewing his lips together.

Powers and abilities

Leland possessed the ability to increase the mass of an object or person within 350 feet of him, making it extremely heavy. Leland's power could affect both people and inanimate objects, but active resistance by the subject made it more difficult to assert Leland's power. Leland was overweight and in poor health, and thus he was a poor hand-to-hand combatant. As well as this, his over-reliance on his power meant that he was known to use it in situations where he would have done better to simply engage his opponent in a more conventional manner, such as when he automatically used his power in his rematch with Wolverine despite the clawed mutant being directly above him at the time.

Other versions

House of M

Harry Leland appeared as the Commissioner of the NYPD, in which he was in discussion with John Proudstar about the assaults on Sapien Town and the Brotherhood's attempts of capturing Luke Cage's gang. ["House of M: Avengers" #5]

Trivia

*Shinobi Shaw has speculated that Leland is Shinobi's biological father, but this has not been confirmed in canon.

References