"COMMITEE OF FIVE"
"COMMITEE OF FIVE"
Membership: Boom-Boom, Bull, Dragon, Ice, Razor
Purpose: To track down and kill Moon Knight on behalf of the Committee
Affiliations: Eddie
Enemies: Marlene Alraune, Jean-Paul "Frenchie" DuChamp, Ray and Ricky Johnson, Moon Knight
Base of Operations: Various (gathered in New York City for a joint contract)
First Appearance: Moon Knight I#4 (February, 1981)
History:
(Moon Knight I#4 (fb) - BTS) - Boom-Boom, Bull, Dragon, Ice and Razor
were five "seasoned hit-men" who were hired by the Committee to find and kill Moon
Knight. Once any of them succeeded, all five of them would receive $25,000 apiece.
(Moon Knight I#4 (fb) - BTS) - The five hitmen (apparently) decided to just roam around New York in the hope of spotting their target.
(Moon Knight I#4 (fb) - BTS) - Since the five hitmen were known to patronize the Inn Flight nightclub in Queens, they hired Eddie and the bartender to take care of anybody who came around asking nosy questions about them.
(Moon Knight I#4) - For four successive night none of the hitmen saw
the slightest sign of their target. On the fifth night, Ice spotted Moon Knight near
Rockefeller Center, fired one shot from his rifle and saw MK fall over the edge of
the ice-rink. However, when he went to find the body as proof of the kill, Ice was
confronted by a very alive Moon Knight. Only a couple of lucky breaks enabled the
panicked Ice to escape capture.
Hours later, all five hitmen went to the Committee's headquarters to make their progress reports. Razor reported that, "Five nights of lookin' for this Moon Knight character and I ain't even seen so much as a white flash of cape or cowl." Ice reported that he'd had MK dead in his sights but had missed him because "the guy's some kinda spook" to which Boom-Boom replied, "Shee-oot. He's a costumed clown, Ice."
The next night, two of Moon Knight's agents (Ricky and Ray) were confronted at gunpoint by Eddie after they went to the Inn Flight nightclub and asked questions about Ice and his friends. The two teenagers managed to get the gun away from Eddie and force him to reveal that the names of the other two hitmen were Boom-Boom and Bull. They left Eddie tied up in the back room of the club.
Later that night, Boom-Boom used some fireworks to lure Moon Knight into an alley where he'd hidden some dynamite in a paper bag but Moon Knight, suspecting that it was a trap set by Boom-Boom, managed (with help from a cat) to spot the bomb and get himself (and the cat) far enough away to survive the explosion. When Boom-Boom came to look for proof of the kill, Moon Knight rose up out of the rubble to confront him. Boom-Boom wisely chose to make a run for it and managed to jump from an overpass onto a passing truck and escape, waving to MK as he did so.
The next day, the various underworld informants were unwilling (or how Crawley said it "recalcitrant") to mention any of the five hitmen, fearing reprisals if they did. Later that day, Bull, Dragon and Razor set a trap for Moon Knight. They let it be known that Dragon and Razor would be going to watch that night's boxing matches at Madison Square Garden. As they had planned, Moon Knight spotted them and followed them to a gutted tenement north of Central Park. Bull (who apparently was already there) remained in hiding while Razor and Dragon sprang their trap. Moon Knight converted his truncheon into a nunchuk and, with only two blows, disarmed Razor (possibly snapping his wrist) and knocked him out. Dragon then tried an "unexpectedly rapid attack" with his nunchak but MK evaded his weapon and kicked him in the stomach with enough force to knock him out with that single blow. As Moon Knight recovered from those two fights, Bull came up behind him and punched him in the head. When MK quickly recovered from the surprise attack and kicked Bull in the face just as someone (Frenchie) fired several shots past him, Bull decided that he'd had enough so he smashed right through the tenement's rotting wall and escaped into the darkness outside. Moon Knight then had Frenchie tie up and blindfold both Dragon and Razor and take them to Grant Mansion for safekeeping.
While all this was going on, Ice was relaxing at the Inn Flight nightclub in Queens when he was approached by Marlene, one of the Bomberettes, who asked him to buy her a drink.
(Moon Knight I#4 (fb) - BTS) - Later that night, Boom-Boom and Bull got together and learned that Eddie had been found tied up in the back room of Inn Flight. Realizing that MK had spies everywhere, they decided that it would be easier to just take the money from the Committee than to earn it by killing MK.
(Moon Knight I#4) - Ice was in his hotel room with Marlene when they were interrupted by a phone call from Bull who told Ice that he and Boom-Boom were quitting the hunt for Moon Knight and were going to put the squeeze on the Committee instead. After Bull revealed that MK had spies everywhere, Ice began to suspect that Marlene might be one of those spies and decided to test her by telling her that he had to leave to go to "a meeting with a certain Committee." Ice left the hotel with his rifle case but secretly doubled back so that he could watch the pay phone. When he saw Marlene making a call, Ice realized that she was one of MK's spies. Ice then decided to grab the money and get rid of anybody who might object.
(Moon Knight I#4 (fb) - BTS) - Boom-Boom rigged the abandoned waterfront warehouse where the Committee met with "enough explosives to make this whole joint collapse like a house of cards!"
(Moon Knight I#4) - Boom-Boom and Bull then confronted the Committee, telling them that they had ten minutes to "pay up and get out alive." Unbeknownst to anyone inside, Ice was even then chaining all the doors of the warehouse shut, trapping Boom-Boom and Bull inside with the Committee members. Ice then began to climb to the roof of a nearby building to wait for Moon Knight. The Committee paid up but when they all tried to get out they discovered that the doors had been chained shut from the outside, and Bull realized that Ice must be crossing them. In the ensuing panic, Bull began to batter at one of the walls. Just as Ice got Moon Knight in his sights, Bull managed to break through the wall and escape, but only Frenchie had the presence of mind to follow behind him. Ice fired at Moon Knight just as the explosives Boom-Boom had rigged around the warehouse went off, collapsing the whole building and dropping MK under Ice's sniper-shot.
Landing on the collapsed warehouse, Moon Knight spotted Boom-Boom's hand poking out of the debris and assumed that "he didn't make it." Bull tried to escape by running down a dock to a speedboat and speeding away but Moon Knight, despite fresh fire from Ice, made it onto the boat. Bull punched MK into the back of the boat but as he approached MK to continue his attack Bull was shot in the chest. Realizing that it was Ice who had shot him, Bull swore to kill Ice and turned the boat around but died and collapsed on MK, pinning him in the boat as it completed its turn and soon crashed into the docks and exploded, catapulting Moon Knight onto the dock, stunned but alive. Ice was about to open fire on the stunned hero when Marlene arrived and kicked his rifle away, then fought him hand-to-hand to keep him away from the rifle. By the time Ice had overpowered her, "long minutes" later, Moon Knight had recovered and climbed to the roof where he broke the rifle in two and then used one of the pieces to knock Ice unconscious.
Later, Moon Knight dropped Ice, Dragon and Razor off outside a police station, their hands bound behind them, with a note (pinned to the wall with a crescent-dart) that read "Night Deposit."
Moon Knight salvaged the satchel containing the $125,000 that Boom-Boom and Bull had extorted from the Committee from the debris of the warehouse. As Steven Grant, he gave a third of the money to those who had helped him defeat the assassins "for prudent investment in honor of our dear departed Committee." Grant then took $5,000 ($1,000 "for each of the Committee's failed employees") to pay for a vacation for his helpers and then gave the rest to various worthy charities.
Comments: Created by Doug Moench, Bill Sienkiewicz and Klaus Janson.
It's important to note that this Group Profile is about a group that never actually existed. As I read the story in Moon Knight I#4, the five hitmen hired by the Committee were NOT an organized group of assassins. Instead, they were just five professional killers who happened to be hired to work together to kill a certain difficult target. The name "Committee of Five" is taken from the story's title ("A Committee of 5") and is just a way of referring to all five of them at once that is more convenient than repeatedly calling them "the five hitmen hired by the Committee to kill Moon Knight."
However, while the five hitmen were not an organized group, they did appear to be somewhat familiar with each other. Bull, Dragon and Razor worked together to set a trap for Moon Knight and later, after Bull and Boom-Boom had decided that it would be easier to extort money from the Committee than to keep trying to kill Moon Knight, Bull called Ice to let him know what was happening. However, Ice then betrayed Boom-Boom and Bull and caused their deaths so I guess they weren't that friendly after all.
Of the five hitmen, the only one who might have had superhuman abilities was Bull who could "hit like a truck" and could batter his way through walls with just his bare hands. However, that's not conclusive so maybe Bull just had "peak human" strength?
Clarifications:
Boom-Boom has no known connection to:
Bull has no known connections to:
Dragon has no known connections to:
Ice has no known connections to:
Razor has no known connections to:
An explosives expert who learned his trade mining Haiphong Harbor in Vietnam (presumably) while serving in the US Navy. As a civilian, Boom-Boom used his expertise to become a professional killer whose speciality was planting bombs on the vehicles of his targets. His usual base of operations was never revealed.
Boom-Boom was one of five "seasoned hit-men" who were hired by the Committee to find and kill Moon Knight. After five nights of looking for his target without success, Boom-Boom and the others went to the Committee's headquarters to make their progress reports. When Ice reported that he'd shot at Moon Knight but missed him because "the guy's some kinda spook", Boom-Boom replied, "Shee-oot. He's a costumed clown, Ice."
The next night, Boom-Boom used some fireworks to lure Moon Knight into an alley where he'd hidden some dynamite in a paper bag. Moon Knight knowingly walked into the trap but a cat had torn enough of the paper bag away that MK was able to spot the bomb and get himself (and the cat) far enough away to survive the explosion. When Boom-Boom went looking for proof of the kill, MK rose up out of the rubble so Boom-Boom bolted from the alley. His attempt to light a stick of dynamite while on the run was thwarted when MK used a crescent-dart to cut the fuse but Boom-Boom managed to jump from an overpass onto a passing truck and escape, waving to MK as he did so.
The following night, MK captured both Dragon and Razor but Bull managed to escape. Boom-Boom and Bull got together later and, after learning that Eddie had been found tied up in the back room of Inn Flight, they realized that MK had spies everywhere so they decided that it would be easier to just take the money from the Committee than to earn it by killing MK. Boom-Boom then rigged the abandoned waterfront warehouse where the Committee met with "enough explosives to make this whole joint collapse like a house of cards!" Boom-Boom and Bull then confronted the Committee, telling them that they had ten minutes to "pay up and get out alive." The Committee paid up but when they all tried to get out they discovered that the doors had been chained shut from the outside (by Ice). In the ensuing panic, Bull managed to batter through a wall and escape but only Frenchie had the presence of mind to follow behind him. After the explosives went off and the warehouse collapsed, Moon Knight spotted Boom-Boom's hand poking out of the debris and assumed that "he didn't make it."
--Moon Knight I#4
A big man who used his superhuman(?) strength and his bare hands to kill his targets, Bull was based in Miami, Florida.
Bull was one of five "seasoned hit-men" who were hired by the Committee to find and kill Moon Knight. After five nights of looking for his target without success, Bull and the others went to the Committee's headquarters to make their progress reports.
Two days later, Bull, Dragon and Razor set a trap for Moon Knight. They let it be known that Dragon and Razor would be going to watch that night's boxing matches at Madison Square Garden. As they had planned, Moon Knight spotted them and followed them to a gutted tenement north of Central Park. Bull, who was apparently already there, remained in hiding while Razor and Dragon sprang their trap. Moon Knight managed to knock them both out in only seconds but then Bull came up behind him and punched him in the head. When MK quickly recovered from the surprise attack and kicked Bull in the face just as someone (Frenchie) fired several shots past him, Bull decided that he'd had enough so he smashed right through the tenement's rotting wall and escaped into the darkness outside.
Later that night, Bull and Boom-Boom got together and, after learning that Eddie had been found tied up in the back room of Inn Flight, they realized that MK had spies everywhere so they decided that it would be easier to just take the money from the Committee than to earn it by killing MK. Bull phoned Ice to let him know what they were planning to do and mentioned that MK had spies everywhere. Later, Bull and Boom-Boom confronted the Committee and revealed that Boom-Boom had rigged their warehouse-headquarters with explosives and that they had ten minutes to turn over all the money before the bomb went off and the warehouse collapsed. The Committee paid up but when they all tried to get out they discovered that the doors had been chained shut from the outside and Bull realized that Ice must be crossing them. In the ensuing panic, Bull managed to batter through one of the walls and escape but only Frenchie had the presence of mind to follow behind him. After the explosives went off and the warehouse collapsed, Bull ran down a dock to a speedboat and tried to get away but Moon Knight made it onto the boat. Bull punched MK into the back of the boat but as he approached MK to continue his attack Bull was sniper-shot in the chest. Realizing that it was Ice who had shot him, Bull swore to kill Ice and turned the boat around but died and collapsed on MK before the boat completed its turn. The boat crashed into the docks and exploded but MK was catapulted onto the dock, stunned but alive.
--Moon Knight I#4
A martial artist (karate black belt) and enforcer from Chicago's Chinatown. Dragon used a nunchuk as his weapon.
Dragon was one of five "seasoned hit-men" who were hired by the Committee to find and kill Moon Knight. After five nights of looking for his target without success, Dragon and the others went to the Committee's headquarters to make their progress reports.
Two days later, Bull, Dragon and Razor set a trap for Moon Knight. They let it be known that Dragon and Razor would be going to watch that night's boxing matches at Madison Square Garden. As they had planned, Moon Knight spotted them and followed them to a gutted tenement north of Central Park. Once MK was inside, Razor and Dragon sprang their trap and confronted him. After Moon Knight easily disarmed and knocked out Razor, Dragon tried an "unexpectedly rapid attack" with his nunchak but MK evaded his weapon and kicked him in the stomach with enough force to knock him out with that single blow. After Bull had attacked and been driven off, Moon Knight had Frenchie tie up and blindfold both Dragon and Razor and take them to Grant Mansion for safekeeping.
Hours later, after the last of the hitmen had been defeated, Moon Knight dropped Dragon, Ice and Razor off outside a police station, their hands bound behind them, with a note (pinned to the wall with a crescent-dart) that read "Night Deposit."
--Moon Knight I#4
An employee at the Inn Flight nightclub in Queens, Eddie was paid to take care of anyone who asked nosy questions about Ice or the other hitmen. When two of Moon Knight's agents (Ricky and Ray) came in claiming to be friends of Ice, Dragon and Razor, the bartender sent them to the tail-section of the club where Eddie was playing solitaire. As soon as they mentioned Ice, Eddie pulled his gun on them but Ray distracted him with a question and then jumped him so that Ricky could get the gun. Held at gunpoint by Ray and Ricky, Eddie was forced to reveal that the other two hitmen were named Bull and Boom-Boom. The kids then tied Eddie up and left him in the back room of the club. He was later found there, still tied up.
--Moon Knight I#4
A sniper, Ice was Detroit's premiere hitman and one of the five "seasoned hit-men" who were hired by the Committee to find and kill Moon Knight.
On the fifth night of looking for his target, Ice was near Rockefeller Center when he first spotted Moon Knight. Ice fired one shot from his rifle and saw MK fall over the edge of the ice-rink but when he went to find the body as proof of the kill the rink was empty. Ice was then confronted by Moon Knight who tried to grab him but Ice's rifle went off and MK was blinded by the muzzle flash. In shock, Ice swung his rifle wildly and scored a lucky hit, knocking MK down long enough for him to flee in panic. Hours later, Ice and the others went to the Committee's headquarters to make their progress reports. Ice reported that he'd had MK dead in his sights but had missed him because "the guy's some kinda spook."
Two nights later, Ice was relaxing at the Inn Flight nightclub in Queens when he was approached by Marlene, one of the Bomberettes, who asked him to buy her a drink. Later, Ice took Marlene back to his hotel room but before he could get too far they were interrupted by a phone call from Bull. After telling Ice that he and Boom-Boom had decided that it would be easier to just take the money from the Committee than to earn it by killing MK, Bull revealed that MK had spies everywhere. Suspecting that Marlene might be one of those spies, Ice told her that he had to leave to go to "a meeting with a certain Committee." Ice then left the hotel with his rifle case but secretly doubled back so that he could watch the pay phone. When he saw Marlene making a call, Ice realized that she was one of MK's spies. Deciding to try to grab the money and get rid of anybody who might object, Ice went to the Committee's warehouse and chained all the doors shut, trapping Boom-Boom and Bull inside with the Committee members. Ice then climbed to the roof of a nearby building and laid in wait for Moon Knight. When MK did arrive, Ice got him in his sights but just as he fired the explosives Boom-Boom had rigged around the warehouse detonated, collapsing the whole building and dropping MK under Ice's sniper-shot. When MK went after Bull, who had gotten out before the explosion and was trying to escape in a speedboat, he drew Ice's fire and one of Ice's shots struck Bull in the chest, fatally injuring him. Later, after the speedboat had crashed and MK had been catapulted onto the dock, Ice was about to open fire on the stunned hero when Marlene arrived and kicked his rifle away, then fought him hand-to-hand to keep him away from the rifle. By the time Ice overpowered her, "long minutes" later, Moon Knight had recovered and climbed to the roof where he broke the rifle in two and then used one of the pieces to knock Ice unconscious.
Later, Moon Knight dropped Ice, Dragon and Razor off outside a police station, their hands bound behind them, with a note (pinned to the wall with a crescent-dart) that read "Night Deposit."
--Moon Knight I#4
A "blade freak" who liked "the quiet touch of a nice sharp blade," Razor was one of five "seasoned hit-men" who were hired by the Committee to find and kill Moon Knight. After five nights of looking for his target, Razor and the others went to the Committee's headquarters to make their progress reports. Razor reported that, "Five nights of lookin' for this Moon Knight character and I ain't even seen so much as a white flash of cape or cowl."
Two days later, Bull, Dragon and Razor set a trap for Moon Knight. They let it be known that Dragon and Razor would be going to watch that night's boxing matches at Madison Square Garden. As they had planned, Moon Knight spotted them and followed them to a gutted tenement north of Central Park. Once MK was inside, Razor and Dragon sprang their trap and confronted him. Moon Knight converted his truncheon into a nunchuk and, with only two blows, disarmed Razor (possibly snapping his wrist) and knocked him unconscious with a blow to the side of his head. After Dragon was defeated just as quickly and Bull had attacked and been driven off, Moon Knight had Frenchie tie up and blindfold both Razor and Dragon and take them to Grant Mansion for safekeeping.
Hours later, after the last of the hitmen had been defeated, Moon Knight dropped Dragon, Ice and Razor off outside a police station, their hands bound behind them, with a note (pinned to the wall with a crescent-dart) that read "Night Deposit."
--Moon Knight I#4
images:
Moon Knight I#4, page 4, panel 2 (group shot)
Moon Knight I#4, page 12, panel 2 (Boom-Boom)
Moon Knight I#4, page 16, panel 5 (Bull)
Moon Knight I#4, page 16, panel 1 (Dragon)
Moon Knight I#4, page 9, panel 2 (Eddie)
Moon Knight I#4, page 2, panel 3 (Ice)
Moon Knight I#4, page 15, panel 1 (Razor)
Appearances:
Moon Knight I#4 (February, 1981) - Doug Moench (writer), Bill Sienkiewicz (pencils), Klaus Janson (inks), Denny O'Neil (editor)
First Posted: 11/28/2005
Last updated: 07/30/2012
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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