RODDY McLEISH

Real Name: Roddy McLeish

Identity/Class: Human, conventional weapons-user; Scottish citizen

Occupation: Assassin
    former ventriloquist

Group Membership: None

Affiliations: Devil, Triad gangs, numerous assassins;
    formerly Wolverine (Logan/James Howlett)

Enemies: Ai-Chio, Wolverine (Logan/James Howlett), Wong Tak-Wah;
    approximately 450 victims over lifetime

Known Relatives: Unidentified son

Aliases: White Ghost, Gweilo (Cantonese for White Ghost, or ghost man or foreign devil)

Base of Operations: Hell;
    formerly upstate New York;
    formerly Hong Kong, China;
    mobile;
    formerly Edinburgh, Scotland

First Appearance: Wolverine II#119 (December, 1997)

Powers/Abilities: McLeish was a supremely skilled assassin, experienced with guns, various bladed weapons, explosives, etc. In his later days, after his injuries, he employed a number of assassins to aid him. When targeting the likes of Wolverine, he used an explosive packed with Adamantium shards. He was also a reasonably skilled ventriloquist and had an extremely high tolerance for alcohol, acquired via lifelong experience.
    Ten years after his injury, he had a number of problems, including a weak heart, as well as probably lung cancer, as he was always coughing up blood. His back did heal well enough that he could stand, though he was much more limited than he was at age fifty.

Height: Approximately 6'1"
Weight: Approximately 200 lbs.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: White

History:
(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - As a child in Edinburgh, McLeish did a ventriloquism act on the stage to help pay the bills.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - Three days after his thirteenth birthday, McLeish killed his first man.
    He killed about 12 people each subsequent year.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish saw a Japanese killer attack a soldier, cutting the top of his arm to the bone circumferentially and then peeling the flesh down his arm like a glove.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish was hired by a woman to kill her ex-husband.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish slew the ex-husband with a big tree saw and floated him downstream like a log. When he showed the ex-wife the head, she said she had wanted to see the whole body to be certain he was dead. McLeish put the head on his knee and used his ventriloquist skills to make it talk to her, telling her it wanted to marry her again and stay with her. She offered McLeish an extra fifty thousand to take the head with him.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish got so that he could only kill someone after drinking four pints of whiskey.

(Wolverine II#122 (fb) - BTS) <15 years before the main story> - McLeish last spoke with his son, who lived in British Columbia.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - In Hong Kong, McLeish earned the title Gweilo, usually a derogatory term for Caucasians, it was used literally to refer to McLeish as the "White Ghost," the best killer in the world (or at least that's what he thought).

(Wolverine II#120 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish met and was impressed with Logan as he violently took out several corrupt Hong Kong cops.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish began meeting up with Logan in a bar in Hong Kong semi-regularly, talking and drinking, though Logan didn't share too many details of his own life.

(Wolverine II#120 (fb) - BTS) - Logan told McLeish about his berserker rage and how he couldn't control himself when it was upon him.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish was hired by a member of the Triad gangs to assassinate film maker Wong Tak-Wah for refusing to lend his star to their production for a month.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish saw Logan battle a Triad enforcer and shatter a knife on his bone, heal from the wound in minutes, and then pop his claws to gut the man.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb)) - McLeish invited Logan to dinner, noting that he had seen what he had done against the Triad. He further warned Logan that he wasn't invulnerable, as he could strip the flesh from his bones, maybe even from his head.

(Wolverine II#121 (fb)) - McLeish, whiskey bottle in hand, stood in the rain and shouted to Logan and to the skies how much he loved killing people.

(Wolverine II#120 (fb)) - McLeish invited Logan to a gathering of his various assassin friends, where he discussed a bullet to the brain as the merciful way to kill a decent man, noting that to do otherwise was to be no better than a greedy wild animal, killing more than he could eat. Wolverine noted that he was a long-time hunter and never killed more than he could eat, after which he left, having had enough of the party, and went home.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish noticed that Logan took his girlfriend, Ai-Chia, to the movies every Thursday and didn't return until 1:30 pm.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb)) - <Ten years before the main story and three months after he had started drinking with Logan> - In Hong Kong, as McLeish approached his 50th birthday, he shared some whiskey and stories with Logan, noting how he had killed around 450 people in his lifetime. He also noted his work was getting harder with age, and that he would eventually stop getting the big contracts and have to stop freelancing...and then someone would remember that McLeish had seen something he shouldn't have, and then someone would come for him. He played a game of stabbing a knife between the fingers of his outstretched hand, but he accidentally cut his own finger, something he'd never done before. As Logan departed to take Ai-Chia to the movies, McLeish noted that it was Thursday.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - While Logan and Ai-Chia were away, McLeish stabbed Ai-Chia's father to death. However, Logan and Ai-Chia left the movie early due to Ai-Chia's dislike for it.

(Wolverine II#119 (fb)) - Logan and Ai-Chia returned to her home at 12:45 pm and saw her dead father. Logan saw McLeish departing by car and took off after him in a motorcycle, first slaying his getaway driver. McLeish took the wheel and swerved into Logan, knocking his cycle over and leaving him behind, wishing he had not come home early that day. McLeish met with the Triad who had hired him aboard a boat, taking his money, and noting that it was pointless to have killed someone over a movie. Having recovered and tracked him down, Logan stabbed his claws into the motorcycle's gas tank and then pushed it down on top of McLeish, breaking his back. Logan planned to throw his cigar down to set off the leaking gas, but the Triad started shooting at him, and the sparks ignited the fuel, which blew up the boat.

(Wolverine II#122 (fb) - BTS) - The side of the gas tank laying on McLeish ruptured first, turning the explosion into thrust that blasted him diagonally through the deck and into the water; McLeish reasoned that being limp from his broken back allowed him to be passively carried by the explosion, saving his life.

(Wolverine II#122 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish later claimed he was recovered by the Triads who spent 10 years piecing him back together, with the price of their efforts being that he kill Logan.
    He also later told Logan that the Triads had nothing to do with anything since the explosion.

(Wolverine II#121 (fb) - BTS) - Upon learning Logan had slain McLeish and been his friend, Ai-Chia broke up with him, no longer able to touch a man with "dead people all over your hands."

(Wolverine II#119 (fb) - BTS) - McLeish began plotting an assault on Logan, gaining the alliance of his assassin associates.

(Wolverine II#121 (fb)) <A week before the main story> - McLeish slew Ai-Chia and left her body in the woods of upstate New York along with a tape player and a motion sensor, intending for Logan to find her there.

(Wolverine II#121 - BTS) - McLeish and/or his associates slew an entire village, hung them on walls, and hooked up a speaker system.

(Wolverine II#119 - BTS) - Wolverine returned to his apartment in Manhattan's East Village to find the dead body of a homeless Gulf War veteran he had gotten to know. On the man's forehead was a picture of Wong Tak-Wah's corpse, and stuck in the dresser next to him was McLeish's dagger. Wolverine pulled the dagger and heard a click, then checked in the cabinet below the knife and saw that he had just released the arming switch of a plastique explosive packed with Adamantium shards (Wolverine had lost his Adamantium at this time, but McLeish apparently did not know that). Wolverine leapt out of the building, but still took some hits and then fell several floors to land atop a car. He realized that McLeish was still alive and gunning for him, and that he would kill any of friends who got in the way. Logan made tracks to get away to protect his friends, and a whole rack of pay phones started ringing as he passed him.

(Wolverine II#120) - As Wolverine rushed towards the garage that held his motorcycle, a pair of McLeish's agents smashed him between their head-on car collision. The one still conscious driver pulled a gun on Wolverine and told him McLeish said, "Hello." Logan took a glancing blow, took out the man without killing him, and then crawled away to heal. Soon after, Logan incapacitated the man guarding the garage where he kept his motorcycle and then headed out of town.
    From a cabin in upstate New York, McLeish received word that Logan was headed his way, as predicted. McLeish started laughing, coughed up some blood, noted that he had some people waiting for Logan, and took a slug of whiskey.

(Wolverine II#121 - BTS) - A group of McLeish's assassin associates ambushed Logan at a "Y" in the road in upstate New York, shooting him off of his motorcycle. Logan took them all out and realized that some of the bullets were Adamantium (as opposed to those used in the city), figuring McLeish had not wanted him dead in the city. Logan pondered which way he had to go to get to McLeish, then realized McLeish was playing mindgames and took control of himself and headed into the woods. He came across a tape deck and motion sensor, which played a message from McLeish, noting how he was the best killer in the world but hadn't been the same since Hong Kong. Logan soon found the body of Ai-Chia, dead for a week. The message goaded Logan to continue up the road to a nearby town where there would be more like this to see. Enraged, Logan lost control and rushed after him, growling.

(Wolverine II#122) - Taking out McLeish's agents as he found them, Logan found an entire village slain by McLeish, who taunted him from a speaker before a gas bomb exploded; the pain of the explosion helped Logan re-focus. McLeish related his survival through the speaker, further noting that he had wanted Logan to kill all of the other assassins so that when McLeish was dead, Logan would be the best killer in the world, rather than one of the others claiming that title. The voice led Logan into a cabin where he was attacked and then took out another assassin before finding the alleged son of the Triad who had died on the boat in Hong Kong. The man told Logan that McLeish had died in Hong Kong and that he had faked his voice to lure in Logan. Noting that Logan's healing factor was rather depleted.  (as intended), the man pulled a gun, intending to fire an Adamantium bullet into Logan's head and blow his brain apart. The man put the gun to Logan's head, telling him how he had been waiting for this moment since he had learned of his father's death at age 13, but Logan impaled the man with his claws, apparently killing him.
    Following the scent of whiskey, Logan approached a closed door and called to McLeish, who fired a poison-coated Adamantium bullet into his chest. As McLeish calmed himself, noting how weak his heart was since the explosion, Logan taunted McLeish, telling him he hated their conversations and had pitied him as just a drunken loser with a vicious streak. McLeish told Logan that everything he'd heard since the first bomb in Manhattan had been a lie: there were no Triads involved, only his assassin colleagues and hirelings. Logan revealed that he had been an agent of Canadian intelligence and had tracked down his son in British Columbia and had left him six feet under. Logan taunted McLeish, telling him to kill him and that he had already won. When McLeish rushed him, Logan popped his outer two claws on either side of McLeish, noting that there was one claw left. McLeish's heart then gave out and he coughed up blood and collapsed, dead.
    Noting that he had never found out where McLeish had gotten all of the Adamantium from and that he had never met his son, Logan took a sip of whiskey, and poured the rest on McLeish's corpse. He obtained some gas tanks, emptied one around the body, left the building, and then fired a bullet that blew up another tank.

(Wolverine IV#2) - McLeish was one of the many souls under the Devil's control that Wolverine fought.

Comments: Created by Warren Ellis, Leinil Francis Yu, and Edgar Tadeo.

    McLeish's murder of Ai-Chia's father takes place early in the modern era, after Logan got his Adamantium. McLeish's more recent attacks on Logan took place during the time when Logan was bereft of the Adamantium, though McLeish didn't know that at first.

    I'm really not sure about the order of all the flashbacks...just going with my best guess.

Per Wikipedia

Gweilo (鬼佬; Jyutping: gwai2 lou2; Cantonese pronounced [kwɐ̌ɪ lə̌ʊ]; sometimes also spelt Gwailo) is a Cantonese term for Caucasians, and has a long racially deprecatory history of use; however, nowadays it is usually not considered derogatory by Cantonese speakers. Gweilo literally means "ghost man"[2]. The term is often translated into English as foreign devil. The term arose when the first group of Europeans appeared in China as they were associated with barbarians due to their behaviors.[3] For more than 4000 years, Chinese people has the image of its borders continuously breached by uncivilized tribes given to mayhem and destruction. Hence foreigners were referred to as foreign devils.[3] Historically in Southern parts of China, the term Foreign devil (鬼佬) was used. In Northern parts of China, the term Ocean ghost (洋鬼子) was used

His first name was revealed in his profile in Wolverine: Weapon X Files.

Profile by Snood.

CLARIFICATIONS:
No KNOWN connections to:

images: (without ads)
Wolverine II#121, p7 (face close-up)
        P8 (full body)
    #122, p17, panel 3 (later appearance)

Appearances:
Wolverine II#119 (December, 1997) - Warren Ellis (writer), Leinil Francis Yu (penciler), Edgar Tadeo (inker), Mark Powers (editor)
Wolverine II#120-122 (January-February, 1998) - Warren Ellis (writer), Leinil Francis Yu (penciler), Edgar Tadeo (inker), Mark Powers (editor)
Wolverine IV#2 (December, 2010) - Jason Aaron (writer), Renato Guedes (pencils), Jose Wilson Magalhaes (inks), Jeanine Schaefer (editor)

Last updated: 03/25/13

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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