Fictional Character Biography
Andreas and his twin sister Andrea are the children of Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, the leader of the Nazi terrorist organization HYDRA. While the two were still in their mother's uterus they were genetically modified, giving them bio-energy powers which they can use when in physical contact with one another (usually when holding hands). Baron Strucker indoctrinated his children in the beliefs of white supremacy, Nazism, and the Fourth Reich. In adulthood, the twins became the supervillains known as Fenris, and led a terrorist organization which shares their codename.
As Fenris, Andreas and Andrea seek to continue their father's legacy and fight against the X-Men, X-Factor, and Magneto. However, when Andrea discovers that Citizen V is secretly Baron Helmut Zemo, he kills her to prevent her from telling anyone the truth.
Following Andrea's death, Baron Zemo has the Purple Man brainwash Andreas into becoming the new Swordsman. The Purple Man has Andreas flay the skin from her corpse, tan it, and incorporate the resulting leather into the hilt of his sword. This allows him to channel the powers they shared through his sword. Andreas breaks free of the Purple Man's control and joins the Thunderbolts.
Andreas continues to be a member of the Thunderbolts under its new leadership. As a term of his continued participation, his sister is being cloned using cells taken from the skin wrapping his sword hilt. Norman Osborn, his superior, notes that Andreas loved his sister in "many ways", implying an incestuous aspect to their relationship. Teammate and current field leader Moonstone has approached Andreas with a reassurance. If he helps her kill Songbird, Moonstone would be able to make a move to usurp the mentally fragile Osborn as the New Thunderbolt director. Thus two factions seem to be forming amongst the Thunderbolts with Swordsman and Moonstone on one side while Songbird and Dr. Chen stand on the other.
Despite his considerable skill, he has been defeated twice; first, when Jack Flag hit him with the flat of his own sword, and second when Steel Spider threw him through a window and a flat-screen television using a metal limb.
Under the control of four imprisoned telepaths, the Swordsman has taken over his father's hereditary title of "Baron" Strucker, and shaved his head in his honor. He has gained the loyalty of several guards by paying them well, and ordered them to set off a bomb in the Thunderbolts' carrier, the Zeus, to initiate a lockdown. He declares to one of his guards that Norman Osborn will bring him back his sister or he will kill everyone in Thunderbolts Mountain. After a detachment of guards kill most of his loyal guards, Strucker kills off the remaining attacking guards. He then encounters Venom, who declares that he is going to eat Strucker. The two fight, and Strucker runs Venom through with his sword, activating his energy powers while the sword is in Mac Gargan's body. Soon afterwards, Norman Osborn snaps from the pressures of running the Thunderbolts, he reclaims the mantle of the Green Goblin and brutally attacks the Swordsman, crucifying him to a wall with small goblin-daggers.
Not long afterward, it is discovered that Andreas used Arnim Zola to clone Andrea. Although Andreas has his sister back, he decides to complete his contract with the Thunderbolts, leaving the group as a free man. In order to protect his sister while he is on missions, Andreas skins his arm, giving the flesh to Andrea to hold, allowing her to use their shared powers.
Andrea accompanies Andreas and the Thunderbolts to battle the Skrulls during the Secret Invasion. As Andrea confronts a group of Skrulls abord their ship, Moonstone appears from behind and immobilizes him. Bullseye then kills Andrea while she attacks Moonstone. Osborn later convinces Andreas that the Skrulls killed his sister.
The Swordsman saves Songbird's life when Bullseye attempts to kill her. When Swordsman confronts Norman Osborn over the dissolving of the Thunderbolts, Norman loses his sanity momentarily and stabs Andreas through the chest, apparently killing him with his own sword, and throws him out over the mountain.
Read more about this topic: Andreas Von Strucker
Famous quotes containing the words fictional, character and/or biography:
“One of the proud joys of the man of letters—if that man of letters is an artist—is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world’s memory.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“The slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into consideration the setting—the war and the revolution—and the character of the accused—revolutionary leaders of millions who were conducting their party to the sovereign power—you can say without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)