CHALLENGER

Real Name: Oscar Black

Identity/Class: Human cyborg mutate, U.K. citizen

Occupation: Government operative;
  formerly Royal Marine Second Lieutenant

Group Membership: Super Soldiers (Dauntless/Alec Dalton, Dreadnaught/Paul Turner, Invincible/Joseph Hauer, Revenge/Lee Childs, Victory/Kenneth Wright);
   formerly Royal Marines

Affiliations: British Super Soldier program (Sir Marcus Grantby-Fox, Doctor Richard Brown, Doctor Javed Khan, Doctor Bruce McDonald, Doctor Simon Ogilvey, Doctor Arnold Stratton, Empire Chemical Enterprises, others)

Enemies: I.R.A., Revenge (Lee Childs)

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Unrevealed (see comments)

First Appearance: Super Soldiers#2 (May 1993)

Powers/Abilities: Challenger underwent physical enhancements to make him a super soldier. He was superhumanly strong (Class 10), and possessed enhanced reflexes, remarkable endurance and accelerated healing. His appendix was replaced with a genetically-engineered drug-producing organ; when excited it produces "Red," an amphetamine to improve his performance in combat; it produces "White" to bring him down from this high when combat ends, and "Blue" to keep him calm and relaxed once the amphetamine high was over.

   As a Royal Marine Challenger was trained for unconventional, high-stakes combat in extreme environments from arctic to jungle, specializing in amphibious assaults and maritime operations, inserting via sea, air or land. He was skilled in reconnaissance, surveillance, and small tactical operations, high-level weapons handling, close-quarters combat, marksmanship and demolition.

   His Super Soldier uniform and gear included Chobham plate body armor with a head-mounted targeting system, twin .44 automags loaded with Teflon dum-dum rounds, an Adamantium combat knife, Kevlar helmet (which he unfortunately wasn't wearing on his final mission), fire proof fatigues and shock boots. His main weapon was a Royal Enfield X-4 Retaliator with depleted Uranium, armor-piercing rounds, 40mm grenade launcher and integral laser range-finder.

Height: 6'5" (by estimation)
Weight: 240 lbs. (by estimation)
Eyes: Unrevealed
Hair: Black

History:
(Super Soldiers#1 (fb) - BTS) - Since the United States of America successfully created a super soldier with Captain America in the early 1940s the U.K. was among many countries that sought to develop their own process.

(Wisdom#1 (fb) - BTS) - Long dormant following the end of the Second World War...

(Super Soldiers#1 (fb) - BTS) - the sudden rise in the superhuman world population heralded by the debut of the Fantastic Four prompted the British government to feel they needed their own superhuman deterrent to match the nuclear one and to remain relevant on the world stage. The urgency was further increased when the Russians began producing superhumans such as Omega Red and the Crimson Dynamo, and so a new British Super Soldier Program was launched. Inspiration was taken from the American Super Soldier Project iteration that had created Nuke, an individual whose capabilities were enhanced with amphetamines. Wanting the advantages of the drugs but to avoid these new creations becoming junkies as Nuke had, the scientists on the project instead chose to create a genetically engineered organ that would produce the drugs naturally.

   Test subjects were chosen from military operatives who already possessed extensive combat prowess, but who had suffered otherwise fatal injuries during missions.

(Captain America: America's Avenger) - Oscar Black was a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Marines.

(Super Soldiers#2 (fb) - BTS) - Just like the others who would become Super Soldiers, Black was wounded and then officially listed as dead, before being handed over to the Super Soldier Project.

(Super Soldiers#1 (fb) - BTS) - Reconstructed cybernetically, Black also had a new genetically-engineered organ implanted in place of his appendix which reacted to stimuli, producing "Red" when excited, "White" when he needed to calm down, and "Blue" when he was relaxed. In order to facilitate control over him, the scientists induced amnesia in Black by a combination of brain operations, hypnosis and low frequency sound emissions, though this process was only temporary and needed to be periodically repeated. Black was one of six Super Soldiers created.

(Super Soldiers#2 (fb) - BTS) - He was codenamed Challenger, with the others being dubbed Invincible, Dauntless, Dreadnaught, Revenge and Victory. They were run by the Cabinet Office (the ministerial department of the U.K. government responsible for supporting the Prime Minister and his Cabinet), which answered only to the Prime Minister. Rather than being used to fight other superhumans as per the original reason cited for the program, the Super Soldiers were officially "instruments of British government and corporate policy." Among other tasks they were used in Northern Ireland not only to eliminate I.R.A. terrorists but also I.R.A. sympathizers. However, one of the Super Soldiers, Revenge, had become addicted to Red and was growing increasingly, gleefully and murderously violent.

   Eventually Revenge, Dreadnaught and Victory were sent on a mission to the Thai/Cambodian border, where (unknown to the others or their superiors) Revenge went full on-psycho and slaughtered his fellow Super Soldiers as well as the local villagers.

(Super Soldiers#2 (fb)) - When the first trio failed to make contact after several hours, Challenger, Invincible and Dauntless were sent in to investigate. After making their way through the jungle they emerged to find the village they had been heading for aflame, with the bullet-riddled corpses of the locals stacked like firewood and the remains of one of the missing Super Soldiers, similarly bullet-riddled and charred nearly to the bone. Challenger just had time to express his surprise and wonder aloud who could have carried out this atrocity when Revenge suddenly popped up from cover, happily claiming responsibility even as he opened fire. Revenge's shot blew Challenger's head apart, instantly killing him.

Comments: Created by Michael Bennent, Lee Stevens, Andrew Currie and Robin Riggs.

   The Super Soldiers presumably had a base they returned to between missions while they were government operatives, but I don't believe we ever learned where that was. The Super Soldiers Control Centre was on the Yorkshire Moors, but it seems that was not where the Soldiers themselves were based, as Hauer only discovered its location in Doctor Javed Khan's notes.

   Regarding Black's height - we don't have a lot of images to go on, but he's clearly close to Joseph Hauer in height, and Super Soldiers#3 and 4 show that Hauer and USAgent (official height 6'4") are pretty much the same height. In terms of weight, Black is clearly broad and very muscular, so somewhere towards the top end of a bodybuilder of that height seems reasonable.

   We learned Black's first name in the U.K. entry of Marvel Atlas#1; the Super Soldiers entry in Captain America: America's Avenger confirmed his original military branch and rank.

   This profile was completed on 05/10/2026, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 25th anniversary's celebratory event to represent Super Soldiers.  

Profile by Loki.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Challenger has no known connections to:

Dreadnaught and Victory

SBS (Special Boat Service) Sergeant Paul Turner and Royal Marine Corporal Kenneth Wright were both British soldiers so badly injured in the line of duty that they were officially declared dead, but actually handed over to the Super Soldier program. Rebuilt like their fellows, they were assigned the codenames Dreadnaught and Victory respectively, and with their new unit carried out missions in places such as Northern Ireland, where they were effectively a death squad used to kill I.R.A. terrorists and sympathizers. However, a mission to the Thai/Cambodian border proved to be Turner and Wright's last; sent in with the mentally unstable Super Soldier Revenge (Lee Childs), their psychotic teammate turned on both local villagers and them. When the rest of the Super Soldiers - Joseph Hauer, Alec Dalton and Oscar Black - were sent to check why the initial trio had not reported in, they found the dead villagers piled up and the unrecognizable burned and bullet-ridden remains of either Turner or Wright; what happened to the corpse of the other victim remains unrevealed.

Comments: We have no clue whether the remains we see are those of Turner or Wright, because that charred corpse is literally the only image we have of the pair, so even if we knew what each normally looked like we couldn't identify them. In theory the one we didn't see might still be alive - after all, Dalton was believed dead too when Childs attacked the second team, but turned out to have survived.

   Like Oscar Black, we learned Turner and Wright's first names in the U.K. entry of Marvel Atlas#1, while the Super Soldiers entry in Captain America: America's Avenger confirmed their original military branches and ranks.

   Dreadnaught is more commonly spelled Dreadnought, but the former is the spelling used in the comic, and subsequently in the handbooks as a result. It's unclear whether to treat it just as a spelling error on the part of the original writers, or an intentional choice in turn reflecting either a spelling error or intentional choice by whoever assigned the codenames. Regardless, unless we get new in-story evidence, here and in the handbooks it IS an intentional choice, not an error.

--Super Soldiers#2

images: (without ads)
Super Soldiers#2, p15, pan2 (main image)
Captain America: America's Avengers handbook, Super Soldiers entry (recolored headshot)
Super Soldiers#2, p16, pan2 (death)

Appearances:
Super Soldiers#2 (May 1993) - Michael Bennent and Lee Stevens (writer), Andrew Currie (pencils), Robin Riggs (inks), Paul Neary (editor)

First Posted: 09/29/2026
Last updated: 05/10/2026

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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