THE FREELANCERS

Membership: Bernard, Fraley, Lezar, Maiscott, Jerry Perricone, Price, West

Purpose: To capture the D.P.7 for the Clinic for Paranormal Research

Aliases: None

Affiliations: Clinic for Paranormal Research (Tracy Speck, others)

Enemies: Charlotte "Friction" Beck, Demon, E.S.People (Dan, Holly, Keith, Mary Lou, Victor, Walt) Lenore "Twilight" Fenzl, Stephanie "Viva" Harrington, Dave "Mastodon" Landers, Randy "Antibody" O'Brien, Scuzz (Dennis Cuzinski), Jeff "Blur" Walters, the Woodsman

Base of Operations: Mobile, though reporting back to the Clinic for Paranormal Research, 

First Appearance: D.P.7#6 (April 1987)

History:
(D.P.7#6 (fb) - BTS) - When the seven members of the third test group of paranormals attending the National Institute for Paranormal Research's Clinic in Wisconsin went on the run, the Clinic initially tried to hunt them down using trained members of the first test group. However, when it became clear they weren't up to the task, the Institute started assembling a team of freelance bounty hinters to take up the pursuit. 

(D.P.7#6) - With a team of seven freelancers finally hired and brought together at the Institute's headquarters, Institute head Philip Nolan Voight briefed them on their targets, warning them that each possessed dangerous paranormal abilities and so they should be approached individually to afford the best chance of apprehending them.

(D.P.7#2 - BTS) - The freelancers' hunt was made easier because one of the Clinic's loyal paranormals, Tracey Speck, was using her powers to periodically enter the escaped paranormals' minds and see through their eyes to discern their locations.

(D.P.7#6) - On the trail of Dennis "Scuzz" Cuzinski, Lezar and Benard arrived at Bean City, a Wisconsin biker bar, in time to witness the aftermath of a rampage by their teenage target. Seeing the destruction he had caused, including a number of burning motorbikes, Bernard noted to Lezar that they'd not been briefed that he was that powerful, but Lezar mused that adolescence put kids through lots of changes. Bernard informed Lezar that he'd warned the others that Scuzz was heading in their direction, and Lezar confidently stated that he felt it was safe to say Scuzz was as good as nabbed.

(D.P.7#7) - Driving down the highway Price spotted Scuzz race by in the opposite direction on a stolen motorbike. He called Fraley on the carphone to tell him, and instructed him to let Scuzz pass him when their paths crossed.

(D.P.7#7 - BTS) - Rather than try to capture Scuzz while he was riding the bike, the hunters covertly tailed him until he stopped at an isolated farmhouse. With his powers having burned all his clothes off, Scuzz sought refuge from the freezing Wisconsin temperatures inside the farmhouse, leaving the bike's keys in the ignition. The hunters moved in and removed the keys in anticipation that Scuzz would likely soon return to his transportation.

(D.P.7#7) - As expected, Scuzz soon dashed from the house, now dressed again but pursued by the owners, Orville and Emma. When he reached his bike Price shot the boy with a tranquilizer, and the other hunters loaded their unconscious catch into one of their vehicles to return to the Clinic. Bernard flashed Orville some credentials, telling the farmer that the boy was a dangerous fugitive they had just apprehended, and apologized for disturbing them.

   Shortly thereafter Jerry Perricone and Maiscott did a drive pass on the Sheboygan home of Stephanie Harrington, another of their targets, and spotted that target Dave Landers was sitting in an RV outside the house. Perricone wondered if they should attempt to capture him then and there, but Maiscott pointed out that his companions Lenore Fenzl and Stephanie Harrington might come out of the house at any minute, so it would be better to wait until their apprehension attempt wouldn't be interrupted. They drove up to the next block and parked, so they could keep an eye on their prize from a safe distance.

   Back at the biker bar Fraley and Bernard watched some more of their targets, Charlotte Beck, Jeff Walters and Randy O'Brien, showed up in a pick-up truck on Scuzz's trail, seeking to locate their missing friend. O'Brien went into the bar alone to question the patrons, isolating him from the others, but the hunters decided it was too crowded with potential witnesses for a clean hit, so they instead let Walters return to the vehicle and watched as their targets drove off, confident they could apprehend them later. Presumably tailing them, West and Lezar caught up with the pick-up truck as the group visited the hospital and O'Brien went inside. When Walters then ran off too, leaving Beck alone in the car park West called Speck, requesting she use her powers to confirm what Walters and O'Brien were doing. She confirmed that O'Brien was visiting a man Scuzz had injured back at the bar and Walters was making a call from a pay phone. West decided it was safe to move in, so he walked by the pick-up holding a handkerchief over one eye, pretending to be injured and in distress, and asked if Beck could direct him to the Emergency Room. When she rolled the window down, the shot her with a tranquilizer.

(D.P.7#7 - BTS) - The two hunters then quickly moved Beck to their vehicle and applied a hasty disguise - a red-blonde wig, pink skin make-up, and jacket - to the African American woman, so that she would not be recognizable at a quick glance.

(D.P.7#7) - Moments later Walters returned to the pick-up, and when he saw Beck was absent he raced around the parking lot looking for her, but missed his disguised and unconscious friend sleeping in West's arms.

   Meanwhile Harrington's group were visiting a different hospital, and Harrington went in alone to visit her husband, who had been unintentionally injured by Landers during the home visit. As she took the elevator to leave Maiscott and Perricone were inside waiting for her, posing as an orderly and patient in a wheelchair respectively. Once the doors closed they tranked her and swapped her unconscious body into the wheelchair, so they could take her out looking like two orderlies transporting a patient.

(D.P.7#8) - Perricone and Maiscott slipped out the back of the hospital with Harrington, where Bernard and Fraley were waiting with a van to load her into. Fraley told them to hustle as Landers and Fenzl were still nearby. When Maiscott (?) asked if the others had scored yet, Bernard confirmed that West's group had Beck, and Maiscott cheerfully noted "three down, four to go."

   In another part of Wisconsin Lezar (see comments) called the Clinic on his car phone to confirm that he and West had apprehended Beck, and to ask Speck to check if anyone was pursuing them. Looking through Walters and O'Brien's eyes she confirmed the hunters were in the clear, and Lezar told his partner this, prompting West to wonder if she could look through their eyes too.

   A few hours later Bernard, Price, West, Maiscott and Perricone caught up with Walters and O'Brien's pick-up, trailing them until they stopped for gas, but instead of splitting up both men went into the gas station. Price noted that he was tired of tailing them all over the state waiting for them to separate, and that he just wanted to get the job over so he could return to normal security work. Bernard agreed, suggesting they could end the run-around there, and so while he acted like he was filling up the hunters' car's tank, Price shot out one of the pick-up's tires with a silenced pistol. Bernard then went into the gas station and, after "checking" who the pick-up belonged to, informed O'Brien that he had a flat. O'Brien and Walters came out to confirm, but the former was suspicious of the sudden blow-out when the tire had been fine before, and asked Walters to covertly check out Bernard's car using his superspeed. Zipping round behind Bernard's car Walters spotted that the passengers were armed, and realized they were from the Clinic. Racing back to O'Brien, Walters snatched his friend up and sped off, so fast that O'Brien just seemed to vanish from the freelancers' perspective. Realizing they'd been made, Bernard told the other hunters to fan out and search, reasoning that they should still be able to capture at least one of their targets.

  With the weight of his friend slowing him down to normal human speed, Walters was unable to outpace the hunters, who soon spotted him as he ran onto a farm behind the gas station and gave pursuit. O'Brien told his friend to ditch him so at least one of them could escape, but rather than escaping himself Walters decided to fight the hunters to give his friend the chance to get away. Racing towards the hunters at high speed he struck down Bernard before anyone could shoot him. then dodged as Price fired and knocked him down too. However, having not eaten recently, hunger was beginning to slow Walters down. West told Maiscott to spray fire at their target, believing he couldn't dodge them all.

(D.P.7#8 - BTS) - However, West was wrong, and despite slowing, Walters did dodge all the shots and knocked both of them out too, though this left him exhausted and barely able to move.

(D.P.7#8) - O'Brien meanwhile was ambushed by Perricone and tranked. As Walters stumbled over looking for his friend, Perricone shot him too.

   Simultaneously in Sheboygan Lezar and Fraley took the chance to slip into Fenzl and Lander's RV while it was parked and empty, and waited for the last remaining targets to return. When they did, the hunters remained hidden until the RV was stopped at traffic lights, and shot both targets from behind. Fenzl was knocked out, but the superhumanly strong Landers managed to remain conscious, jumped out and fled. Unsure he could rescue his friend without being knocked out by further trank darts, Landers fled, berating himself as a coward. As Lezar transferred Fenzl to their car, Fraley informed him of Landers' escape, but Lezar warned him to stay on guard in case he came back to try and free their captive. Fraley told him that he'd just heard from Price confirming O'Brien and Walters' capture, and Lezar laughed at the fact they'd captured six of the seven targets in just four days. Fraley wondered if there were enough of "these weirdos" around that they could become full time "freakhunters," admitting that he found what they'd been doing fun.

(D.P.7#10) - Maiscott, Perricone, Bernard, Price and Fraley caught up with Landers after the fleeing man boarded a freight train to hide in one of the cars. With the train racing along at speed, Perricone tried to covertly enter the carriage Landers was hiding in, but Landers spotted him and threw him into some boxes, knocking him out. As Landers climbed out of carriage he was spotted by Maiscott, who called for Fraley's help while shooting at their target. Though hit on the shoulder, Landers returned fire with Perricone's gun, hitting Maiscott and tranking him unconscious. As Landers climbed the ladder on the side of the car to try and get on the top of the train Fraley opened fire; Landers ducked just in time, then shot Fraley too, only to be hit in turn by two shots from behind, fired by Bernard and Price. Beginning to become woozy Landers jumped from the train into the snowy wilderness they were passing through, and fled into the woods. Bernard instructed Price to gather the others and deploy search pattern five, then jumped off the train too to maintain pursuit, confident that their final prey didn't have too much of a lead and would be easily captured now he'd been shot with several darts.

   Unluckily for Bernard, Landers was found by a Woodsman, who took the unconscious man in. After spending a freezing night in the snow hunting for their target, Bernard found the Woodsman's cabin the next morning, but while watching covertly from a prone position in the snow while planning his approach Bernard was taken prisoner by the Woodsman, who snuck up on him unheard and held him at arrowpoint. Bernard insisted the Woodsman was interfering in things that were not his concern, and warned that he had five friends nearby, then tried to pull his pistol on the man, only for the Woodsman's dog, Demon, to bite his arm, forcing him to drop the weapon. The Woodsman forced Bernard to enter the cabin, bringing him face to face with Landers, and said he would decide what to do with both of them once he'd heard why Bernard was after him and what he believed Landers had done.

(D.P.7#11 (fb) - BTS) - Evidently deciding that Bernard was in the wrong, the Woodsman helped Landers evade the other hunters and took him deep into the woods to be safe and to train him to fight. While Speck could still see through Landers' eyes, with Landers only seeing snow and trees she was unable to help the freelancers locate him, and so they remained unable to catch him for four months.

(D.P.7#11) - Eventually Landers came back in from the wilderness and used a gas station payphone to call a friend. As he took a ride on the back of a truck hauling lumber the hunters caught up with him, and began shooting as he spotted them and jumped off and began running into the woods. Leaving their car behind the hunters gave chase, hitting him several times with trank darts.

(D.P.7#11 (fb)) - Landers' plight was sensed by a group of telepathic paranormals hiding out nearby, the E.S.People. They came to his aid, using psychokinesis to deflect darts Bernard shot at the by-now fallen Landers then inflicting a temporary seizure on him, twisting Price's perceptions so he saw Fraley as Landers and so shot him, driving Maiscott and Perricone with icy winds back onto a frozen lake which broke beneath them, and causing West's rifle to jam and explode in his face. Creating an illusion that the woods were on fire, the E.S.People forced the hunters to retreat while they escaped with Landers.

(D.P.7#11 - BTS/D.P.7#12 (fb)) - The hunters remained in the area, searching for Landers, but were unable to find the E.S.People's house because it was hidden behind a telepathic cloaking field. As a result he evaded them for two more hours.

(D.P.7#11) - However, when Landers finally emerged from the house he was spotted within a few minutes and shot with multiple trank darts, knocking him out. The freelancers had finally captured their last target.

(D.P.7#12) - The freelancers transported Landers to the Clinic in an ambulance, wanting to get rid of their charge as soon as possible (and before he could revive). As they unloaded him on a gurney at the Clinic doors Lezar admitted the hunt had taken so long he'd began to think they'd never finish it, while Fraley stood by with a pistol drawn, not willing to take any chances. Having handed over their prisoner to the orderlies, the group headed to see Voight to report the mission finally completed. Maiscott admitted he found the clinic creepy with all the "freaks" under one roof, and said he thought someone would torch the place, a comment Price chided him for. Once in Voight's office, Bernard provided their curious employer of the details of the capture, and Voight congratulated them, told them his secretary would give them their pay vouchers and dismissed them, adding that he hoped their services would not be required again. They departed, unaware that the only reason Voight wasn't going to eliminate them (for knowing too much, presumably) was because he couldn't be sure he wouldn't need their services again.

Comments: Created by Mark Gruenwald, Paul Ryan and Romeo Tanghal.

   The group doesn't actually have a name; freelancers is a description rather than a team name, and it's clear that while some of them might have worked together at times in the past they aren't a team on any sort of regular basis. Instead they are individual mercenaries, manhunters, freelance troubleshooters, whatever, who the Clinic assembled for this one job.

   Identifying who is who in the freelancers: Unlike the norm in comics, at no point do the readers get formally introduced to the members of the group. There are no editorial text boxes that give each one a name, they never do a roll call, and they never bother identifying themselves to their targets. Instead we have to piece together who is who from the handful of times someone drops a name in conversation, and that's not very often and on a couple of occasions contradictory. A lot of the "usual suspects" sites that track comic characters don't even mention these guys, and those that do don't agree with one another as to who is who and at least one definitely gets some of them wrong. So I think it behooves this entry to make it clear why it matches a given name to a given freelancer by laying out the evidence and noting where it sometimes seems inconsistent. I suspect the inconsistencies arose at least because Gruenwald hadn't actually decided on names and who was who from the start, but instead assigned them as and when he felt the need, and so errors arose prior to them all the names being nailed down and matched to faces.

First things first - the seven guys seen in the main image at the top are all of the hunters. The image of Voigt to the left confirms that there weren't any others off-panel at the start of the hunt, and we never see any more than seven at any juncture. In theory, sure, someone else could have been hired later, and that could then be used to explain some of the apparent contradictions in subsequent issues, but if that had been the intention I'd imagine some mention would have been made in the story; instead I'm pretty certain that any hunters we see who don't visually match the seven above are down to artistic inconsistencies. Paul Ryan was the penciller across the entire run, but there were varying inkers and colorists.     I'll discuss who is who in order of how consistent and easy it is to match names to faces, rather than the order the names were revealed.

D.P.7#6, the first issue the group appears in, only identifies two of the hunters. One is the bearded white guy with black hair; he's called Bernard by another of the hunters. The only hunter with a beard, Bernard is consistent in his look and name (i.e. he only ever gets called that, and only he ever gets called that), so there's zero doubt in his identification. The same can't be said for the other hunter named in the same panel, Lezar, who doesn't seem to visually match any of the freelancers introduced earlier in the same issue (his hair seems to be too curly for anyone except the next guy I'm going to discuss, but too short for that guy) so we'll come back to him. And sadly, every other hunter suffers from some degree of inconsistencies.

The next most consistent hunter isn't actually identified until their final appearance. He's got bushy ginger curly hair in his first issue, a single panel appearance, but thereafter retains the bushy curly hair but becomes a darker shade of red. The hair looks too bushy to be Lezar (above left), and in #12 we get confirmation that he's not when he gets called Maiscott.

In #7 we get a nice clear confirmation that the blond guy with combed back hair is West. And that would be perfect, except the very next issue a different hunter appears to say he is West WHILE the blond guy is in the back seat of the same car! However the new West doesn't actually match appearances with ANY of the originally depicted freelancers (see the discussion on him below). In real life, this was presumably a mix-up in the storytelling, but in story it can be explained away that driver meant "This is West" in the sense of "This is West's group" rather than meaning he himself was West.

Next up is a guy with black hair of short to medium length, with a side parting. At the end of #7 he's identified as Perricone by his red-haired partner, and then in #8 as Jer by the same guy. Since the name Jerry was also given in #7, though in a panel where we couldn't see who said it to whom, but this guy was shown to be present in the next panel, he's presumably Jerry Perricone, making him the only hunter we have a first name for. The hair matches him to the guy furthest right of the original line-up, though there his skin color was almost golden; presumably he's Asian, but perhaps someone thankfully realized that didn't mean they needed to make his skin yellow.

Up next is the black member of the team (I'm not saying African American because we don't know the nationalities of any of the hunters). There's never a panel where he's clearly named, BUT in #10 the hunters corner their final target, Dave Landers, on a train, and Maiscott calls out to Fraley. Since the black guy is the only hunter on the same carriage as Fraley (the others come at Landers from the other side), and since we know the names of all three other hunters seen on the train (Perricone, Bernard and Price), the black hunter must be Fraley.

And now things get really messy. We've got two guys left from the original image from #6. On the left is a guy with short, red-brown hair (we'll call him A). In the middle we've got a guy with serious cheekbones, squarish nose, a very high forehead and VERY short hair that looks in this image to be black (we'll call him B). One of these has to be Lezar, seen with Bernard above. The other is Price, who identifies himself by name in #7. The trouble is, which is which?

In #7 Price has short, light orange hair (fits the guy on the left) but it's almost crew cut; he's also got a squarish nose, high forehead and noticeable cheekbones (fits the guy on the right). In #8 his hair becomes black for a few pages, but then reverts to orange, but it's back to black in #10 when he is namechecked by Bernard. Given he matches B more in all aspects except that reddish hair color, I think B is Price.

And that just leaves us Lezar. In issue #6 and the image with Bernard above he's got short but noticeably curly hair with some red in it, though a darker shade than A. Issue #8 provides the biggest problem involving Lezar. We get Maiscott or Perricone (hard to tell which from the tail of the word balloon) asking Lezar how the other hunters are doing (see left), and here Lezar is black haired. It's Bernard who answers though, stating that West's group has Charly Beck. We then cut to West's group at more or less the same moment (given the comment Bernard made), and the white haired guy identifying himself as West despite blond West being in the back seat of the same car. But if white haired guy isn't West then who is he? He can't be Bernard, Perricone, or Maiscott, all of whom were with the black haired Lezar. He can't be Price, since in in #12 white-hair and Price are in the same panel together. Could he be Fraley instead of the black freelancer? Except that the one time someone calls to Fraley on panel our white haired guy isn't present but the black guy is, so no, white-hair isn't Fraley. One remaining option is that we have an eighth hunter (also called West?) who joins the group unannounced between the initial line-up in #6 and the last page of the same issue. The other is that white-hair is Lezar, and that the "Lezar" in the panel to the left is someone else - the team's not been together long and don't all know each other too well, so perhaps Maiscott or Perricone called the guy at the van (the black hunter, with his skin miscolored?) by the wrong name.    So if we run with this identification, if only by process of elimination, Lezar was either A or B in the initial line-up in #6 (as noted, for history purposes it doesn't make any difference as both were present), got named at the end of #6 at which juncture he had hair that was a mix of gray (right side) and red (top and left side), was with West in #7 and had black hair when Charlene Beck was captured in #7, was still with West in #8 (and confusingly identified himself by West's name) and now had white hair (despite it only being mere minutes after #7, given that their captive Beck was still in the car with them), and thankfully stayed white haired thereafter. Lending at least a little weight to this is that, apart from the changing hair color he does look like more or less the same guy across the issues - maybe he just likes dying his hair? Though even that wouldn't explain it changing in the middle of a short car journey...

Profile by Loki.

CLARIFICATIONS:
The Freelancers have no known connections to:

• FREELANCE RESTORATIONS - private detective firm based in the U.K., formed by Sir Denis Nayland-Smith--Master of Kung Fu I-94
  
• FREELANCERS - Roxxon security contractors--Champions II#1.MU
  
• F.R.E.E.LANCERS - colloquial nickname for the Fast Reaction Experimental Espionage Branch--F.R.E.E.Lancers (TSR)
• or any other "Free" or "Lancer" characters

images: (without ads)
D.P.7#6. p3, pan3 (main, plus individual headshots in the identification discussion)
D.P.7#7, p23, pan6-8 (capturing Harrington)
D.P.7#8, p20, pan2 (fighting Walters)
D.P.7#6, p3, pan4 (Voight confirms the number of freelancers)
D.P.7#6, p23, pan6 (Lezar and Bernard identify each other)
D.P.7#12, p2, pan5 (Maiscott is identified)
D.P.7#7, p18, pan3 (West identifies himself; also West subprofile image)
D.P.7#8, p9, pan4 (Lezar calls himself West, while actual West is in the back-seat?)
D.P.7#8, p7, pan5 (Jer is named)
D.P.7#7, p23, pan8 (Perricone is identified; also Maiscott and Perricone subprofile images)
D.P.7#10, p10, pan5 and p11, pan2 (Fraley is identified)
D.P.7#7, p2, pan6 (Price identifies himself; also Price subprofile image)
D.P.7#8, p8, pan1 (Lezar is mentioned, but I think he's not actually there)
D.P.7#10, p21, pan3 (Bernard subprofile image)
D.P.7#8, p23, pan6 (Fraley and Lezar subprofile images)

Appearances:
D.P.7#6 (April 1987) - Mark Gruenwald (writer), Paul Ryan (pencils), Romero Tanghal (inks), Ralph Macchio (editor)
D.P.7#7 (May 1987) - Mark Gruenwald (writer), Paul Ryan (pencils, inks), Romero Tanghal (inks), Ralph Macchio (editor)
D.P.7#8 (June 1987) - Mark Gruenwald (writer), Paul Ryan (pencils), Al Williamson, Danny Bulandi (inks), Ralph Macchio (editor)
D.P.7#10 (August 1987) - Mark Gruenwald (writer), Paul Ryan (pencils), Danny Bulandi (inks), Ralph Macchio (editor)
D.P.7#11-12 (September-October 1987) - Mark Gruenwald (writer), Paul Ryan (pencils), Al Williamson (inks), Ralph Macchio (editor)

First Posted: 10/28/2026
Last updated: 10/28/2026

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

Non-Marvel Copyright info
All other characters mentioned or pictured are ™  and © 1941-2099 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
If you like this stuff, you should check out the real thing!
Please visit The Marvel Official Site at: http://www.marvel.com

Special Thanks to www.g-mart.com for hosting the Appendix, Master List, etc.!

Back to Groups