Alex Wilder

After discovering the dark truth about his parents, Alex Wilder decided to dedicate himself to making sure that they would survive their evil circumstances. Despite the twisted path that their criminal organization, the Pride, as well as their god-like overloads the Gibborim, set them on, the Wilders remained a family first.

To save his parents from themselves, Alex manipulated his fellow Pride children, the Runaways, to ensure his success. And though he ultimately wound up transported to another dimension, he would still not be denied the life he spent his childhood fighting for.

Wild Start

As young adults, Alex's criminal parents Geoffrey and Catherine Wilder found themselves recruited by the god-like Gibborim into a group called the Pride. Six couples, each with different abilities and talents, would get free criminal reign of the West Coast in exchange for yearly sacrifices of pure souls to the Gibborim. After 25 years, the Gibborim would be powerful enough to destroy the world and head into paradise with the members of the Pride.

When they started having children, the Pride decided to give their offspring their spots. And when teen Alex Wilder discovered this, he considered his parents heroes and developed a plan to make sure the duplicitous members of the Pride would not betray his loved ones.

To make that happen, he manipulated the other kids into going on the run, acquiring new skills, and upsetting the familial balance of power.

Alex's Abilities

Initially, Alex Wilder does not exhibit any super powers, but does possess an expert's ability to manipulate and plan, in addition to his incredible intelligence. A tactical genius, Alex quickly becomes leader of the Runaways and conducts them like an orchestra to perform exactly as he intends. Even with only his mind at his disposal, he proves an incredibly formidable foe to the Runaways and the remaining Pride members.

After spending some time in a hellish dimension, though, Alex seems to gain abilities mighty enough to physically defeat the likes of Tombstone.

Fierce Foes

Though he initially acts like their close friend, Alex ultimately betrays his fellow Runaways, facing off against them to save his parents. He also manages to rub the Gibborim the wrong way, which leads to his apparent destruction at their hands.

When he returns, Alex also runs afoul of Power Man and Iron Fist in his attempts to restart the Pride.

Family and Friends

Alex proves incredibly loyal to his parents, Geoffrey and Catherine Wilder, a pair of criminals who work with the Pride and for the Gibborim.

Although he uses his fellow Runaways, Alex does truly care for Nico Minoru, another member and the object of his romantic affections.

In fact, during his manipulations to secure himself and his parents a place in Paradise, he also reserves a space for Nico, and unsuccessfully tries to bring her into the fold.

Later, Alex became a part of Baron Zemo's Masters of Evil before recruiting Black Mariah and Cockroach Hamilton into his own new version of the Pride.

The Runaways' Runaway

Alex Wilder started out like any rich kid in California. He lived a privileged life, joined his school's audiovisual club, and played online video games revolving around Super Heroes.

For a time, he had no idea that his parents, Geoffrey and Catherine, were members of a group called the Pride—even though they once fought Tony Stark several years before the start of the Runaways' story.

After discovering the truth about the Pride—that they agreed to work for the inter-dimensional Gibborim in exchange for a potential spot in paradise after the god-like beings destroyed the Earth—the young Wilder decided to take matters into his own hands. He developed a long form plan that would turn acquaintances into friends and then friends into enemies.

A year before showing his fellow Pride children how their parents sacrificed a young woman to feed the Gibborim, Alex discovered the truth. Though disturbed by the situation, he assumed his parents had to have a logical reason for their actions. He snuck around and found a copy of their handbook, the Abstract, and learned about the Gibborim's deal with the twelve members of the Pride. The humans would receive incredible power boosts and control of the L.A. crime scene. In turn, they would supply the Gibborim with unsullied souls to empower them. As they grew older and had children, the Pride decided they would all offer their children their spots in paradise.

Soon after reading all this, Alex discovered a conspiracy between two Pride families—the Hayes and Deans—to betray the other members of the group and take the six spots in paradise with their own children. At that point, Alex hatched a plan to stop the other parents, but knew he would need help. So, he found out about the Pride's various hidden safe houses, each filled with tech and dinosaurs and other secrets. He then knew that he needed to enlist the help of the other Pride kids—Nico Minoru, Molly Hayes, Chase Stein, Karolina Dean and Gert Yorkes—in order to bring his scheme together.

The next time all of the parents got together, as the kids hung out at the Wilder house, Alex told them he'd found a cool secret passage while snooping around for Christmas gifts. During the party, he took everyone to see the parents revealing themselves as the Pride, although Karolina had taken Molly, the youngest, back to the rec room before their parents killed the girl. This left Alex, Chase, Gert, and Nico to witness the crime.

With that, the kids decided to break out on their own and take down their parents. Alex served as their leader, especially after he tried calling the cops about the Pride just to have the officer blow him off.

From there, the kids started hitting their parents' various hideouts and secret lairs, acquiring the Abstract, finding Gert's mind-linked dinosaur Old Lace, uncovering Karolina's alien powers, getting Fistigons from Chase's folks, and rescuing Molly from her own parents. Along the way, Alex and Nico began a romantic relationship that would be put to the test in a variety of ways. From there, they holed up in a mansion called the Hostel, which fell below the surface of the Earth during an earthquake.

While out in the world trying to survive, they stopped a convenience store robbery that resulted in Alex welcoming a kid named Topher into their crew. Topher, who turned out to be a vampire, complicated Alex's situation as he became romantic with Nico while Wilder watched, hidden behind a painting. Alex later saved Nico from Topher, and, ultimately, Karolina used her light powers to kill him.

After tangling with Cloak and Dagger, the gang decided to take the fight to their parents. The looming Rite of Thunder proved the best opportunity, as it would bring all of the parents together with the Gibborim for the transference of a soul. Upon breaking into the Gibborim's underwater stronghold, the kids found themselves pinned back; Chase nearly died early on, so he passed the Fistigons to Alex as Gert told Old Lace to follow Wilder if anything happened to her. The more experienced parents easily bested their offspring. Then came the big reveal—that Alex had been a mole for the Pride all along. He knocked Karolina out, took control of Old Lace, and stole the Staff of One from Nico.

With that, he turned to his parents and explained what he'd been doing. He then unfroze Nico from her parents' spell and told her how this all played out. Alex figured that he and his folks would take three of the six spots and that Nico and her parents could round out the group, but she responded by punching him square in the face.

Alex seemed close to winning, until Gert recovered from being knocked out and had Old Lace grab the Staff out of Alex's hand, returning it to Nico. Things then got worse for the traitor as Chase burst in with the Leapfrog. In the ensuing madness, Molly grabbed the container with the young woman's soul and smashed it right before the Gibborim appeared. When the deities talked down to the Wilders, Alex was angered—until he was killed by the Gibborim a moment later.

The Runaways took off, leaving their parents to die in an ensuing explosion.

After he died, Nico attempted to bring Alex back with the Staff of One, but found that even that powerful magical talisman had limits. Then, Alex?s online gaming buddies got together to restart the Pride and bring him back from the past, but instead brought a young Geoffrey Wilder into the present, who tormented the Runaways and killed Gert. That seemed to be the end of Alex?until a mysterious voice started talking to Molly.

That all led to the Gibborim not getting the right amount of energy in their allotted time, which sent the group to an all-white dimension where a voice explained that there was no way out. Alex then revealed himself to be floating in the all-white place.

Alex remained in that void for a long time, and the Runaways eventually fell apart. Chase and Nico got caught up in Arcade's latest Murderworld scheme, which toyed with them on an emotional level and then broadcast it all over the world. That eventually led Chase and Nico to go undercover as villains in the Baron Zemo-run country of Bagalia in order to get revenge on Arcade. While there, Nico took Daimon Hellstrom on as a mentor before he surprised her with the appearance of an old friend: Alex.

The idea was for Alex to help Nico learn how to wield her newfound powers and develop a more strategic mind. After initially trying to flirt with her, he laid some truth on his one-time love: she only used her new abilities when she got really mad, which was not a strength. Eventually sick of doing the right thing, Nico and Alex became an item for a brief time until he told her that Zemo had set this whole thing up as a trap for the Avengers. Zemo and his crew, which included Alex, Deathlocket, Constrictor, and Madam Masque, then escaped in a stolen S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.

More recently, Alex Wilder made his presence felt in Harlem, where he intended to restart the Pride again. He used supernatural software called the Agnitus to completely rewrite criminal records, which helped bring some of Power Man and Iron Fist's longtime enemies like Cockroach Hamilton and Black Mariah to his side. To continue growing his power base, he sent Mr. Fish to hell and took over Tombstone's operation after besting him in a fight.

While Tombstone secretly had Mr. Fish brought back from the hell dimension, Alex summoned a dead magician from the 1930s called Chadoe, and developed a magic-based drug called Redemption that Mariah and the others helped spread all over Harlem. After talking with Brother Voodoo, the former Heroes for Hire discovered that Wilder was attempting to become the Grandmaster of Street Magic.

Cage and Rand caught a break when their assistant-turned-villain Jennie Royce brought them a box containing another demon. Discovering that this important aspect of creating Redemption had been stolen, Alex and Mariah followed suit and showed up at the heroes? office. They were followed by Tombstone and Mr. Fish, leading to an intense battle as Alex magically combined with Chadoe.

As the fight raged, Chadoe decided to take on a new host and ditched Alex in favor of Luke Cage. The heroes managed to send the demon away, leaving Alex drained, but not dead.