Dane WhitmanBlack Knight

A scientist swept into a world of romantic adventure and mysticism, Dane Whitman is the modern-day Black Knight, heir to a legacy that stretches back to the legendary kingdom of Camelot in 6th Century Britain.

Family Legacy

Born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Dane Whitman grows up to achieve a Master’s degree in physics. When his super-criminal scientist uncle Nathan Garrett, AKA Black Knight, lay dying, he urges Dane to redeem the family name and the Black Knight guise by using it in the service of justice. Dane agrees and works to master his late uncle’s weapons and technology, creating a winged horse he named Aragorn.

A scientist himself, Dane and his assistant Norris created a magnetic ray device designed to communicate with life in outer space. They unwittingly contacted exiled Earth-born super-criminal Magneto, who used their transmission to return to Earth. By this time, a treacherous Norris had attacked Dane in hopes of killing him and claiming sole credit for their work, but Magneto imprisoned both scientists, demanding that they serve him. Dane escaped and went into action for the first time as the Black Knight, trying to warn the Avengers that Max Eisenhardt, AKA Magneto, had captured their teammates, Pietro Maximoff, AKA Quicksilver, and Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch; but the Avengers mistook Dane for his uncle and attacked him. The misunderstanding was soon cleared up, but an irritated Whitman flew off after delivering his warning.

Scientist and Superb Swordsman

Highly intelligent, Dane is a trained unarmed combatant, superb swordsman and expert horseman. Though specializing in physics, he is proficient in a wide array of advanced sciences and technologies, including genetic and mechanical engineering. He has strong strategic and tactical skills. 

When Dane touches his mystic pendant and invokes the name of Avalon, he conjures up his equipment and steed. His armor and weapons are extremely lightweight but supernaturally durable. His Shield of Night not only protects him from most attacks but also absorbs the energy of the forces directed against it. He can then release that stored energy in the form of power blasts from his blade, the Sword of Light. His winged steed Strider can fly at great speeds and is is even capable of traveling underwater. While riding Strider, Dane is magically able to breathe regardless of his environment.

Dane sometimes employs the Ebony Blade, an indestructible, enchanted sword that cuts through any substance. It can also deflect, disrupt, absorb or penetrate energy fields and energy beams, including mystical energies; however, long-term use of the Blade can have negative mental or physical effects, especially if the Blade is used to shed blood or kill, in which case the blade usually compels its user to seek more bloodshed. Long-term wielders of the blade develop a mystical connection with it, and under certain conditions can transport themselves through space and even time to the Blade’s location if they have been separated from it. The spirits of people slain by the Blade are sometimes trapped within an astral realm linked to the sword. The Blade is said to render its wielder unkillable, though its sister weapon, the Ebony Dagger, can overcome this mystical protection.

The current status of the Ebony Blade (and how many duplicates of same may exist) is a matter of some confusion. Sean Dolan, AKA Bloodwraith, was the Blade’s most recent longtime wielder, and how or if he may have lost the Blade remains unrevealed, but several other people have more recently wielded some version of the Ebony Blade: Dane Whitman, who was housing his version of the Blade in the Black Knight Museum before he recently began using it again; a seemingly unrelated new Black Knight, who serves as an overzealous agent of the Vatican and comports himself as a modern-day religious crusader, recently participating in a super-criminal assault on the “heathen” nation of Wakanda; and Wakanda’s ruler, T’Challa, AKA Black Panther, who stripped the Vatican’s knight of his Blade and kept it for his own use thereafter. One of these recently-employed Blades may be the late Proctor’s Ebony Blade, an alternate-reality version of the sword, last seen in the custody of the Avengers.

Dane’s notable past weapons include his power lance and his laser sword. His original primary weapon, a mechanical power lance, was outfitted with heat beams, force beams, gas emitters and bola launchers. His laser sword, also known as his neural sword or photonic sword, generates an adjustable “blade” of energy which can act as a penetrating laser or as an immaterial energy column that stuns a victim without doing physical damage.

Dane first rides Aragorn, a genetically engineered white horse with wings; Aragorn’s bird-like wings enable him to fly, with enough thrust to carry aloft several passengers as well. Though they get separated during Dane’s time in the Crusades.

Amergin, High Druid of Avalon, gifts Dane his second steed Valinor, a flying black horse with bat-like wings, but the Bloodwraith later usurps command of Valinor. For a time, Dane rides an atomic steed, one of the mechanical flying vehicles manufactured and employed by the High Evolutionary’s Knights of Wundagore.

Enemies Across Dimensions

Despite being distantly related to Mordred and Morgan le Fay, Dane defends Otherworld and goes up against them a couple times with the help of Victoria Bentley, Sean Dolan, and Valkyrie as well as the Avengers. 

The Irish orphan Sean Dolan at first works alongside Dane, but is later transformed by his Ebony Blade into the Bloodwraith. He steals the blade and kills Dane’s ally Victoria Bentley and the Black Knight goes on to face him and several other occasions.

In Otherworld, Dane also battles Necromon and his agents as well as Iron Ogre. Back in his home reality (Earth-616), Dane faces Exodus, the Herbert Wyndham, AKA High Evolutionary, and Proctor, and defeated the Supreme Intelligence.

Compatriots and Companions

As an heir to the Black Knight mantle, Dane inherits the guise from his uncle Nathan Garrett. The line going back includes Sir Percy of Scandia, Sir Raston, Sir Eobar Garrington, Sir William and Sir Henry. Additional ancestral relations Sir Dandel, Lady Evaine, Lady Rosamund, Edward, Geoffrey are all deceased. Dane’s distant ancestral relations include Dafydd ap Iowerth, Arthur Pendragon, Mordred the Evil, and the sorceress Morgan le Fay.

Throughout his time as the Black Knight, Dane joins superteams like the Avengers, Excalibur, Knights of Wundagore, Heroes for Hire, Queen’s Vengeance, Ultraforce, the agents of Merlin, Champions of Otherworld’s Camelot, King Richard’s army, MI13, Euroforce and Ultragorce. He is also an associate of The Defenders and infiltrates the Masters of Evil and in so doing he helps the Avengers defeat them.

Dane has a strong attraction towards Crystal of the Inhuman Royal Family, but she maintains her marriage to her husband Quicksilver and Dane moves on to the time-displaced Eternal Sersi. Together fighting off Proctor, an alternate-reality (Earth-374) counterpart of Dane, Sersi and Dane later abscond to travel across dimensions, though they eventually part ways.

A Cross-Dimensional Odyssey

Later, Dane infiltrated Ultron’s Masters of Evil, helping the Avengers defeat them. Inheriting Garrett Castle (formerly Castle Scandia) from his uncle, Dane visited the property, where Sir Percy’s spirit invited Dane to succeed him. Dane drew the sword from its scabbard and bested its mystical Guardian in combat, earning the right to wield the Ebony Blade as Percy’s true successor. Shortly thereafter, the spirit of Mordred—allied with and empowered by the evil lords of the Netherworld bordering the mystical realm of Otherworld—sent the supernatural assassin le Sabre after Dane, who defeated his attacker. Soon realizing that the Ebony Blade compels its wielder to seek bloodshed, Dane resisted its lethal spell, though he very nearly slew his ex-assistant Norris under the Blade’s influence. Dividing his time between England and America, Dane aided the Avengers on occasion, once alongside the sorcerer Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange. Whitman was finally awarded official Avengers membership after rescuing the team from Kang, but he was strictly a reservist as he spent so much time overseas. Finding it harder to resist the Ebony Blade’s corrupting properties, Dane tried unsuccessfully to destroy it, but later reclaimed it after it fell into other, more dangerous hands.

Seduced and turned to stone by the evil Amora, AKA Enchantress, Dane found his spirit drawn back to the 12th Century, where he inhabited the body of his ancestor, Eobar Garrington, and fought in the Crusades as the Black Knight. During Dane’s absence from the modern era, his petrified body was animated by Ultron and pitted against the Avengers, who were forced to smash it to rubble. Back in the Crusades, the true Black Knight engaged in years of bloody warfare under the Ebony Blade’s influence, with control of his form alternating between the minds of Garrington and Whitman and combinations of the same. His foes included the spirit of Mordred, whose presence in this era had drawn Whitman’s spirit there in the first place via Merlin’s magic. When Garrington encountered time-displaced modern-era heroine Sersi and the equally time-displaced spirit of her lover, a future incarnation of Dane Whitman, he aided them and ultimately decided to give his body over to Whitman’s spirit entirely, with Eobar’s spirit apparently moving on to a higher plane. Sersi and Whitman-as-Garrington went on to battle Garrington’s rogue comrade Bennet du Paris, AKA Exodus, a mutant minion of En Sabah Nur, AKA Apocalypse; but Paris ultimately refused to kill “Garrington” and turned on Apocalypse, who entombed Exodus in the Swiss Alps for centuries. Sersi and the future incarnation of Dane’s spirit returned to their own time, while Whitman-as-Garrington continued adventuring in the 12th Century until he died helping the druid Amergin and modern-day heroes Anthony Ludgate Druid, AKA Doctor Druid, and the Avengers defend the legendary land of Avalon from the Fomor. In the process, Amergin sent Dane’s spirit back to the modern era, where his original body was magically restored. By this time, Dane had gained a new mystical winged steed, Valinor, to replace Aragorn, whom Brunnhilde, AKA Valkyrie, had adopted during Dane’s time in the Crusades.

Shortly after Dane’s return, Merlyn (formerly Merlin) teamed him with Brian Braddock, AKA Captain Britain, in defense of Otherworld, a mystical extradimensional realm encompassing Avalon, where Merlyn had long resided and in which Camelot had been rebuilt. Alongside allies such as Merlyn, Moondog and the Proud Walkers (notably Vortigen), Whitman and Braddock fought Mordred and many other agents of the Nethergods’ leader Necromon, who had conquered the Netherworld and wished to conquer Otherworld and Earth as well. During the Otherworld conflict, the Iron Ogre shattered the Ebony Blade; Dane replaced it with King Arthur’s mystical blade Excalibur, loaned to him by the Lady of the Lake. 

Later, Dane and Captain Britain helped resurrect King Arthur himself, who reclaimed his Excalibur while Dane regained the Ebony Blade, which Camelot’s smith Weyland had reforged for Merlyn. Arthur ultimately teamed with the Black Knight to slay Necromon during the final battle for Camelot, which was destroyed; however, Vortigen offered to rebuild Camelot within his own kingdom in Otherworld, and Arthur accepted. Though invited to stay in Otherworld, Dane went home, discovering his castle had been bought by its caretaker Victoria Bentley to prevent the British government from seizing it for unpaid taxes. By this time, Dane’s bloody battles in the Crusades and Otherworld had reactivated the Ebony Blade’s curse, corrupting his mind until the blade’s evil was temporarily purged with the aid of Doctor Strange and Sir Percy’s spirit. Over time, Dane’s memories of Otherworld became vague and incomplete, more dream-like than real.

Returning to America, Whitman rejoined the Avengers. Smitten with his teammate Janet Van Dyne, AKA the Wasp, but rejected by her, Dane shared an adventure and a kiss with his admirer Rita DeMara, AKA Yellowjacket, a small-time super-criminal who later became an honorary Avenger before her death. Whitman’s time-displaced 27th century descendant Ernst Wythim, the Last Knight, tried to slay Dane in an effort to destroy his own timeline and erase his own blood curse, but Wythim failed. When Dane’s teammate Namor McKenzie, AKA Namor the Sub-Mariner, used the Ebony Blade to slay the Leviathan (the monstrously mutated and immensely destructive Marrina), the sword’s blood curse warped Dane’s mind and slowly petrified his body into a Starstone-like material (leading Hogun the Grim to use the immobile Dane as a human weapon against Asgard’s foe Seth). Dane was ultimately restored to normal through the combined efforts of Sir Percy’s spirit (who reanimated Dane’s body by inhabiting it for a time), Victoria Bentley, Captain Britain, Irish orphan youth Sean Dolan, Valkyrie, and Doctor Strange, thwarting a new conquest scheme by the spirits of Mordred and Morgan le Fay in the process. 

Upon regaining human form, Dane rejoined the Avengers and soon began wielding an energy sword of his own design, retiring the dangerous Ebony Blade; but the Blade later transformed Sean Dolan into the demonic menace Bloodwraith, who stole the Blade, usurped Valinor and killed Victoria Bentley. Despite these setbacks, Dane became a more central figure in the Avengers, sparking an ethical conflict in the ranks when he was among the rogue Avengers who tried to execute the alien Supreme Intelligence for its genocidal war crimes, and later serving as unofficial field leader under team chair Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow.

Dane’s relationships with teammates Crystalia Amaquelin, AKA Crystal, and Sersi complicated his life further. Dane loved Crystal, the estranged wife of Avengers veteran Quicksilver, but was also drawn to the unstable Sersi, who was madly in love with Dane and formed a “Gann Josin” mental link with him. When Quicksilver tried to reconcile with Crystal, Dane renounced his feelings for her and devoted himself to Sersi. Sersi’s mental instability had actually been artificially triggered by Proctor, a bitter alternate-reality (Earth-374) counterpart of Dane who had been jilted by his world’s Sersi and had roamed the multiverse destroying each reality’s Sersi ever since. Sersi slew her tormentor Proctor but was now too dangerously unstable to remain on Earth. Dane went into other-dimensional exile with Sersi and they had a series of adventures in other realities, notably the “Ultraverse” alternate Earth-93060 where Dane joined and briefly led the Ultraforce super-team. When he and Sersi headed back to their home reality, they made an accidental side trip to the Crusades, during which Dane earned the friendship and enmity of Bennet du Paris, who survived into modern times as the super-powerful mutant terrorist Exodus.

Returning to present-day Earth, Dane joined the corporate super-team Heroes for Hire. At the same time, Dane’s one-time Otherworld ally, the Lady of the Lake, declared him the latest mortal incarnation of the Pendragon (one of the heroic spirits that previously inhabited King Arthur and other champions through the ages) and appointed him the new earthly champion of Avalon. Given a new magical winged steed and mystical weapons by the Lady of the Lake, Dane fought alongside Heroes for Hire for a time, though he and Sersi split up and he soon left to serve as leader of the High Evolutionary’s Knights of Wundagore. Along the way, he tried to rekindle his romance with Crystal, fighting over her with Quicksilver until she spurned both of them. More recently, Dane has converted Garrett Castle into a museum chronicling the lives and exploits of the Black Knight lineage throughout history.

Serving briefly with a one-time Excalibur roster assembled by Captain Britain, the Black Knight has also aided the Avengers against foes such as Morgan le Fay and Mordred, the Bloodwraith (whom Dane monitored for a time alongside Firebird) and Kang the Conqueror. Captain Britain later offered Dane full-time Excalibur membership. Whitman considered it, aiding the group in several adventures, but ultimately departed on a new quest: using the Ebony Blade again of late, Dane has grown convinced that he currently wields some sort of duplicate, and has gone in search of the true blade.

Dane later wielded a fake blade created by Dracula and slaughtered invading Skrulls. Dane foung alongside Doctor Faiza Hussain against Kl’rt, AKA Super-Skrull, until Dane could no longer fight and a new Captain Britain rescued them. Faiza healed Dane and the invasion concluded.

The Ebony Blade began to further influence Dane and his actions, leading him to kill a fake Savage Steel. Rebecca Stevens tried to him help but he denied her offer. Dane was then recruited to lead Euroforce, a team of European Super Heroes, though his mental state deteriorated. He then fled to Weirdworld and lost control over the Blade. He slayed King Zaltin Tar to create a new Avalon alongside Shield and Spear but the Avenger Unity Division arrived to stop him. He was separated from the Blade and taken into custody. Stevens negotiated with Steve Rogers for Dane to remain in Weirdworld since the people relied on him.

Dane later returned to Europe to assist Euroforce against Hydra but he was captured and remained so until the Champions of Europe liberated them.