The son of soldier-turned-businessman Daryl Taylor and a one-night stand, Donyell grew up knowing little about his father. As an adult, he hated Daryl's legitimate son Dwayne, now the costumed adventurer and leader of the New Warriors called Night Thrasher. Donyell, calling himself Bandit, seductively approached Silhouette, Thrasher's estranged girlfriend, before confronting Thrasher himself. Although evenly matched for a time, Bandit played on his brother's insecurities and beat him severely. Becoming unstable, Bandit abducted Silhouette to lure Thrasher into a final showdown, but Thrasher won the rematch; although Thrasher was willing to reconcile with his newly discovered brother, Bandit departed, their relationship unresolved.
Bandit soon became romantically involved with Silhouette. She vanished when the New Warriors were scattered through time in a conflict between the immortal Sphinx and his reincarnated lover, Meryet Karim. Confronting the Warriors' support staff, Bandit agreed to lead other Warrior associates in search of the team, assembling a substitute Warriors roster. Teleported to Egypt by the alien power of Powerpax, they fought both the Sphinx and Karim. Then, upon the original team's return, they joined them in an all-out assault before the Sphinx and Karim merged into a composite being and vanished into the past.
Angered by their relationship, Thrasher parted ways with Silhouette and Bandit, on worse terms than before. Bandit's own grudge was hardly resolved, and he sold information stolen from Thrasher's company, the Taylor Foundation, to competitors. When Silhouette discovered a former enemy, ex-drug dealer Scorch, was now doing business with Thrasher, she and Bandit disrupted a meeting and attacked both men. Bandit had no real interest in the affair but gladly participated in anything to drive Thrasher and Silhouette further apart.
Years later, Bandit turned up in New Orleans where he romanced Bella Donna Boudreaux, leader of the Unified Guilds. Although he furthered the Guilds' criminal endeavours, he perceived Belladonna's ex-husband Gambit, noted thief and X-Man, as an obstacle, and urged the Guilds to kill him. However, to Belladonna's outrage, Gambit revealed Bandit was manipulating her and had never broken off his relationship with Silhouette. The quarrel was interrupted when the Guild members turned on all three, but Gambit and Belladonna cooperated with Bandit to defeat their attackers. Bandit left New Orleans, and recently, reformed the New Warriors, using the codename of his deceased brother.
