Known as the unforgiving and ruthless mobsters, the Tracksuit Mafia takes from their tenants without remorse. If anyone gets in their way, they’ll fight tooth and nail, even assassinate them, bro. Pay or goodbye, as they say.
Mobsters
The slumlord Ivan Banionis leads the Tracksuit Mafia in New York City. When he evicts a tenant from his building, he and his cronies, all dressed in matching tracksuit outfits, take possession of their belongings and dump it on the curb. They hassle their tenants and abuse them, threatening to raise their rent, which catches unwanted attention from one of their renters, that of Avenger Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye. For the way that they suck their tenants dry, Barton nicknames them the Tracksuit Draculas.
Pinched
The Tracksuit Mafia’s main antagonist is the Avenger Barton, who lives in Ivan’s building. He gives them so much trouble, that they put out a hit on him. But Barton runs Ivan out of town and rallies the tenants against the Mafia, who all end up in jail. Barton’s protégé Kate Bishop, also called Hawkeye, joins the fray and fights against the Mafia.
Goodfellas
When Barton becomes too much to handle, the leader of the Tracksuit Mafia offers to take him out at a meeting with other criminal organizations such as the Hand, the Maggia, the Circus of Crime, and the Owl Gang. The Mafia hires Kazimierz Kazimierczak, AKA the Clown, a cutthroat assassin. While the Clown gets the upper hand on Barton, he ultimately loses as does the Mafia.
The Mafia’s Side of the Story
When Barton decided to buy Ivan out, he approached the Mafia at their hidden underground casino in the back of a Chinese restaurant. He offered Ivan a bag of cash, money from his Avengers earnings, but Ivan refused. Ivan said he didn’t want fairy godmother money, and planned to drive up the rent, empty the building, and sell it. But Barton wasn’t having it, and decided that attacking them would send a better message. He gets kicked out and shot in the arm, but a dog (later named Lucky the Pizza Dog) came to his rescue, biting the mafia members that were shooting at him. They kicked the dog in the street and got punched out by Barton. The dog gets hit by a car and the Mafia, with Ivan leading the charge, follow Barton to a pet hospital where Barton defended himself. He put Ivan in a cab and sent him off to the airport, literally bought him out and ran him out of town, despite Ivan’s rebuttals that he had a buyer already and it was his right to raise the rent.
When the Mafia attempted kidnapping Ivan’s runaway wife Darlene “Penny” Wright, AKA Cherry, Barton stepped in, again giving them trouble. Meanwhile, other criminal organization heads like Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin, Alice Walker, AKA Typhoid Mary, representing the Hand, and Mister Negative as well as members from the Maggia, the Circus of Crime, and the Owl Gang, were all tired of Barton meddling in their plans. At a meeting where they discussed what to do with him, the Tracksuit Mafia’s leader offered to kill Barton. Plus, the Mafia worked for a company (or companies) who owned all the buildings in a three-block radius of this one building that they no longer owned, so they tried to force Barton into giving the building back, threatening not only Barton, but also their renters. Determined to take Barton out for good, the Mafia responded with a merciless mercenary, the Clown. Barton did his best to stand his ground but the Clown shot him and his brother Barney, AKA Trickshot, leaving him paralyzed.
The Clown also messed with Barton, killing one of his neighbors, and then the Mafia with the Clown laid siege on their building. Ivan returned to lead the attack but when he and the Mafia arrived, they faced a united front. Barton had rallied the tenants, including his brother, to fight back, and his protégé Kate Bishop and dog Lucky backed him up. Bishop took down Ivan while Barton dealt with the Clown, and the tenants took care of the Mafia’s cronies until the police arrived on site to arrest them all.
