History
Andreas de Ruyter came from the family that for at least two generations was obsessed with capturing a Wind Rider. Andreas considered his father and grandfather to be loony terrorists, and refused to follow their steps, unlike his younger brother Claude, who continued their mission. Andreas instead joined the Bureau of State Security of the South Africa.[2][5][6]
One day he was given a mission to buy Vibranium from the Wakanda, but was unable to even enter the country. Andreas was stopped and seriously beaten on the border by King T'Chaka, who refused to sell anything regardless the price. His disgrace was witnessed by young Prince T'Challa.[5]
Andreas retired from service and wasted the next ten years fighting bulls in arena, trying to forget his humiliating defeat.[3][5] One day Claude contacted him to tell that he found a Wind Rider, young street thief Ororo Munroe, and needed Andreas' help to capture her. Andreas agreed to help, they tracked down the urchins and mercilessly killed all the kids and their Teacher, leaving only Zenja, who told them that Ororo left with the Prince T'Challa of Wakanda. Andreas vehemently hated Wakanda ever since his defeat decade ago, so he became much more interested to capture T'Challa, compared to Wind Rider, as he hadn't really believed in her powers. It lead to a conflict between brothers, because Claude wanted to kill T'Challa, while Andreas wanted to capture and exchange him for Vibranium.[3]
Andreas went after T'Challa, but was defeated by him and then Claude shot him with tranquilizer. Claude then tried to kill the prince, but was defeated as well.[5] Andreas, however, later captured Ororo and used her as a hostage to force T'Challa to surrender. They both were chained and put on helicopter. On their way, Ororo unlocked the chains, but during the following fight Andreas and T'Challa fell out of the helicopter. Ororo jumped after them, using the strong desire to survive and save T'Challa to forcefully awaken her powers. She stroke Andreas with lightning and then summoned powerful wind to hold herself and T'Challa and let them land safely, while Andreas was seriously injured and partially paralyzed from the fall.[7]
Years later Andreas hired sniper to kill Ororo, who became a superheroine Storm. She defeated sniper, and went to meet with T'Challa who by then became the king. She informed him about Andreas and they tracked him down. Andreas created a robot to kill them both, but working together the two destroyed the robot. Andreas was controlling the robot with his mind, so its destruction backfired and killed him.[1]Notes
- The confrontation between young Ororo and T'Challa and Andreas de Ruyter was originally told in Marvel Team-Up #100. The story was greatly expanded and partially retconed in Storm (Vol. 2). In the original story Andreas was still serving his government and was ordered to capture T'Challa as they planned to brainwash and use him as a puppet king to get access to Vibranium in Wakanda, Ororo already controlled her powers, and helped T'Challa to deal with Andreas. After he failed to capture the prince, Andreas promising career went downhill and he was eventually fired. In retconned version, however, Ororo was still mostly unaware of her powers and she was the one originally targeted by de Ruyter and was saved by T'Challa. Andreas was already retired for decade, and his desire to capture T'Challa was much more personal.
See Also
- 7 appearance(s) of Andreas de Ruyter (Earth-616)
- 1 mention(s) of Andreas de Ruyter (Earth-616)
- 1 mention(s) in handbook(s) of Andreas de Ruyter (Earth-616)
- 5 image(s) of Andreas de Ruyter (Earth-616)
- 1 victim(s) killed by Andreas de Ruyter (Earth-616)