As an assassin, Arcade is as ingenious as he is demented. The Marvel villain is a man of mystery with one clear character trait: his taste for violence.

Arcade was created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne and made his first appearance in Marvel Team-Up Vol. #65 (January 1978). He keeps his identity as secret as possible by only using the name “Arcade” and fabricating multiple fake personal histories to deceive clients, cohorts, and enemies. In one of his stories, Arcade claimed to have killed his father with an explosion after the elder cut him off financially. This violent act woke his desire to kill and convinced him that he had a talent for it.

He became a paid assassin, but when he quickly became bored with killing in regular ways he decided to build a Murderworld. Arcade created a secluded facility filled with complex traps, designed in the twisted aesthetic of an amusement park. He continued to kill for money, but now he did it by trapping victims in Murderworld, going so far as to study his targets to design special traps based on their strengths and weaknesses as a way of entertaining himself.

Wanting to up the ante once again, he started targeting superheroes to see if he could take them out. His first attempt was against Spider-Man and Captain Britain, then he set his sights on the X-Men, Alpha Flight, X-Force, and other heroes.

The dangerous, game-playing assassin is still at large, lurking in the Marvel universe.