Harry Leland
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Harry Leland, also known as the Black Bishop is a Marvel Comics supervillain, and an adversary of the X-Men. Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist/co-writer John Byrne, he first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #132 (April 1980).
A mutant, Leland possesses the ability to increase the mass of an object or person, making it extremely heavy. Thanks to his allegiance to Sebastian Shaw, he attained the rank of "Black Bishop," of the Lords Cardinal of the New York branch of the The Hellfire Club, an exclusive secret society bent on world domination. In civilian life, he was a corporate lawyer.
[edit] Biography
Leland first encountered the X-Men when the X-Men invaded the New York headquarters of the Hellfire Club. Leland caused Wolverine to become super-heavy and fall through the floor into a sub-basement. In the rematch, Wolverine attacked Leland from above. At that moment, Leland foolishly used his mass-increasing powers against his opponent a second time, resulting in Wolverine crashing through the floor again, only this time with Leland beneath him. All evidence to the contrary, Leland survived this incident.
Alongside the Hellfire Club, Leland later battled the X-Men in New York's Central Park. Leland used his power to sink Colossus hundreds of feet underground. When Nimrod attacked the assembled mutants, the X-Men and the Club joined forces to battle Nimrod. Against considerable resistance by the robot, Leland increased Nimrod's mass to move it towards the ground and thus vulnerable to attack. Overweight and in poor health, the effort caused Leland to have a heart attack. Then, at Storm's urging, Leland increased the mass of Sebastian Shaw (who had been sent hurtling towards outer space by Nimrod), causing Shaw to crash into Nimrod's body on the ground. Leland succumbed to his heart condition and died.
But this was not the last to be seen of the Black Bishop. In She-Hulk (vol. 2) #34, the supervillain Black Talon revived Leland's body, as well as the bodies of three other deceased mutants, as a zombie; his motives for doing such were unspecified. After She-Hulk's defeat of the Talon and his "X-Humed", Leland was reburied. Precautions were taken to ensure that he never come back, among them filling his mouth with salt and sewing his lips together.
[edit] Powers and abilities
Leland possessed the ability to increase the mass of an object or person, making it extremely heavy. Leland's power could affect both people and inanimate objects, but active resistance by the subject made it more difficult to assert Leland's power. Leland was overweight and in poor health, and thus he was a poor hand-to-hand combatant.
[edit] Trivia
Artist John Byrne based Leland's appearance on actor-director Orson Welles, and the name refers to two characters in Welles' films: Harry Lime from The Third Man, and Jed Leland from Citizen Kane.
Shinobi Shaw has speculated that Leland is Shinobi's biological father, but this has not been confirmed in canon.
