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    Miles Craven

    Character » Miles Craven appears in 79 issues.

    The infamous leader of International Operations who was obsessive with super-humans and wanted to control them.

    Short summary describing this character.

    Miles Craven last edited by Thor_Ul on 03/17/22 07:29PM View full history

    Wildstorm Universe

    In 1945, Miles Craven was one of a number of intelligence agents dispatched by the US Department of Defense (DoD) to investigate a Daemonite alien spaceship that had crashed in the Nevada desert. Craven was instrumental in conceiving a new use for the Daemonite 'sleep chambers' salvaged from the wreck: Imprisoning dangerous super-powered beings (SPBs) in a virtual environment. He manipulated a patriotic SPB codenamed Missile Man into helping the Department capture SPBs (both villains and heroes) for this project, known as Operation: Paragon. General Zebulon McCandless, who was also involved with Operation: Paragon from its very beginning, later modified the project to indoctrinate and train SPBs so that they might save the world in the event of a biblical apocalypse. McCandless' contingency program became known as Number Of The Beast , since it had 666 original test subjects. Craven had other plans for 'problem' SPBs, and later established five virtual reality cold-storage prisons of his own in San Francisco, Egypt, Alaska, Jamaica and Italy. Over the following 50 years, these facilities accumulated hundreds of inmates.

    In the 1950s, Craven was decorated as a hero in the Korean war and joined the newly-established Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In the '60s, he was a key intelligence adviser to the Pentagon during the Vietnam conflict and founded a 'shadow network' within the DoD, named International Operations (I/O), to deal with the rising number of criminally inclined SPBs. Shortly after Craven founded I/O, two US defense projects were attacked by Daemonites: An atomic submarine launch facility and the launch of a communications satellite named Icarus 5. In the wake of these attacks, Craven was prompted by power-broker Saul Baxter (the Kherubim Lord Emp ) to found a covert seven-member team whose remit was, officially, to track down and capture unidentified life forms (ULFs). However, Baxter's real purpose for this unit, named Team One, was to cover up any facts that might surface about the Kherubim the next time a Daemonite appeared. Baxter stacked the team with Kherubim: including Mr Majestic ( Majestros ), John Colt ( Yon Kohl), Lucy Blaize ( Zannah, also known as Zealot ) and Marc Slayton ( Backlash , who was at the time unaware of his Kherubim heritage). Human members included Henry Bendix and Isiah King .

    On Team One's first mission against ULFs, their desperate attempts to stop a horde of Daemonites from launching a nuclear attack on New York resulted in Yon Kohl being caught in one of Majestros' energy blasts. Believing Kohl to be dead, Emp took a digital imprint of his consciousness from his ravaged body, for later use in programming the android Spartan . Kohl's body survived, however, due to the incredible regenerative abilities of Kheran nobles. When he recovered he was secretly taken in by Miles Craven and surgically altered to resemble the East Asian tyrant Kaizen Gamorra . Craven then kidnapped Kaizen and replaced him with Kohl. The real Kaizen was placed in one of Craven's 'cold-storage' prisons for many years, but later escaped and reclaimed his throne on The island of Gamorra .

    Following the disappearance of Saul Baxter and the disbanding of Team One, Craven and Bendix were summoned by the United Nations (UN) shadow council, the MJ-12. The council revealed that aliens had infiltrated Team One and asked Craven and Bendix to join its crusade against such extraterrestrial influence. No doubt with the help of the MJ-12, Craven went on to become National Security Czar of the United States, while Bendix was appointed 'Weatherman' of the UN's new superhuman response team, StormWatch .

    In 1967, Craven hired maverick researchers Alexander Devereaux and Nicholas Robertson (working on alien conspiracy theories and time travel, respectively) for what became the Puritans ' Project: Flashback, a plan to travel back in time and undo the alien influences on Earth's history. Craven also recruited agents Elijah Sterling and Andrew Stansfield, who had previous experience together fighting an alien, to develop the paramilitary wing of the Puritans.

    In addition to his work in combating alien infiltration and SPB proliferation, Craven used his position as National Security Czar to develop a number of other unsanctioned projects, including Project: Genesis. Craven recruited doctors Simon Tsung and Gabriel Newman to develop the Gen-factor, a genetic agent capable of bestowing superpowers on human beings. Craven used his new Team 7 covert strike force, amongst others, as Guinea-pigs for Project: Genesis.

    After Team 7 rebelled and left I/O, and after the next generation of Gen-active super-humans were removed from I/O's custody by Craven's former deputies John Lynch and Ivana Baiul , Craven used material from Project: Genesis in a new venture, named Project: Renaissance. Craven's health was failing, and this new project was aimed at cheating death. Craven used a new team of Gen-12 super-humans, named the Brotherhood, to hunt down former members of Team 7 and harvest elements of their Gen-factor. With the help of Yoh Kohl (masquerading as Kaizen Gamorra), these extracts were infused into a clone body. Just before his murder at the hands of the former members of Team 7, Craven's consciousness was downloaded into this 'Gen-Omega' clone. However, the clone body turned out to be unstable, and was destroyed by Dr Tsung's adopted gen-active son, Sigma .

    Shortly after Craven's death, an Internal Security Services (ISS) investigation into his activities was sabotaged by a mysterious young woman named Mariah Craven (possibly Miles' daughter), who appears to have been working for the MJ-12 council. Further investigation into Project: Genesis was blocked by Ivana Baiul, who returned to I/O after Craven's death and took over his position as Director.

    While the database of US SPB monitoring agency Paranormal Search Investigations (PSI) appears to record the death of Henry Bendix, it currently lists Miles Craven's status as "Location classified": Perhaps surprising, given that PSI's new operations director Marc Slayton witnessed Craven's execution (at the hands of the Team 7 alumni) some time before Bendix's death.

    Craven had a short taste to power when his mind was deposited in the clone of Sigma called Clon-Omega. However ast he clone was made using the defective gen-factor of the Team 7 member, the clone Omega was consumed by this, ending with the second life of Craven.

    The Wild Storm.

    In the Wild Storm arc, Miles Craven is the weak leader of IO.

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