Bloodsport (Robert DuBois)

Another trailer for Supergirl Season 3 has been released, and we get a look at a brand new villain Kara will be facing: Robert DuBois. The name should ring a bell for the comicbook readers, albeit he’s better known with the alias Bloodsport. As in the comics, Bloodsport is seen using some high-tech, possibly alien weapons to battle Supergirl, but he’s missing his trademark red bandanna… although he’s basically a thug with super-weapons, so he’s not losing much of his “identity” with the costume change. Waiting to see how the villain will factor in Supergirl’s life, let’s take a look at his original counterpart, as usual.

Robert DuBois was born and raised in Metropolis, and albeit not much is known about his family, he grew up with his brother, Michael “Mickey” DuBois, and the two of them were very close. As a young man, DuBois was drafted, as many others, into the US Army to go to Vietnam. Robert didn’t have any particular moral objection to the war, but he was afraid of dying nevertheless: rather than joining his peers on the battlefield, he preferred to flee to Canada. What he couldn’t imagine was that Mickey, wanting to save his brother’s honor, reported for induction in his place, pretending to be Robert. Mickey went to war in his brother’s place, but in Vietnam he was terribly wounded, and lost both arms and legs. As soon as he knew what had happened, Robert went mad with guilt: he blamed himself for what had happened to his brother, and quickly went insane. He became obsessed with Vietnam, and subjected himself to an intensive training as if he was actually going to war. He was locked in several psychiatric hospitals in Canada, but no doctor could help him with his fixation. Then, one man came with a “solution”: Kimberley, so he introduced himself, played with his obsessions, convincing DuBois that a new war had to be fought, one even more important than Vietnam, a war for humanity. The enemy was but one: Superman, the alien that was humiliating humanity with every single breath he took. Kimberley equipped Robert with an arsenal of futuristic weapons, weapons he could access to thanks to a teleportation device, and sent him to Metropolis to fight the war he never attended to.

As it’s easy to guess, the entire operation was orchestrated by Lex Luthor, but the mastermind failed in underestimating DuBois’ madness. Finally with guns in hand, Robert renamed himself Bloodsport, and became convinced that he was a war veteran. Shouting that he had been wounded along with his brother in Vietnam, Bloodsport started shooting on civilians guilty of “wasting” the freedom he and his brother had been fighting so hard for. Before Superman arrived, he had already killed twenty-five innocent bystanders. The Man of Steel, however, was caught off-guard the moment Bloodsport shot him with a gun equipped with Green Kryptonite ammo. Badly wounded, the hero was saved only by the photographer Jimmy Olsen, who held Bloodsport at gunpoint long enough for Superman to escape and look for medical attention. In the meanwhile, even Lex Luthor had become horrified by the useless carnage, and he had his men rescue Olsen and help him track down the one man who could put a stop to Bloodsport’s mayhem: his brother Mickey. As soon as his adversaries vanished, however, Bloodsport resumed his man-hunt, until Superman came back once again, after having received some medical treatment. Realizing the psycho was using a teleporting device to summon his weapons, the Man of Steel used his heat vision to ionize the air around Bloodsport’s gloves, thus preventing him from teleporting any other weapon, but the madman then threatened to detonate his backpack, in a blast that would have destroyed half of the city. Luckily, Jimmy Olsen arrived right in that moment, along with Mickey on a wheelchair. The veteran begged his brother to stop and Bloodsport, upon seeing him, surrendered, once again guilt-ridden. Arrested, Robert DuBois was sent to Stryker’s Island Penitentiary, but this wasn’t the last time people trembled at the name of Bloodsport…

Robert DuBois is a seriously disturbed individual, a man whose sanity was completely eroded by guilt and who’s living in the delusion of being the war veteran his brother has become in his place. As Bloodsport, he’s a well-trained hand-to-hand combatant, and quite a remarkable marksman; he’s equipped with an arsenal of futuristic weapons, including a device able to teleport directly to his hands any weapon he can think of (including a Kryptonite-gun), and a Super-Cycle that can reach incredible speed. Just as dangerous as he is deranged, Bloodsport fights a personal war that takes place entirely in his head… unfortunately, the victims of it are counted among civilians on the streets.