Bloodsport: the mercenary with kryptonite bullets, from Robert DuBois to Alex Trent

Bloodsport, the human who made Superman bleed

Bloodsport, in his original version, has no power at all: no superhuman strength, no flight, no bulletproof skin. He is an ordinary man equipped with two things, a device that makes weapons appear in his hands and green kryptonite ammunition. That is enough to rank him among the rare humans capable of drawing the Man of Steel's blood.

The character is born in Superman (vol. 2) #4, dated April 1987, signed by John Byrne. His civilian name is then Robert DuBois. Six years later, a second man takes up the costume and the gear: Alexander Trent. A third bearer, never named, will follow in 2006. The name therefore outlives its bearers, a case apart in the gallery of Superman's opponents.

Robert DuBois: the deserter Lex Luthor turned into a weapon

Before he is Bloodsport, Robert "Bobby" DuBois is a man whom war terrifies. Called up for Vietnam, he takes fright and flees to Canada. His brother Michael, known as Mickey, goes in his place and comes back with all four limbs amputated. DuBois then spends twelve years moving from one Canadian psychiatric hospital to another.

That is where Lex Luthor spots him. His scientists cure nothing, they exploit the guilt: DuBois is persuaded that he himself is a Vietnam veteran, he is dressed in fatigues, he is entrusted with a weapons teleporter, and he is pointed at a single target. Luthor is not troubled for it, even after Superman has named him as the only possible sponsor: that impunity, Luthor will one day push as far as the presidency of the United States. Bloodsport is not his enemy, he is his tool.

Superman #4 (1987): when Bloodsport puts the Man of Steel on the operating table

The story is titled "Bloodsport!". DuBois opens fire in Metropolis and kills more than twenty-five civilians, with no logic other than forcing Superman to come. The hero follows the heat trail of his motorcycle to the Kenmore Bowling Alley, and the kryptonite projectile hits him full in the chest.

Superman ends up on the operating table, where the surgeon must do the opposite of what medicine commands: expose his patient to kryptonite fragments, long enough for his skin to become penetrable again. A clear demonstration of how his invulnerability really works and of what green kryptonite does to him. The sources diverge on the word — needles, fragments or bullets; for 1987, "projectile" remains the safe term.

The outcome does not come from a punch: Jimmy Olsen traces the shooter's past, finds Mickey and brings him to the scene. Faced with his amputated brother, DuBois collapses: destination Stryker's Island. The same issue also marks the first appearance of Maggie Sawyer, of the Special Crimes Unit of Metropolis.

The weapons teleporter, Bloodsport's real power

All of the character's danger sits in one device, which materializes in his hands any weapon from an arsenal kept at a distance: rifle, missile launcher, explosive. Nothing is carried, so a search yields nothing.

Superman does not break the device, he cuts the link: by ionizing the air around the shooter's hands with heat vision, he scrambles the teleportation wave and the arsenal stops arriving. Cut off from his flow of weapons, Bloodsport becomes a man again — his profile of the time, in Who's Who: Update '87 #1, grants him only basic hand-to-hand.

His ammunition brings him closer to Metallo than to a superman. A telling detail: faced with the number of civilian victims, Luthor, who supplied the device in secret, himself sends an armored team to stop the man he armed.

Alex Trent, the second Bloodsport armed by Bloodthirst

In 1993, the name changes bearer. Alexander "Alex" Trent is introduced in Adventures of Superman #506 and puts on the costume in #507, the episode "Skin Game". The profiles diverge on the "first appearance": one counts the character, the other the costume.

Trent, for his part, is not a victim: he kills of his own free will, even if Bloodthirst uses him as an instrument. Raised in Melonville in a family affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood, he owes his existence to a supremacist project: his mother agreed to be experimented on during her pregnancy, at the cost of more than a dozen Black lives. The network falls thanks to two men, the civil-rights activist Franklin Stern and a young journalist, Perry White.

His equipment comes from a third party: Bloodthirst, sponsor and not an alias of Bloodsport, recovers DuBois's teleporter and implants it in his torso. At Hob's Heights, in the projects of Suicide Slum, he kills more than thirty people, sets the buildings on fire to keep Superman busy, then fires two missiles at Jimmy Olsen and Ron Troupe, of the Daily Planet.

How a journalist brought Trent down twice

The sequel plays out in Action Comics #694, second chapter of the "Spilled Blood" crossover. Hi-Tech, a mercenary to whom Bloodthirst has given her own teleporter, arrives as backup; Trent takes it as an affront and the two fight. Wounded, Ron Troupe holds him at gunpoint: Trent teleports a bomb to himself and blows himself up.

He reappears in Action Comics #702, "Bad Sport!", after the Fall of Metropolis: a shootout on an exit bridge, dozens dead. There again, no power stops him — Troupe destroys his weapons cache and Superman neutralizes him. Bloodsport fights the hero's civilian setting, never a cosmic threat like Brainiac.

Stryker's Island, 1995: the boxing match that kills DuBois

Adventures of Superman #526, cover-dated August 1995, is titled "Title Bout!". The two Bloodsports find themselves in the same penitentiary, and Trent hates DuBois. The warden of Stryker's Island thinks he has a safety valve for his prison's racial tension: a boxing match that Superman agrees to referee.

The setup blows up in midair. Trent teleports a weapon to himself, the riot breaks out, DuBois seizes it, opens a hole in the wall and falls under the watchtower guns. Superman, for his part, does what he always does: he stops DuBois from killing Trent. The moral code holds, and the man dies anyway — a textbook case for anyone interested in the limits of that refusal to kill.

Trent does not come out unscathed: for having bent before a Black man, his own allies set his cell on fire. He reappears seven years later, disfigured by his burns, in Superman: The Man of Steel #129 (2002), where Superman arrests him again. The profiles diverge on this episode: one speaks of a murder in the cell, the other of a burned man who survives — it is the second that the rest of the story confirms.

Three bearers of the name: Bloodsport is a piece of equipment

In July 2006, in Superman (vol. 1) #652, a third Bloodsport enters the scene. He has no name: no source gives him one. His costume is modeled on DuBois's, his arsenal described as extradimensional, his motive financial: Intergang promises thirty million dollars to whoever kills Superman.

His method takes up that of his predecessors: he shoots at Jimmy Olsen to draw the hero, who stops the bullet just in time. Later in the arc, stunned, he lets off a shot that hits Livewire. The whole belongs to "Up, Up and Away!" by Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns. From one bearer to the next, the man changes, the gear stays: that is the longevity of a name that counts very few appearances.

Bloodsport on screen: Supergirl, animation and cinema

In live action, the character appears only once: "Girl of Steel", first episode of season 3 of Supergirl, aired on October 9, 2017. Robert DuBois is played there by David St. Louis — the spelling of the name varies by source. A mercenary hired by the businessman Morgan Edge to blow up the waterfront of National City, he is stopped by the Supergirl of the series. No kryptonite, no Vietnam, no brother.

In animation, watch the trap. The only Bloodsport given a voice and a civilian name is the one in Justice League vs. the Fatal Five (2019): the Alex Trent version, voiced by Tom Kenny. In Justice League Unlimited, a fighter of the same name passes in silence across four episodes, identified only by an arena banner, on a conjectural profile: lending him DuBois's biography would be abusive.

In cinema, The Suicide Squad, written and directed by James Gunn, gives the role to Idris Elba: released in the United Kingdom on July 30, 2021 and in the United States on August 6, in theaters and on HBO Max. The film keeps the starting point — this DuBois is imprisoned for having shot Superman with kryptonite — and rewrites the rest: British, trained by a mercenary father, father of a daughter, Tyla.

The modern Bloodsport, a mercenary held by Amanda Waller

The character does not stay buried: Robert DuBois returns in recent continuity, first in The Flash (vol. 5) #61, cover-dated March 2019, before becoming a central piece of the Suicide Squad launched by Robbie Thompson and Eduardo Pansica in May 2021.

This DuBois is no longer a sick man but a lucid mercenary, whom Amanda Waller sends from one world to another and who takes command on the ground. Here Mickey died in the war, and it is by holding prisoner every Mickey of the multiverse that Waller keeps her man on a leash. His costume lines up with the film's.

Watch the misreading: DuBois does not belong to the Suicide Squad in the comics of 1987-1995. The squad is the relaunch, and the two stories belong to two distinct publishing eras.

Conclusion

If you keep only one thing, keep the object rather than the man. Bloodsport is a weapons teleporter that changes owner: DuBois, Trent, an anonymous bearer. Three men, one piece of equipment, and each time a shooter whom his gear alone makes dangerous, before a very simple counter stops him.

He holds his place among the most dangerous opponents of the Man of Steel not by his power, but because he proves an awkward thing: a well-chosen arsenal and a patient sponsor are enough. The tour of the objects that built the legend extends this file.