DEADLY ERNEST
Real Name: Ernest St. Ives
Group Affiliation: None
First Appearance: Alpha Flight #7
Last Appearance: Alpha Flight #31
Creator: John Byrne

      Ernest St. Ives was a soldier in France during World War I when mustard gas filled the trench he was in. However, St. Ives had an unusally strong power of will and ended up successfully rejecting death. He soon discovered however that his victory had come at a price: the touch of his bare hands had become as deadly as death's own touch. Two of the earliest victims of this weird ability were a soldier who helped him out of the trench and his own wife.
      St. Ives eventually came to terms with his ability, and even began to enjoy it. Effectively immortal, he lived for decades and accumulated great power. However he found himself in conflict with the Alpha Flight members Northstar and Aurora when he attempted to cheat Northstar's old friend Raymonde Belmonde out of his cafe. St. Ives ended up killing Belmonde with his "death touch," and took Aurora captive.
      St. Ives had mistaken Aurora for Belmonde's daughter, Danielle, who was a partner in the scheme to take over the cafe. He treated her with all due respect. In the meantime Northstar had tracked down St. Ives to his home and there encountered the mysterious woman known only as Nemesis. In the ensuing altercation Nemesis hacked St. Ives to pieces.
      Strangely enough, St. Ives apparently did not die from that encounter, although Nemesis had claimed her sword was capable of killing him. The pieces of St. Ives' "corpse" were transferred to a Montreal hospital for examination. This hospital also housed the man known as Scramble, and during an escape attempt Scramble reassembled St. Ives' corpse. St. Ives then proceeded to walk away.
      This led to a second confrontation with Alpha Flight, in which St. Ives succeeded in touching most of the Flight and taking Heather Hudson hostage. Nemesis kept the Flight alive using life force from St. Ives' previous victims. She apparently picked up this life force in her last encounter with St. Ives. The sword itself she gave to Puck, who used it to successfully kill St. Ives this time around.
      Ernest St. Ives was virtually immortal [I say virtually because he was able to be killed... :) -C] and possessed the ability to "turn people off like a light switch" with a touch of one of his bare hands.
      [Compiler's notes: Mantlo's bringing St. Ives back made NO sense. Why should Nemesis' sword kill him the second time and not the first? Sheesh...]