According to Jeffrey Winstone's own, loquacious narrative, an accident of an undisclosed nature turned his body into "living volcanic rock." Deciding to use his powers as a vigilante, he invested his savings into a trip to the Himalayas to search for a monastic order to teach him their fighting style and increase the agility of his new form. He apparently took a vow of celibacy, having "thoroughly spurned human contact," including the kisses of women apparently enamored with volcanic rock men. Returning to the United States, he was in the midst of deciding upon a codename when he was shot and then decapitated by a time-travelling Deathlok sent into the past by Roxxon. The Deathlok identifies Winstone as Slag, a name that Miranda Bayer uses to describe him when later recounting Roxxon's plans to Wolverine. The unit, part of a larger platoon of the robots, had been dispatched from a future by Roxxon to eliminate superhumans on a list that would pose a threat to their future plans.