Origin

The Wrecking Crew was formed when the criminal Dirk Garthwaite, the Wrecker, was approached by Dr. Elliot Franklin, with the task of retrieving a gamma bomb Dr. Franklin had designed, with the intent of ransoming New York for millions of dollars.

Garthwaite managed to retrieve his enchanted crowbar, and during a lightning storm, he told Dr. Franklin and two of his fellow prisoners, Henry Camp and Brian Calusky, to grip the crowbar simultaneously. A lightning bolt struck the bar, thus transferring the enchantments of Garthwaite's crowbar to all three of the others and transforming the group into the Wrecking Crew.

They promptly escaped from prison, but in the course of their search for Dr. Franklin's gamma bomb, they were defeated by the Defenders and Luke Cage.

Creation

The Wrecking Crew was created by Leonard "Len" Wein and designed by Salvatore "Sal" Buscema, the latter of whom was the brother of John Buscema, in November 1974. They first appeared in Defenders vol.1 #17

Team Evolution

Dirk Garthwaite started off as a one man wrecking crew, The Wrecker. Eventually, he shared his power with three other guys finally forming the team:

• Dr. Eliot Franklin became Thunderball
• Brian Calusky became Piledriver
• Henry Camp became Bulldozer

Their roster remained largely unchanged except for leadership which bounced back and forth from Wrecker, the namesake and founder, to Thunderball, the most educated member of the team with a Ph.D. in physics. They also once brought along Piledriver's estranged son, granting him an enchanted shovel and calling him Excavator.

The two biggest membership shakeups came when they replaced a member of the team with a female counterpoint. First, they were joined inexplicably by a female Bulldozer, the daughter of the original Bulldozer. She first joined when Wrecker and Thunderball were recruited by Wizard to make up a new Frightful Four, leaving Piledriver behind. And then she joined the team properly when they were hired by Mister Sinister. The other female member was Demolisher who replaced Thunderball for a time. She had a similar weapon even. Hers was an overhaul hook ball instead of a wrecking ball. Neither became a long lasting member.

Major Story Arcs

Secret Wars

The Wrecking Crew find themselves teleported to a space station with a number of other villains alongside a matching space station full of heroes. They receive a message from The Beyonder, who claims they were chosen as factions to fight in a war for an ultimate prize. The two groups were moved to a planet made of sections of other planets called Battleworld. There, The Wrecking Crew agreed with the rest of the villains to make their move as fast and as soon as possible, falling in under Doctor Doom’s leadership. However, their attacks on the heroes are complicated when Magneto and the X-Men decide to band together as a third faction.

Their war is further complicated when Galactus, who was originally collected with the other villains, calls for his ship and starts preparing to feed on the planet. As part of Doom’s plan to stop Galactus and steal his power to face The Beyonder, the Wrecking Crew are sent out to find the missing villain, The Lizard, whose primal instincts caused him to initially reject the teamup and flee. The Wasp had already found The Lizard, so the Wrecking Crew shot her and later threw her from their war machine to the Avengers below.

With new motivation, the heroes finally put a stop to the villains and placed them in their own dungeon. The heroes had to then save them from the same dungeon, when earthquakes started to destroy the building. While the heroes stuck around to confront Doom and his war against the Beyonder, the Wrecking Crew followed the other villains to the Detroit suburb that was used to create Battleworld. They were in Volcana’s apartment when Molecule Man used his cosmic power to transport that suburb back to Earth.

Under Siege

Believing that unity has been The Avengers strongsuit, Baron Zemo sought to increase the membership of the Masters of Evil, including the Wrecking Crew. Zemo’s latest plan was to lay siege on Avengers Mansion, and he needed their enhanced strength to take on the initial defenses and security door. Once through, Zemo and the rest of the Masters were able to lay claim to the Avengers Mansion. After taking Jarvis, the only staff member on duty, hostage, the Masters set traps to capture individual Avengers as they come to the mansion.

Luckily, Captain America caught on thanks to a message from Wasp the Masters attempted to fake. Even though he ultimately was caught in their trap, he got a message to the real Wasp, who put together a team of Avengers reservists and freed the mansion. One such reservist was Thor. He uses Mjolnir to drain the power of the Wrecking Crew back into Wrecker.

Full Potential

Thanks to a brief partnership with Ulik, Wrecker had learned how to tap into the Asgardian magic that powered his crowbar, like teleporting the Wrecking Crew during heists. He was also using the crowbar to try and relocate Ulik for more tips about reaching his full potential. This conspicuous use of his powers got the attention of Loki, who was currently employing Ulik. They decided to use Ulik as bait to flush the Wrecking Crew out in the open. Unfortunately that psychic lure was too powerful. It also got the attention of Rachel Summers and her team Excalibur. Both teams answered the psychic call and ended up fighting while Ulik and Enchantress looked on. When Thor answered the call, Wrecker used another new trick to cast an illusion, making Excalibur see Thor as Juggernaut, so the Wrecking Crew could use the distraction to get away.

Unfortunately, during their getaway, they were confronted by Code Blue, a special NYPD task force for super criminals. They managed to take Bulldozer prisoner. They set up a trap to grab Bulldozer while Code Blue transported him to the airport, where he was to be sent to The Vault. They knocked the police van off the road into a cemetery, where the cops ended up getting help from Ghost Rider. When Wrecker tried to use his Asgardian energy on the Rider, he accidentally summoned Mephisto, which was exactly the kind of attention Loki was afraid of. Behind their back, Loki makes a deal with Mephisto, helping Loki kidnap Wrecker and separate him from the Asgardian magic that Loki believes belongs to him alone. Once the power was absorbed, Loki ditched Wrecker in a different dimensional plane.

Return

Believing that Wrecker would get sick of sharing his power eventually, Thunderball put his physics background to use creating a contingency plan before Loki . Using his own enchanted cell tissue, he programmed a trans-dimensional power siphon to scan for his exact power readings. He got lucky and found the power, sharing it with Piledriver and Bulldozer. He leveraged this act to become the new leader and then re-powered Wrecker once he had Piledriver and Bulldozer on his side.

Ultimately, Thunderball took a job in Canada, however, it was a trap. The Hardliners, an armored militia working for the Master of the World, were there to try and bring them in. They only managed to anger him, causing a big enough scene that got the attention of Alpha Flight. As Thunderball gets overwhelmed by the Canadian superteam, Wrecker takes the opportunity to make him look bad and re-gain leadership of the group by coming to his rescue.

Alpha Flight decided to prioritize targeting Wrecker, eventually knocking him out. This gave Thunderball the chance to grab the crowbar and use it to teleport the whole team to safety, realizing that they had been duped. This chaos was then used to help push through a superhuman registration bill in Canada’s government, which The Hardliners would be used to enforce.

New Power Sources

With their Asgardian power beginning to fade, the Wrecking Crew turned to Arnim Zola, who created a way (albeit unstable) for them to extract power from other sources. They showed off their new might by attacking the Statue of Liberty but were defeated by the Thunderbolts in one of their first big public wins.

The Doomsday Man breaks the Wrecking Crew out of prison because he needed their help tracking down Ms. Marvel. In exchange, he re-energized them and gave them a locator so they could be teleported back with Ms. Marvel to Doomsday Man’s lair. To smoke her out, the Wrecking Crew decide to target Mardi Gras festivities, but they mistake Monica Rambeau with Carol Danvers, who Doomsday Man really wanted. When Monica Rambeau shows up to take them on, her energy blasts only make them stronger. She is forced to call in The Avengers for help, but The Wrecking Crew is able to convert their energy attacks into strength and kidnap Monica.

Scarlet Witch tries to use chaos magic to stop the teleportation but accidentally sends them to the planet, Polemachus, where the Wrecking Crew quickly take over the Imperion City and have a local scientist turn Monica into a living battery for their strength. When The Avengers came to her rescue, they were no match for this Wrecking Crew. Monica decided to force energy into the Crew and overload the battery circuitry, freeing herself. Thor was then able to steal and disperse the energy with Mjolnir, knocking the Crew unconscious and returning Imperion City to its people.

Some time later, they were hiding out in Milwaukee, when Thor and the Warriors Three paid a visit to the city. Wrecker talked the crew into ambushing the Asgardians to try their power absorption tech on their magic energy. Once they had absorbed enough power, they retreated, however, they nearly killed Hogun in the process. Their powers were finally stable thanks to the new Asgardian enchantment, and Thor was too preoccupied by finding a cure for Hogun to give chase.

Lionheart of Avalon

The Wrecking Crew head to England, hired for a job by a secret benefactor, only to bump into Captain America, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, and Wasp. While fighting their way away from the Avengers, Thunderball went overboard and hurt the Leigh family, a mother and her two kids. The mother, Kelsey, grabbed Cap’s shield and tried to protect her children from Thunderball, who got more and more uncharacteristically ruthless. When She-Hulk finally came to their rescue, Cap and Kelsey had both taken heavy damage. They get them and the Wrecking Crew back to the Quinjet and head for their UK base. There, Cap is treated for his wounds, but Kelsey had succumbed to her injuries en route.

Angry, Hawkeye heads to the basement prison cells with his special Asgardian arrows with the intention of taking the Wrecking Crew out. He finds Wrecker and Thunderball fighting for leadership and hits Thunderball in the arm with a warning shot to get them to stop. However, Hawkeye can’t bring himself to kill the Wrecking Crew, and since his intentions were bad, he hadn’t warned any Avengers that he was going to the basement. Thus, Thunderball used the powerful arrow in his arm to explode the lock, and the Crew ganged up on Hawkeye before attempting an escape. Thunderball demanded they bring the unconscious Avengers so that he could later steal the knowledge of how to use a quinjet from him, revealing to the Wrecking Crew that Thunderball had been replaced.

Wasp caught them trying to escape and went giant-sized to save Clint, leading to another fight with the Avengers. Wanda easily defeated the other Crew members with her magic, but Thunderball proved much stronger. After hitting Wasp with a quinjet, he was confronted by Kelsey, chosen to be Captain Britain in death. She stabbed him with the Sword of Might, revealing the Black Knight of Arthurian legend possessing him. He had been sent to retrieve the Asgardian arrows for Morgan Le Fay.

Hood’s Gang

After the superhero Civil War, the Avengers were split up: one team who registered and one team who were fugitives of the registration act. The Hood saw a new opportunity to band the costumed villains of New York together, including the Wrecking Crew. One such opportunity was using a Deathlok cyborg to run a distraction while the Wrecking Crew break into a Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. bank in New Jersey to steal $12.7 million

They thought they were in the clear, but the fugitive Avengers caught up to them. Using an illusion that they had both Avengers teams back together, they managed to trap most of Hood’s men. But Hood and Wrecker would break into the holding facility and make sure they all got to sleep in their own beds that night, at the expense of many SHIELD agents’ lives.

Their next plan had to be to take out the fugitive Avengers. The Hood tracked them to the Sanctum Sanctorum, which had an illusion cast to make it look abandoned. While staking the building out, the villains saw Spider-Man entering the building. Spider-Man also saw them and managed to alert his teammates before the villains could make a move. Doctor Strange was forced to cast a powerful spell that put all the villains in a comatose state. Carol Danvers and a SHIELD team responded to the incident. She took the Crew and others into custody, while letting the Avengers go.

Omega Flight

Wrecker was being influenced by a magical force to bring his team to Canada. Upon arrival, they were confronted by Sasquatch, the only surviving member of Alpha Flight’s run-in with The Collective. Sasquatch wasn’t nearly strong enough to take them all down. They ended up taking him hostage as their own personal punching bag.

Wrecker was drawn toward a museum that had a giant Inuit exhibition which was actually a gateway to the Realm of the Great Beasts, which could only be opened with Wrecker’s enchanted crowbar. Despite their fear, the Crew followed Wrecker into the magical realm. There, they release Tanaraq, who increases their strength so they can cause maximum damage. This also gets the attention of Beta Ray Bill as well as Omega Flight, the new Alpha Flight replacement searching for Sasquatch.

Unfortunately, the heroes were distracted because Sasquatch was also possessed by Tanaraq and turned rabid. Omega Flight member, Talisman, had already lost too much family so she used her father’s shamanic bag to trap Tanaraq’s influence from both Sasquatch and the Wrecking Crew. U.S. Agent then beat the Crew with Wrecker’s own crowbar.

Dark Reign

The Wrecking Crew eventually fell back in with Hood’s criminal syndicate and even supported the heroes when they were fighting invading Skrulls. They stuck with The Hood, because The Hood got a seat at the table as a member of the Dark Cabal, thanks to Norman Osborn was given leadership of SHIELD for his heroic efforts during the Skrull Secret Invasion.

When The Hood loses his power, fellow Cabal member, Loki, takes all of Hood’s time trying to reclaim that power. Without leadership, his syndicate decided to continue on without him. Using an ace in the hold, a device that de-powers any superhuman, they were able to knock down both the Outlaw Avengers and Osborn and his Dark Avengers. He used it to leverage a similar deal from Osborn as they had when Hood was in charge. Osborn agrees.

During a meeting on the helicarrier, the syndicate was interrupted by Hood with his powers back. He shoots and kills Jonas Harrow for trying to take over the team. He berated Wrecker for falling in with Osborn revealing his original deal had more freedom than Wrecker’s current deal, which was straight up employment. They were now Norman Osborn’s “black guard,” assigned to hunting down the Outlaw Avengers.

Osborn, who was being manipulated by Loki, decides to use the peace-keeping operation he was handed to wage an assault on Asgard, which was currently hovering over Oklahoma. The Wrecking Crew, among other super criminals, were forced into the assault. The Wrecking Crew were caught looting the throne room by Hulkling and Wiccan, who hit them with lightning.

The New Bulldozer

Wrecker and Thunderball were personally recruited away from the Wrecking Crew by The Wizard, who was given free reign to choose from prison inmates thanks to his benefactor, The Quiet Man. Joining them was a new Bulldozer, the original Bulldozer’s daughter, who was inexplicably missing. She would stick with the team when the trio ditched Wizard and brought back Piledriver. They were hired by Mister Sinister to look for the body of Wolverine, frozen in pure adamantium, which they failed. They were than hired by The Fantastix, a group that bought the Baxter Building and patterned themselves on the Fantastic Four, to take a fight to announce themselves to the world.

Demolisher

Growing cynical of his time with the Wrecking Crew, Thunderball first tried a different team when he joined a new Illuminati and then returned to academia while working for Wakanda. For a short time, they replaced him with Demolisher, a new female member armed with an overhaul hook ball. The original Bulldozer also returned. Demolisher was only part of one job, when Kingpin hired them to destroy his daughter’s school and blame it on her school rival, Moon Girl. Thankfully, she and Devil Dinosaur were able to stop them.

Myrmidon

After Hydra’s secret takeover of America crumbled, The Wrecking Crew found themselves locked up in the new super prison, The Myrmidon. It was created by Baron Von Strucker, who struck a deal before Hydra’s coup was officially cut down. Strucker hung video screens all over the prison so he could occasionally broadcast himself torturing a random inmate. It was Wrecker’s turn soon after Captain America was locked up after being framed for the murder of General Ross.

Cap tried to mind his business, but Bulldozer and Piledriver couldn’t help but mess with him. They blamed him for the brainwashed version of Cap Hydra used to convince the world, but Thunderball had earned some trust with the heroes thanks to his Wakandan work. The Daughters of Liberty reached out to Thunderball to help motivate Cap. His first attempt was faking a nervous breakdown to get the ire of the guards so Cap would come to his rescue.

Next, Invisible Woman sneaked into the prison to inject Thunderball with an EMP. It went off just as Cap was chosen as Strucker’s new torture victim. The EMP knocked out everything in the prison, including their power dampeners. The Crew fell in under Cap’s leadership to break themselves out, with the rest of the villains following their lead.

Contagion

After a mystical predatory fungus, called The Urchin, escapes from K’un Lun, it starts to spread through New York City, growing more powerful with every infected person. The Wrecking Crew are cornered by it in Penn Station and forced to fight off patient zero. Three of the Crew members were infected and encased in fungus, while Piledriver was saved at the last minute by heroes. He would stick with the heroes hoping to help them stop the infection and release his buddies. When the exhausted magic practitioners containing it finally fell, Piledriver and the heroes came to their rescue only to find their old teammates zombified by the fungus. They finally defeated it thanks to Moon Knight. When he was infected, he connected to the hive mind, which he was able to navigate better than anyone else thanks to his dissociative identity disorder. He manually disconnected each superhuman from the hive mind until the fungus was weak enough to be cured.

Alternate Realities

Earth-58163 House of M

The Wrecking Crew was a part of The Hood's gang. In their liberation of Santo Rico, the Piledriver and the Bulldozer were killed by Madison Jeffries and Lionel Jeffries, but the liberation succeeded nonetheless. When they found out that the Red Guard had been sent to eliminate them, the Thunderball fled because of his son back home, but the Wrecker stayed behind, and he was beaten to death by Sasquatch and Sebastian Shaw.

Wrecking Zoo

On Earth-8311, home of Spider-Ham, the Wrecking Crew is known as the Wrecking Zoo. Like the rest of the characters of that Earth, they are anthropomorphic animals. The Wrecker is a cat named The Whisker. Piledriver is a dolphin named Smile-Diver. Bulldozer is a mole named Mole-Dozer, and Thunderball is an owl named Thunderbowl.

The Wasteland

On Earth-21923, where Earth turned into a Wasteland after the villains took over, the Wrecking Crew went to work for Doctor Doom. They were terrorizing a town in Wyoming when they were killed by The Guardians of the Galaxy, who came to Earth looking for the Ultimate Nullifier, not realizing that Earth was now The Wasteland. Although, The Guardians ended up beingn a figment of Star-Lord's imagination, meaning Star-Lord must have taken them all on himself.

Other Media

Television

• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: The Wrecking Crew appears in several episodes of the series most notably in "Thor the Mighty," where they are face Thor as part of his show introduction. The Crew later reappears in the two-part episode "Gamma World," this time working for the real Leader, who uses gamma radiation to increase their powers.
• Super Hero Squad Show: The Wrecking Crew appeared in a few episodes of the kid-friendly animated Marvel series.
• Ultimate Spider-Man: The Wrecking Crew make their first appearance in the Disney XD shared universe hiding among the workers of Damage Control when they end up fighting Spider-Man and his friends.
• Marvel's Avengers Assemble: They appeared twice in the Disney XD universe show about the Avengers, usually as secondary antagonists to the team.
• Hulk: Agent of SMASH: They appeared twice in the Disney XD universe show about Hulk and his fellow gamma mutates, usually as secondary antagonists to the team.
• Marvel Disk War: The Wrecking Crew appear in a couple of episodes of the Japanese anime based on the Marvel universe.
• She-Hulk: Attorney At Law: The Wrecking Crew appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe streaming series based on She-Hulk. The characters are not as impossibly buff as their comic versions, and their weapons had magic symbols on them.

Video Games

• The Wrecking Crew members are bosses in the Asgard level of Marvel Ultimate Alliance. All four villains attack the heroes at once.
• The Wrecking Crew members appear as bosses in the Facebook game Marvel Avengers Alliance.

Merchandise

• Members of the Wrecking Crew were featured in Eaglemoss' line of lead Marvel figurines.
• Members of the Wrecking Crew appeared in the Marvel Universe line from Hasbro.
• Members of the Wrecking Crew appeared in the HeroClix figure game.
• Members of the Wrecking Crew appeared in the Marvel Legends line from Hasbro.
• The members of the Wrecking Crew received a set of busts from Bowen Designs.