We're not here 'cause they think we have what it takes to be heroes.

Eelectrokinesis: ability to generate, direct and absorb massive amounts of electrical energy. He was also shown to be able to both sense and manipulate it, to an extreme extent, as evidenced by his ability to replicate the appropriate electrical discharge to undo an eye-scanner lock, and to alter electric impulses in the brain to make someone temporarily dizzy and unable to focus without permanently damaging their system. He was also shown creating electromagnetic force-fields strong enough to stop bullets.

Brandon Sharpe's mother was, to put it kindly, a promiscuous woman. She had an affair with a politician that ruined his career, which she used to jumpstart her own, leading to a jeans ad and her posing in Penthouse. She wasn't very famous and it wasn't for long, but it was just enough to get her knocked up. In that span of time she'd slept with enough people that Brandon has no idea who his father really is (he knows it's not the man she says), but after he developed his abilities, his mom seemed sure, herself. Despite it never being explicitly confirmed, it's strongly hinted at that his father is the Spider-Man super-villain named Electro. This would explain why Striker's powers are a) developing into a nearly identical set, and b) obviously genetic, but not a result of the X-Gene (therefore making him not a Mutant). In the end it doesn't matter, as she pursued the most wealthy of her sexual partners in an attempt to rope him into marriage by telling him that the baby was his, and never confided her suspicions in anyone, least of all her son.

Instead of marriage, the wealthy man she'd targeted offered her a large cash settlement, and she took it to raise Brandon on her own. The money ran out eventually though, and she was getting too old to continue seeking a career as a model, so she began to live in the spotlight vicariously through her son. With the help of a new manager named Rick, Brandon did work in commercials and on TV, to the point where he was a somewhat established child actor. Rick even got Brandon's mom a few parts, and spent time with them, becoming what would seem to be a father figure to him; he really looked to be the best thing that had ever happened to them.

Only he wasn't. He'd begun to molest Brandon, and when Brandon tried to tell his mother and to escape the situation, she lashed out at him and accused him of lying, demanded that he not ruin what they had. And he didn't, at least until Rick took his behavior to the next level and attempted to rape the still very young Brandon, who manifested his electrokinetic abilities by unleashing lighting in the car they were sitting in at the time, killing Rick and scarring his own face.

Finally realizing the gravity of the situation, Brandon's mother switched gears entirely, and instead began to seek out ways to turn her son into a superhero (mostly because there aren't many acting parts for children with visible, disfiguring scars.) He gave up quickly on actual superheroing, because they had a heck of a time actually finding crime to stop, and started working in state fairs and monster truck shows. He tried to get onto the super-power related reality shows like the New Warriors one and Who Wants to be a Thunderbolt, but he was turned down both times on account of being too young.

Norman Osborn didn't think twice about his age, though. When Osborn became the director of National Security, he began recruiting developing metahumans from all over the country and running experiments on their powers. He tortured and disfigured many of them in pursuit of unleashing their true potential, but he never had to go so far with Brandon. He didn't even have to make threats. All he did was give Brandon everything he thought he wanted.

Only it just made Brandon bored.

When the Avengers finally arrested Norman, Brandon had no problems with accepting their offer for a place on the new Avengers Academy team with the promise of the fame and television exposure that being superhero would provide him. They were told that the Academy would be a place that trained the most promising metahumans to come out of Norman Osborn's program, a place to make them the next generation of heroes, but it didn't take them long (with the help of their teammate Finesse) to learn that the six of them had been recruited not because of their potential to do good... but because of their potential to do harm.

As the majority of them had been physically and psychologically tortured, the Avengers feared what their damaged psyches might do to them if they didn't receive help and instruction and were instead left to their own devices back in the real world. The decision to keep the real reason they were all there from them was out of the fear that they might internalize the idea that they were essentially damaged goods or ticking time-bombs, and Striker was probably the best example of that. Despite never being tortured, Brandon merited a place on the team because of the death in his history and because of the fact that his comparatively harmless time with Osborn (the sketchiness of providing sexual partners for a minor with a history of sexual abuse notwithstanding) was "overshadowed by his overconfidence, self-centeredness, and disregard for authority." In short, he was the most likely to be a super-villain simply because of who he was as a person, rather than the circumstances he had just endured.

Regardless, months after the training began the team still hadn't gotten any publicity or public exposure. Growing impatient and frustrated with the lack of contribution to his career, Striker's mother hired the super-villain Whirlwind to attack the class on a night out on the town. She called in an anonymous tip to the press to the predetermined location of the fight, and it worked out flawlessly; Striker flashily took him down and the team was announced to the world against the Avenger's wills simultaneously. Everything seemed to be going perfectly.

In Striker's eyes, anyway. From the Avengers' point of view, something needed to be done about the kids' attitudes, and they were taken to what was essentially the Scared Straight program at the Raft, Marvel's foremost metahuman jail. While there, Striker got left behind while Hazmat, Mettle and Veil caused a blackout and went to confront Norman Osborn in his cell at the Raft. Shortly after, they found a videotape online of one of their instructors, Tigra, being beaten by the former mob kingpin "the Hood." When they confront Tigra about why she never sought retribution or got her revenge, she told them that it was because Hood was in jail.

Finesse was able to determine that it wasn't Hood in jail, however, by viewing video footage of both the real Hood and his imposter in his cell. They seek him out and this time Striker is part of the team that defies their instructors and sneaks out with Hazmat and Veil to confront the currently depowered Hood. They videotape Striker electrocuting him multiple times until he says sorry, and upload it onto YouTube.

Instead of being pleased, Tigra attempts to expel the three of them, only to be stopped by the other instructors. From that point on, they are meant to be on probation. This leads Veil to, in an act of desperation (an attempt to save herself from expulsion), try to revive Hank Pym's late wife from the dead, but instead they summon Carina, the wife of Korvac, a man with godlike powers. She transforms Striker (and the rest of the team) into an older version of himself so he's significantly more powerful in order to confront Korvac, but while battling with him the older version of Striker is killed. Ultimately he was unaffected by the death of an alternate body, but he still felt what it was like to die violently and alone. Terrified, he fled the fight.

The others managed to take Korvac down, but when later confronted by Tigra for his percieved acts of cowardice, Striker tells her that he isn't ashamed. He knows why he ran and it's because he doesn't believe in giving up his life for the stupid drama that happens between superheroes and supervillains, which they always see fit to drag the rest of the world into. He is just trying to decide if anything that they're doing is worth giving up his life for.

In an attempt to cheer the team up, Reptil talks Hank Pym into letting the Academy confront Electro when they see him committing a crime on the Avengers satellites. He says that they need a win after losing the last few conflicts, as the team's morale is down in the dumps. When they are deployed, they find that they're not just fighting Electro, but the entire Sinister Six (namely Electro, Mysterio, Sandman, Rhino, Chameleon and Doc Ock); they are, unsurprisingly, soundly defeated. Striker is angry because it turns public opinion on them for the first time since they became famous.

As a group they make the decision to track down Jeremy Briggs, the last victim of Osborn that would have been in the Avengers Academy if he hadn't turned them down. They find that he's been using his ability to alter the chemical makeup of any substance to make himself a billionaire, and it almost looks like they're going to leave to join him when Finesse tells them that they've been lied to and that she doesn't trust Jeremy. It ends in a brawl with Jeremy which almost gets them all killed, only for him to stop short of doing any of them actual harm and tell them that if they ever change their minds, he'll always have a place in his company for them.

Marvel's big summer event, Fear Itself, crosses over into Avenger's Academy when Red Skull's daughter attacks Washington D.C. with a battalion of giant mechs and the Avengers are forced to deploy the Academy team to intervene while the rest of the group is busy with the other simultaneous attacks. The battle is bloody and hard-won, and everyone on the team ends up taking lives. This troubles some of the members, and Reptil and Finesse turn to Striker for advice, as he's the only one on the team to kill someone before that night.

They're in the middle of talking when they are attacked in their base (the Infinite Mansion) by Titania and the Absorbing man. Unable to even harm their attackers, the students are only able to escape with their lives due to the last minute intervention of Pym and Quicksilver. Despite all surviving (again), Veil quits the team, citing how messed up it is that they pushed a bunch of emotionally damaged sixteen year olds into having to fight their war for them, and to (in the last minutes at the mansion) basically have to choose which of them should commit suicide to ensure survival for the rest of the team.

Everyone else at the Academy either becomes angry with her, or sad about her, except Striker who had become her best friend through her time on the team. He tells her that she should do whatever she wants, and he'll still support/hang out with her, and she leaves. This serves as a catalyst, and Hank Pym decides to open Avenger's Academy to the public, to stop isolating the teens from everyone else, and to take in anyone who wants to be trained. At this point in the series, the original Avenger's Academy lineup falls largely out of focus, so the next event that has a significant impact on Striker is the arrival of Julie Power.

Striker tracks her down and basically spills his guts to her about the fact that he thinks he might be gay, and that his pursuit of women so far has been hollow and just a front to the point where he would only go after people he was sure would reject him (and the one time a girl didn't, he turned her offer of sex down.) She tells him she'll support him, and they become friends.

Until Striker comes out in a press conference shortly after, anyway. While Julie Power thought he should figure things out for himself quietly, Striker clearly thought differently and made it as loud and as public as possible, because well, he's still Striker.

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