Caleb Hammer

First Appearance: Marvel Premiere #54 (June 1980).
Appearances: Marvel Premiere #54, X-Force #37, Gunslingers #1, Blaze of Glory #2-4.
Years Active: 1885-1896.

Caleb Hammer was a cowboy character influenced by Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name, but given a somewhat new twist.

Hammer's first appearance, in Marvel Premiere, is set in 1890 in "Manacle, Wyoming" and involves Hammer hunting down the man who killed his wife. Hammer had originally trained for the ministry, but in 1885 his wife had been mistakenly killed by a drunken shootist. In 1886 Hammer, working at a harvesting machine factory in Chicago, tried to persuade scabs not to cross a picket line, but a riot broke out which killed Caleb's younger brother Issak. After that Hammer became a Pinkerton agent, albeit one seemingly concerned as much with the soul, despite his own lost faith, as monetary gain. Hammer took on a variety of assignments for the Pinkertons over the next five years. In Blaze of Glory Hammer, working as a bounty hunter, is in pursuit of Kid Colt, but ends up killing the Gunhawk (II) for having shot Colt in the back. In X-Force it was revealed that the External Absalom, while still a mortal, had killed Caleb Hammer in 1896 Wyoming, shooting him in the back.

Hammer's experiences seemed to have granted him metahuman abilities; he is abnormally fast with his hands, has greater-than-human strength (he can snap gun steel with his bare hands), and can survive an exploding barn and being set on fire.