The antihero Bloodshot was given powers by nanites in his blood, making him into a living weapon. He had increased strength, incredible marksmanship, a healing factor, the ability to tap into computer networks, and even minor shapeshifting capabilities. Unfortunately, it also denied him his free will as he was forced to serve his handlers in Project Rising Spirit, even as they manipulated his memories and his perceptions of reality.
When Bloodshot finally escaped Project Rising Spirit, he set out on his own to find answers about his past, but soon found himself becoming one of Valiant's premier heroes, battling against incredible odds to stop those who needed to be put down, and somehow surviving even the most brutal of these encounters.
12 WON: Against Killers in Colorado As The Nanites Returned To Him
After his initial 2012 comics series came to an end, Bloodshot was given a fresh start in the 2014 event story The Valiant. He was purged of the nanites that gave him his powers, allowing him to begin a new life of peace in Colorado.
When a news report exposed that a group of white-skinned red-chested men had committed a string of murders, he realized the nanites had entered these men. He stopped the killers, but returned to killing in the process, even as the nanites returned to him and made him a weapon once more.
11 LOST: Against Immortal Enemy Which Ended In Kay McHenry's Death
The Immortal Enemy was the main villain in the 2014 story The Valiant. A shapeshifter who fed on fear and who hunted the Earth’s protectors throughout time, the Immortal Enemy was an unstoppable force of hate who ripped through all of Valiant’s heroes with ease, all to get to the current Geomancer, Kay McHenry.
Finally, Bloodshot was the only thing standing between Kay and certain death. Yet he continued to stand up to the Immortal Enemy, despite being hopelessly outmatched. As Kay died in his arms, she purged the nanites from him, returning his full humanity (though as was stated before, that did not last).
10 WON: Kommandar Bloodshot In A Rewritten & Twisted History
This short one-shot story was a tie-in with the larger event Divinity III, in which a Soviet Cosmonaut with the reality-warping powers of a god returned to Earth and created an alternate Soviet-inspired 21st Century.
Bloodshot was no longer the hero that people once knew but became a relentless killer who tore through a rebel group of Americans. In this alternate reality, he killed people he once knew and cared for. As he was about to kill the last of them, a woman named Magic, a memory flashed through him of their time together before reality was rewritten, their lips lovingly pressed together. He let her go, the only survivor of an otherwise perfect mission.
9 LOST: Against Analog Man In A Loss Before The Battle Had Begun
“Analog Man” was the third story of the Bloodshot: Reborn series. Set in a dystopian future, Bloodshot and Ninjak fought against enemies who the heroes could barely hope to survive—let alone beat. Drones replicating the X-O Manowar armor and hordes of Shadowman's cult-like devotees piled onto the two.
Finally, they begin storming a tower to find the person within who is responsible for all they had endured. The story ended in a tragic twist, revealing that Bloodshot had lost before the battle had even begun.
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7 WON: Against Armor Hunters With Help From Unity
Armor Hunters was Valiant’s the second major event story of the Valiant Universe, but none has quite surpassed its scale in all that the story did. The central plot involved a group of aliens known as the Armor Hunters coming to Earth to destroy the superhero X-O Manowar, who wore an alien power suit, and also destroy the Earth in the process.
The superhero team Unity recruited Bloodshot to fight alongside them. Beyond his appearance in the Unity title, he also starred in a three-issue miniseries where he personally stopped one of these powerful aliens, named Malgam. In the final battle of the invasion, he was instrumental in turning the tide of battle and saving the planet.
6 LOST: Harbinger Wars Which Ended In Bloodshot's Capture By Toyo Harada
While Armor Hunters was the biggest crossover event of the Valiant Universe, the first was Harbingers Wars, an event that connected Bloodshot’s story with that of the main characters from the Harbinger series.
At the end of the book, pretty much everyone lost. Bloodshot faced off with Peter Stancheck, one of the most powerful telepaths and telekinetics on the planet. However, both heroes ended up being captured by the megalomaniac villain Toyo Harada.
5 WON: Against Toyo Harada By Forcing Him Into A Coma
Now that it's been told how Harbinger Wars ended, it’s worth knowing about the first big fight of the story, when Toyo Harada and Bloodshot fought one another.
Though neither was aware of it, Bloodshot had been programmed to attack Harada with unrelenting force the moment he saw the other man. Harada, a powerful telekinetic, quite literally ripped Bloodshot’s face off. However, Toyo found himself infected by Bloodshot’s nanites, ripping him apart from the inside. He managed to expel the nanomachines from his body, then immediately entered into a coma-like state as his body involuntarily flew away from the battle to keep him safe. Despite losing the war, Bloodshot definitely triumphed in this particular battle.
4 LOST: First Fight On Bloodshot Island Against Older Versions
After a convoluted dream sequence, Bloodshot awoke on an island where he found himself surrounded by other older versions of Project: Bloodshot. There was a supersoldier from World War II, another from Vietnam, and a third from Gulf War.
But all of them were being hunted by the next-generation Bloodshot supersoldier who would kill them every day, only for them to be resurrected the next. Worse still, this was someone (the main) Bloodshot personally knew: the geomancer Kay McHenry, whose corpse had been experimented on to turn her into a weapon.
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2 WON: Bloodshot USA When Nanites Were Unleashed On New York
Project Rising Spirit created Bloodshot and all of his predecessors, as well as numerous other biological weapons. They created the nanites that gave Bloodshot his powers.
Then they unleashed those nanites on New York, possessing the people of the island and turning them into super strong weapons that ripped through everyone and everything around them. Thankfully, Bloodshot was able to stop them and to finally stop Project Rising Spirit once and for all.
1 LOST: EMP Burst At The Beginning Of Bloodshot's Journey
The end of this list is actually the beginning of the long journey. Bloodshot’s first story involved the struggle to escape the programming that Project Rising Spirit had put him through and escaping their clutches.
They tracked him down and used a superpowered child to generate an electromagnetic pulse, knocking his nanites offline and crippling him. The only reason he survived was that the child turned out to be held captive and used the opportunity to shoot her handler and escape. Bloodshot’s first story ended in defeat, but it set him down the road to reclaiming his freedom—and his sense of self.