Origin
Originally, Harvest was Mauro Camden, a Missouri businessman who supported the restriction of mutants. However, when anti-mutant leader Steven Lang became leader of the techno-organic Phalanx and sought human volunteers who would willingly give up their humanity in order to corral mutantkind, Camden (much like Cameron Hodge) became one such volunteer. Now a largely independent agent of the Phalanx, Camden became known as Harvest and began studying methods for absorbing mutants into the Phalanx (mutants having so far been immune to such endeavors).
Creation
Harvest was created by Scott Lobdell and John Romita Jr. He first appeared as Mauro Camden in 1994’s Uncanny X-Men #308, and appeared as Harvest for the first time in issue #313.
Major Story Arc
Phalanx Covenant
Harvest arranged the kidnapping and study of several newly-discovered mutants, imprisoning them in an old freighter ship off the coast of San Diego. Shortly after their imprisonment, Harvest started an attempt to assimilate the young mutant known as Blink. The girl managed to fight back however with the use of her premature teleportation abilities, which caused Harvest to fracture and subjected him to horrible pain. One of the captured mutants children turned out to actually be a secret Phalanx operative who was to monitor the children, and he broke Blink’s concentration to stop her from using her powers and to save Harvest. Harvest then left to recuperate, during which the young mutants ousted and dealt with the Phalanx operative, after which they were rescued from their cell by a team of the X-Men.
When he became aware of his prisoners’ escape, Harvest rallied the Phalanx under his control and attacked the various mutants. Already aware that her powers could hurt Harvest, Blink confronted him in order to save everyone from him. When she attacked Harvest, her powers flared out of control and tore him apart with dimensional rifts until he was completely destroyed, while inadvertently killing herself in the process.
The young mutants Harvest had captured would go on to become Generation X.
Powers & Abilities
Harvest exhibited the standard abilities all Phalanx have shown to possess: ability to absorb and assimilate other lifeforms to gain mass and also raw materials with which to heal, a certain degree of shape-shifting, ability to form energy weapons, and able to interact with other forms of machinery.
Although part of the Phalanx, Harvest wasn’t entirely part of their hive-mind and still retained much of his individual self.
Other Media
Toy Biz Toys
Harvest received his very own action figure from Toy Biz. A very rare thing for a character to receive that only appeared in a few issues.