Little is known of Jim Wilder’s early life, other than he was an orphan until he met Anna Hark, president of the Hark Corporation. She took him in, and when he grew to be an adult, she employed him as her personal investigator.
It was during one such investigation – the bombing of one of Hark’s buildings – that he stepped on an alien monolith and was teleported into the heart of an ancient, living Bleed-ship.
This ship had been built on an alternate earth and was designed to sail the Bleed, the interdimensional buffer zone between universes. The ship and its crew crashed, however, 65 million years ago, triggering the K-T extinction event that killed the dinosaurs.
Wilder was able to talk to the ship, which revealed that it needed a crew – living beings to act not only as pilot and navigator, but also as engines, fuel and scanners. When it went down, the ship ejected travelstones to allow rescuers to enter it, but none came. Until Jim Wilder. The ship asked Wilder to be its pilot, and Wilder gladly agreed.
Doing so left Wilder with alien technology implanted in his body, and an elaborate “flight suit” that he could manifest at will. He appears to be able to teleport himself and others into the ship and out of it at will.
Wilder is unaware that his “accident” was carefully engineered. His employer, Anna Hark, had been working with The Four, who wanted to unlock the secrets of the Bleed Ship. She organized the bombing of her own building, and international spy John Stone, disguised as a mugger, prompted Wilder to chase him, resulting in Wilder’s stepping on the travelstone.
With the help of Elijah Snow, Wilder has found six more people to crew the Bleed-ship. The other crew members are metahumans, the descendants of Science City Zero survivors, and together they enabled the ship to leave its entombment in the earth and once again sail The Bleed.