Origin
Ian Fate was born in England and raised in America after his parents died. He married a woman named Gloria and had a child, Brian, whom he loved dearly. He became a successful journalist, winning a Pulitzer Prize. At one point he worked for the Daily Bugle.
Mobsters took offense to some of his articles, and hired Eric Simon Payne, then a hit-man, to assassinate him. (Payne believed he was a fellow mobster, not an innocent journalist.) However, the job was botched, and Fate's family was killed by the car bomb instead. Fate fell into a spiral of hate and despair, and started to learn magic as a way to gain revenge on Payne, who later became Devil-slayer and renounced his previous murderous ways.
Major Story Arcs
Fate finally decides he is ready to revenge himself upon Payne, who is at this point a member of the Defenders. Fate seemingly kidnaps Payne's wife, Cory, and holds her prisoner, first in a dungeon and then in another dimension, threatening to kill her. However, it is not really her, but a drug-addled friend of Payne's named Ira Gross, whom Fate covers in an illusion to look like Cory.
After a battle, Fate's demons kill "Cory," who is revealed to be Gross, but Payne, Dr. Strange, Wonder Man, and Beast defeat Fate. Devil-slayer is tormented by self-hatred, realizing that he is at least in part at fault for his friend's death, and feeling guilty over his past misdeed.
Believing Fate to be more insane than evil, Strange brings Fate to a therapist, but Fate escapes.
Still insane, he reappears in the Everglades and meets the Man-Thing, whom he convinces to join him on a ill-conceived plan to help others who have been hurt like he has. They go to the Daily Bugle and try to convince J. Jonah Jameson, who used to work with Fate early in his career, to use the paper to act as propoganda for doing good in the world. Meanwhile the Man-Thing threatens the Bugle workers out of confusion, and Fate freezes them all in place. Jameson refuses and Fate goes wild. Spider-Man shows up and fights Fate and the Man-Thing.
Jonah tries to convince Fate that his family would have hated to see what Fate is doing in their name, and Fate starts to see the evil in what he's done. He finds the Man-Thing, who is deteriorating since he's away from his magic swamp, and feels pity for him. Fate teleports them both back to the swamp, where he hopes they can help each other find the light in their lives.
Powers & Abilities
Fate is a skillful sorcerer, able to paralyze numerous people at once, teleport in space and between dimensions, cast illusions that fool even Dr. Strange, control hordes of demons, create seraphic shields, shoot mystic energy blasts like the "tendrils of Taaru" that would strip flesh from bones, levitate others, and "fly" by standing on flying mystic discs.
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