El Conquistador

El Conquistador is a Silver Age Marvel villain who clashed with the original X-Men — Iceman, Cyclops, and Beast — debuting in 1968. A human antagonist with no recorded superhuman powers, he relied on resources and schemes to pose a threat to Marvel's mutant heroes.

A Silver Age Marvel villain who made his mark crashing into the pages of The X-Men in 1968, El Conquistador emerged from the imaginative pairing of writer Arnold Drake and the legendary Jim Steranko — a creative team that guaranteed visual fireworks. His handful of appearances put him squarely in the orbit of some of Marvel's most iconic mutants, sharing those charged pages with Bobby Drake, Scott Summers, and Hank McCoy in both The X-Men and Amazing Adventures. Rare by nature with only a small cluster of appearances to his name, El Conquistador is exactly the kind of deep-cut Silver Age antagonist that makes long-box digging so rewarding — a piece of early X-Men history touched by Steranko's unmistakable hand.