Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Joe Orlando, the character first appeared in Daredevil #3 (August 1964).
The character has appeared in numerous media adaptations, including the television series Daredevil, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which he was played by Bob Gunton.
The final page of X-Factor #5 initially featured the Owl, but as Layton was removed from the book and replaced with Louise Simonson, the final page was changed to feature a new character named Apocalypse instead, as Simonson and editor Bob Harras wanted a new villain for the book.
He subsequently employed two enforcers and captured Daredevil in a chance encounter, planning to kill him at a meeting of underworld bosses in order to make himself the undisputed overlord of crime.
However, the vigilante was saved by Black Widow, and the two of them worked together to thwart the Owl's planned heist of the San Francisco public treasury.
[11] The Owl then moved to Chicago with a scheme to siphon valuable knowledge from the brains of his victims, and battled the Cat.
He schemed to loot New York under cover of a citywide blackout, but was captured by Spider-Man, the Black Widow, and Simon Stroud.
[16] No longer confined to the module, the Owl later engaged in a gang war against Doctor Octopus in an attempt to usurp the Kingpin's position as the crime boss of New York's underworld.
[21] He began to enlarge his criminal empire by refining Mutant Growth Hormone from his own genetic material, though Daredevil was able to get him arrested.
[citation needed] He managed to manipulate behind the scenes and get the Kingpin arrested for a past murder when it looked like Fisk was going to make a deal with the FBI.
[23] He took Dakota North captive and implied he would torture and sexually assault her in order to get information on Daredevil, who then appeared and cut every nerve in both his arms and legs using a sword the Owl had tried to attack him with.
[27] Owl attended a circus with Kingpin, Madame Masque, Tombstone, and Hammerhead when Hawkeye stole their money.
[29] The Sinister Six (consisting of Boomerang, Overdrive, Shocker, Speed Demon, and Beetle) assaulted Owl's base.
[30] After a series of failures Boomerang teams up with the Owl and forms the Sinister Sixteen in order to retrieve the picture of Doctor Doom that the former had stolen a few days before, and that was now in the hands of the Chameleon.
[36] Owl is among the crime lords competing with Mister Negative to obtain the Tablet of Life and Destiny in order to win the favor of Mayor Wilson Fisk.
[37] Owl is among the crime lords that attended the wedding of Randy Robertson and Janice Lincoln where it was crashed by Shotgun who shot Tombstone.
[43] The Owl has ingested a special serum which enabled him to naturally glide for short distances, though he has to leap from a height of at least 20 feet (6.1 m) off of the ground to do so.
Though the Owl only exercises moderately, his strength, endurance, resistance/resiliency to injury and fatigue, and reflexes/reactions are enhanced as a result of his mutation (he is physically stronger and tougher than any Olympic weightlifter).
His vision and hearing are superhumanly acute, his head can rotate 180 degrees, and his eyes can move independently of each other in their own sockets and have greater visual range than an ordinary human.
These experiments have met with mixed results and a by-product of them is that he has been mutagenically altered in a way that has negatively affected his sanity and made him more animal-like.
The Owl wears a set of metal razor-sharp steel-tool talons attached to each forearm (closely resembling Wolverine's claws) and a specially designed cape designed to resemble an owl's outstretched wings to assist him in steering during flight, and often uses various other bird-themed weapons and pieces of equipment.
This incarnation of the Owl is killed by Gwen Stacy and Clint Barton, alongside fellow Marauders members Dirigible, Red and Arcade.