The Slaymaster's first appearance was in Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain #243 (October 1977), a weekly Marvel UK title which featured a mix of reprint and original material.

Wearing a derived version of Captain Britain's costume supplied by Vixen, Slaymaster ambushes and quickly defeats Betsy Braddock, sadistically gouging out her eyes.

It is revealed that Bateman has obsessed over the original Slaymaster his entire adult life, and has made it his goal to take up his mantle and defeat Captain Britain.

He spends years hunting down the security designer for Slaymaster's lair and acquires the necessary clearance codes to safely enter and obtain all of the equipment and weapons of his predecessor.

[volume & issue needed] Slaymaster is a master hand-to-hand combatant and a world class assassin, on various occasions he is depicted as having more than normal balance and reflexes.

An alternate version of Slaymaster appears in a parallel universe visited by the Exiles that has been almost completely taken over by HYDRA, headed in this reality by Susan Storm.

[4] This Slaymaster escapes his reality along with Susan Storm and begins hunting down alternate-reality versions of Psylocke, killing them and taking their eyes, much like his 616 counterpart did to Betsy Braddock.