Wade had conflicting memories of his childhood. He once recalled that his father abandoned his mother while she was pregnant with him and she took out her anger on him until, as an adult, he beat her instead. He later recalled that his mother died when he was five and that his father, an army officer, became abusive, causing Wade to grow up to be a thug and criminal. When his father got his act together and tried to rein in his son, one of Wade's friends shot and killed him. However, he told a writer that his father was a teller of bad jokes who abandoned him and his mother while he was a boy. His mother turned to humor, alcohol and home shopping networks as a coping mechanism. He believed that he ran away from home so that his mother wouldn't need to spend what little money she had left on him.

However, it was eventually revealed that his parents were still together, living in Canada and had kept Wade's room as he had left it but Wade himself did not recognize the house, his parents or his room when he returned there as an adult.

After leaving home, he appears to have joined the U.S. Army Special Forces but despite his superior skills, he was drummed out for not following orders that conflicted with his moral code. After a failed suicide attempt just before his nineteenth birthday, Wade was invited to join a clandestine group of CIA-sponsored mercenary assassins thanks to his military record, assured that his targets would all deserve death. [...]

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