Competition! Eugene Mason was doing a 30 year sentence in Louisiana for arson and murder. He started off in the Little Alcatraz prison when Luke Cage was in there. One day out working on a rail road he faked an illness, knocked out or killed the two guards and escaped in a truck and headed for New York. He found a cheap apartment to rent in Pottersville and the landlady sold him a suitcase of old clothes left by her previous tenant who was the original Crime-Buster who had died in the Skrull-Xandar War. Figuring he could do the same as Luke Cage he donned the costume and a wig so no one would recognise him and started to promote himself as a Hero for Hire. His first outing as a hero was when he 'helped' Power Man and Iron Fist by capturing Firefly while they were fighting and claiming the reward for himself. Crime-Buster began to rival the Original Heroes for Hire in business but he would also take on not so innocent clients and was often brutal in his methods, for example he once charged a kid to stop another kid from bullying him and he shattered the thirteen year old bully's kneecaps.