Meggan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Meggan | |
 Meggan, by Alan Davis |
|
| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Marvel Comics/Marvel UK |
| First appearance | Mighty World of Marvel #7 (December, 1983) |
| Created by | Alan Moore Alan Davis |
| In story information | |
| Alter ego | Meggan Braddock |
| Species | Human Mutant |
| Team affiliations | Excalibur, Court of Otherworld |
| Abilities | Shapeshifting Empathy Flight Energy-absorption and discharging Seeing auras Control of natural elements |
Meggan is a fictional character, a comic book superheroine in the Marvel Comics universe.
Contents |
[edit] Fictional character biography
Born in a blizzard to a Roma family near Fenborough Station in Britain, Meggan adapted to the cold by growing fur, to the horror of her family. Unfortunately, as an empathic metamorph, the more they saw her as a monster, the more monstrous she became, growing webbing upon her hands and her always bare feet, antennae, claws, and distorted features. The belief that she was some sort of monster was also affected by the fact that Meggan's birth took place near an ancient British fortress that was rumoured to be the site of dark magics. Meggan's family hid her away in their camper, where she watched television incessantly, and believed that the world of Gerry Anderson was the real world. Eventually, she met Captain Britain and fought him, but then befriended him.[1] She fell in love with him, joining him as an adventurer. With him, she first encountered Gatecrasher's Technet.[2] After she learned enough to stabilize her powers to a form that pleased him (and thus pleased her).[3] Captain Britain fell in love right back, and the two began a romantic relationship. Together they defeated Baba Yaga.[4] Before she gained control of her powers, she had only fragments of memory of her early years. The two had a long and stormy courtship, marred by events both cosmic and mundane.
Meggan then fought Gatecrasher's Technet alongside Captain Britain, Nightcrawler, Phoenix, and Shadowcat, and with them became a founding member of Excalibur.[5] Meggan was later reunited with Courtney Ross.[6] Meggan became attracted to Nightcrawler before long. Excalibur clashed with Arcade and the Crazy Gang, and Meggan temporarily switched bodies with the Crazy Gang's Knave.[7] Brian could not deal with Nightcrawler's attraction toward Meggan (which was strongly reciprocated) and Meggan later developed a crush on Peter Rasputin, the X-Man Colossus.
Due to her odd upbringing, for many years Meggan was naive in many of the aspects of culture, obsessed with television, and functionally illiterate. For example, she did not know that Doctor Doom was such a horrific threat, though she soon learned when he attacked the entire team and attempted to destroy England.
Her Excalibur teammates, over the years, brought her up to speed with Earthly life and knowledge. Douglock took a personal effort in being her teacher after he joined the team. In the latter part of the Excalibur series, Meggan became much more self-confident, taking more of a leadership role, changing her costume and being much more threatening. She used the minimum of force needed but did not hesitate to scare her adversaries.
When Roma stepped down and let Captain Britain become the Omniversal Guardian of the Otherworld, Meggan came to rule beside him as his queen. They supervised the origin of another Captain Britain, who became associated with the Avengers.
Later, the Scarlet Witch caused a hole in reality when she altered it to create the House of M. This set off a multidimensional tidal wave, threatening Otherworld and the other parallel realities of the Omniverse. Meggan and Captain Britain were sent to fix the hole, given only a short amount of time before Saturnyne would destroy the 616 reality to prevent it from hurting the other realities. Working with Psylocke and Rachel Summers, Meggan and Captain Britain located the hole in reality through which the tidal chaos wave was about to spread. Allowing the others to seal the gap, Meggan ventured into the void beyond and sacrificed herself to briefly slow the progress of the impacting chaotic energies to give Psylocke, Rachel, and Captain Britain time to sew the reality tear. Her fate remains unknown.
When reality was restored, only a few remembered what had gone on during the House of M. Captain Britain and the others were one of the many who didn't, having only vague memories of the ordeal and believing it to be a dream. As a result, Britain doesn't know about Meggan's sacrifice and has no idea where she is, leaving him in distress.
[edit] Powers and abilities
Meggan is an immensely powerful superhuman, with three main powers; empathy, elemental powers and shapeshifting. These abilities actually blend together, aspects of one talent affecting the others. Meggan has been referred to as an "elemental empath", an "empathic metamorph", and an "elemental megamorph". Meggan's most defining power is her empathy, a talent which enables her to sense the emotions and feelings of living creatures (from people, to animals, to plants) and can broadcast her own feelings to influence other people's emotions. She can also psionically "see" psychic, natural, and mystical energy auras. Her empathic powers are highly sensitive, and make her vulnerable to telepathic manipulation. Her empathy also lets her connect to the "life force" of the Earth itself, which brings up her second power; elemental control.
Thanks to Meggan's empathy, she has a psionic link to the natural forces of the Earth. By "speaking" to the elements, Meggan can command the environment around her, and her emotional state can affect the local ecosystems. She can extinguish forest fires with a thought, summon gale force winds or part the waters of a lake with wave of her hand, cause earthquakes in a flash of anger. Meggan has even been observed causing electromagnetic pulses by commanding the magnetic fields around her, freezing opponents by rapidly dropping the air temperature around them, or increasing the powers of elemental mutants (such as increasing the temperature of Peter Wisdom's heat blasts). Meggan has used her elemental powers to affect man-made objects, such as actually making the atoms in a building's roof move apart, creating a hole in the roof that resealed itself (without a trace of ever having a hole) once Meggan passed through (which suggests that Meggan's elemental powers may have a psychokinetic quality). Meggan can focus the elemental energies around her into devastating energy blasts, and draw energy from the Earth and project it in bursts of concussive force. She has also been observed controlling mystical energies. Meggan can also hover and fly, indeed she once commented during a case where she was working undercover that her feet hurt (not because she was wearing high heels when she normally went barefoot), simply because she was unused to walking anywhere at all, not seeing the point when she could more easily fly.
When combined with her friend Rachel Summers on an alternate Earth filled with magic, Meggan has actually succeeded in bringing the dead back to life.
Finally, Meggan is a shape-shifter who can alter her form at will and can assume the form of any living creature, even those who only exist in legends. Meggan has pointed ears in her usual and true forms. As a newborn infant she instinctively adopted a fur-covered, somewhat animal-like form in response to the cold weather around her; she retained this form until she discovered her shape-shifting abilities. She can add to her mass and shed this additional mass at will. Meggan adopts the special abilities, superhuman powers, and even aspects of the internal anatomy of whatever being she uses her metamorphic powers to imitate. She once became a Godzilla-like fire-breathing dragon, and another occasion she became a werewolf that had all of a wolf's natural abilities. Meggan can assume the form of other people as well. Her facial features and overall physical appearance often change to a degree with her mood. Thanks to her empathy, Meggan's body will actually change in response to the emotions around her, becoming beautiful when she feels loved, or hideous when she feels fear or anger, or she might become considerably less attractive when deeply depressed. She can also sense the images of what other people desire her to be like. Due to her empathic nature she may consciously or unconsciously alter her appearance to resemble people or even animals she is with at the time. Her elemental powers also cause Meggan to change in response to her surroundings, growing fur in extreme cold, or gills when she is submerged or swimming underwater. This can be affected by outside forces if she is not careful, causing her to turn into one shape when she intended to turn into another.
She can increase the density of her muscle tissue to boost her strength to superhuman levels, shown capable of exceeding that of Captain Britain on two separate occasions.[8] The use of this power is tied to the planet itself. During her confrontation with Galactus during the original Excalibur run she grew in stature to match the planet-eater's size, but the taller she grew, the more she was destabilizing the environment nearby.
On occasion she has successfully mimicked the powers of other superhumans. In one case copying Dazzler, Rogue, Colossus, Longshot, Storm, Wolverine and Havok in rapid succession.[9] She has also transformed herself into sentient sand or water, attaining the associated properties.
Meggan's life force and superhuman powers were at a time, dependent upon the mystical forces within the British Isles. Her powers and health would deteriorate if she remained for too long a time outside Britain. However, her health and superhuman powers will function in certain magical realms and other dimensions.
Meggan is a fair hand-to-hand combatant, trained by Captain Britain. She received no formal education, and is completely self-taught about contemporary culture through television viewing.
[edit] Other versions
[edit] Earth-1189
The world of Earth-1189 Meggan was devastated by nuclear war. After the death of her Brian Braddock, she took over the mantle of Captain Britain and became a member of the Corps[10][11].
[edit] Earth-597
A member of Lightning Force (this reality's Excalibur) as Fraulein, in a world where the Nazis have won the Second World War.[12]
[edit] References
- ^ Mighty World of Marvel #14-15 (UK)
- ^ Captain Britain Vol. 2 #5
- ^ Captain Britain Vol. 2 #8
- ^ Captain Britain Vol. 2 #11
- ^ Excalibur Special Edition #1
- ^ Excalibur #1
- ^ Excalibur #4-5
- ^ Excalibur (1st series) #22; Excalibur vol.1, #23
- ^ Excalibur vol.1, #19
- ^ Excalibur #44
- ^ Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Alternate Universes (2005)
- ^ Excalibur vol. 1 #9.
