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Do you know Heather McNeil (Vindicator/Nemesis)?

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Voting ended onMar 15

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#heather mcneil #alpha flight #vindicator #guardian

In Alpha Flight 91, cover date December 1990, Kerry Patrick and the Latverian Liberation Front were introduced. They were created by Fabian Nicieza and Michael Blair. The issue also saw Heather McNeil took on the moniker Guardian and James Hudson took on the name Vindicator. Laura Dean also left the group. ("A Thirst for Power", Alpha Flight 91, Marvel Comic Event)

If you're willing to share, thoughts on Madison Jefferies (and perhaps his brother Lionel)? Please.

Ah, Mr. Jeffries. I think that Madison comes from a very special place that not many male comic book characters get to come from. He’s Roger’s sidekick, first, and then the sidekick, confidant, and lover of leading lady Heather when she becomes in charge of the team. I always thought this put him in an interesting place as he lacked an independence a lot of superheroes often have. There was nothing pulling him away, no real reason he might not stay. He’s this immensely stable-seeming man, and Heather is drawn to this immediately. Not much page time is given to his angst and his problems, he quite literally just helps Heather and does whatever she needs and becomes whatever she (and the team) need him to be with little complaint. Christ, he’s just so perfect and cooperative at first. And he’s not without a voice this whole time, he clearly loves it. He has so little initiative - she’s the one who proposes to him, even.

Madison loves being Heather’s wonderful man. And Heather deserves a wonderful guy, doesn’t she, after all she’s been through? Anyways. That’s why it’s so unbelievably delicious when it all falls apart at the wretched seams. And it just keeps falling apart for him, forever. He cheats on Heather the first time and almost nothing good has happened to him since then. And again: the cheating isn’t even his initiative! It’s Lillian’s! He’s completely passive in this - both failing to end his affair with Lil as he fails to also break up with Heather. It’s an incredible tension that pulled me in. The absolute pit in my heart as he just gets deeper and deeper into this disaster because he can’t act, and he can’t decide. It’s so good.

I will confess: I have a not-so-secret weakness for “insane” characters. For characters who are explicitly, though mostly implicitly, mentally ill. There’s a special pain when there’s no label attached to their specific brand of “insanity”, when they’re othered and discriminated against for some secret bizarre reason. You encounter a lot of sanism and ableism in comics. Well, in virtually all media. You encounter a lot of really fucked up biases from authors who consider mentally ill people (and I’m using that term for lack of a better alternative as I am not at all fluent in antipsych terminology, though I am interested) to be a distant, scary other.

But madness is an ancient theme. There is a baseness to it. And there’s an incredible allure - the perfectly logical character is a deeply boring one, after all. On the other hand, logic is the only means through which a story can be told - illogic is the opposite of that, the anti-story. Everyone in superhero comics has to go a little insane, sometimes. Alpha Flight far more than the rest, though.

I also have a weakness for a duality theme, opposites. I love Aurora and Northstar, I love Sunspot and Cannonball. Madison and Lionel should drive me equally as crazy, but at the end of the day, I kind of felt that Lionel was a third wheel to Roger and Madison. I never took immense interest in him. I would have probably been more interested if Lionel had taken more interest in Madison? Or if we had seen more of their family life? Either way. I love my #themes. I love flesh and metal - awesome. I’d highly recommend both A Zed And Two Noughts (1985) and Dead Ringers (1988) if you like Madison and Lionel. I love superpowers that make the ones who possess them completely lose their minds. And I love a character who hates and resents their own powers, too.

After Roger and Lionel die (awesome - Madison really gets all the hits. Forced to kill his brother and best friend? Together? No one gets to do that anymore. And the finality of it! Neither were ever resurrected!) and we get a handful of events and storylines about Madison believing that he’s insane, or that he’s losing his mind, and in a few of these, he’s presented as a potential danger to Heather, though he doesn’t turn out to be. It’s scary, and it’s a fear pretty damn central to the lives of a lot of straight/bi women who have to find a way to trust their partner, and believe that they understand them completely, in a world where you absolutely can’t ever guarantee that. No one can guarantee your safety against a man. The reader sees that it’s possible Heather doesn’t actually know Madison at all. And it’s scary that she’s already so deeply entrenched with a guy who’s becoming sort of erratic in a story where literally everyone has some history of violence, here.

His manner is completely the same but the way he’s presented is completely different. He was once her rock, and now the reader is getting these little hints - what if he’s to be her undoing? What if their violent delights end violently? It’s a slow reversal, but it’s really worth it. It’s why I miss longform comics so much - this change takes place over years! Mantlo had years to mess around with ideas. He’s just very central to a lot of themes I loved in Alpha Flight, but baby, that’s just Alpha Flight. Oh, I also love cheating.

The original reason I got into Madison at all was because of Danger, of the X-Men, who hooks up with him and they maybe (?) date, I think? I really liked their relationship, maybe situationship, that seems to have continued in the background for about a decade? Continuity things are never really clear with …. Marvel comics, past a certain year. But the fact that their relationship continues unseen is part of why it’s appealing to me…. because I can decide what happens.

But I thought Madison seemed to be again an interesting, albeit somewhat different character who serves a different role in X-Men, specifically throughout the main line in the Utopia era. He’s on a team with a Dr. Kavita Rao and Danger but also Dr. Nemesis who is definitely the writer’s (Spurrier) pet Favourite Boy and serves as his mouthpiece in a very typical cringey 2009 way that I can only describe as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, The Comic. Fuck, I hate that I said that because that’s absolutely what X-Club is. And I’ve read all his appearances in this era like seven times. Fuck.

This was an era where characters were allowed to use “autistic” as an insult and they most certainly did. Dr. Nemesis derides Madison throughout this era as autistic and mentally ill in a variety of ways. They play up his delusions - the fact that he believes he can talk to inanimate machines is less charming and more bizarre. He seems to lose his attraction to human women and becomes exclusively attracted to robots. It’s revealed that his vision - the way he sees the world - is majorly impacted by his superpowers. He acts weird and sort of becomes a verbal punching bag for nastier characters. All this and he doesn’t even get in the giant robot, he serves exclusively as an engineer/mechanic here.

He does get a few moments of real drama but he - and anyone who isn’t the X-man de jour - have less interiority and are more gears in the Utopia machine. I do enjoy it, though. My enjoyment however is definitely coloured by the fact that I haven’t read what happens between the scene where Heather confronts him about Lillian way back in the middle of Alpha Flight and his first appearance in X-Men. I’m missing a huge chunk of his story in a really embarrassing exercise of delayed gratification. I don’t actually find out what happens between him and Lillian, at least I haven’t seen it first hand. Kind of a crazy thing to reveal 1,200 words in. But anyways.

A lot of my thoughts about Madison revolve around him and Danger. I really liked Danger, I knew they were together in some capacity, so I just decided to like them as a couple, no matter what mental hoops I had to jump through. I’m fairly prone to doing that with my favourite characters: I avoid the stuff I don’t like, but when it’s difficult to avoid, I just change my mind on it. So I’ve decided to like X-Club, and the notoriously irritating All New X-Factor, and her appearances in recent Wolverine, and her baby and Madison and whatever else I need to just like. Keep the peace in my head. And enjoy my Favourite Character instead of getting upset.

I think that, given even just a little bit of interrogation, Madison and Danger are an extremely interesting couple. Outside of comics there aren’t a lot of places that would be willing to explore the relationship between a robot who was designed to test and train superheroes and a superhero who has the ability to control robots. I don’t think - if we are actually analyzing the texts - that Madison has the ability to control Danger. He basically says as much during their first meeting. But I still think there’s room for a lot of fun, weird back-and-forth power play. Nothing too creepy!!! I really think the two of them could be an iconic fixture amongst the moving pieces of the X-Men. I love them. I miss them. Whatever.

His most recent appearances were in LaValle’s aborted Exiles comics that never got a proper final arc. It’s funny how I get angrier the closer we get to the current day, lol. And it sucks because Sabretooth was one of the only Krakoa comics that resonated with me… I won’t get too into it. It’s disappointing how little detail and information we got from ten full issues. But whenever I want to be sad I reread the reason why Madison was put in jail on Krakoa in the first place.

I mean, it’s a throwback to a relationship that saw its first kiss more than fifteen years ago and hasn’t been seen since. It’s just endearing that, even though we haven’t seen them, a classic old ship is still kicking around. They were lovers in a dangerous time. They were exiled from paradise like Adam & Eve. It’s tragic, especially since I’m such a big Danger lover, and the heart yearns for catharsis and reconciliation between these two.

In summary, I guess I like Madison because he’s a character that pushes a lot of my buttons and has been surprisingly consistent throughout the years. So many of his relationships have been thoughtful and unique. We love a PTSD/autism king. I love that several fans consider him queer for having a non-normative sexuality. He plays a tragic sort of fool who’s fully aware of his impending downfalls but always manages to distract himself from them with his awesome toys. He’s had every male thot job in the book. I’m fairly sure he’s from Newfoundland. He really doesn’t deserve another romantic relationship with a hot superhero but it’s too late, I think she wants him. I don’t hate him nearly enough for the bad shit he’s done. I will literally forgive him every time for every thing. I love that he wears the Flames jersey that Heather gave him. And I think he's still got something to give, story-wise. I don't think it needs to end here for Mr. Jeffries. He's got more in him.