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Quote1 I can create. That's my gift. I can make anything I can imagine. Out of metal. Glass. You name it. With people, I can't create. I just destroy. I betray. I want to be with her. But I know I can never be. I know that if I'm with her, she'll just be hurt again. ... And she was dead an hour later. Four days after that, I put her in a glass box. The separation is better for us. Quote2
Madison Jeffries[src]

History

Early Life[]

Much of Madison's past is unknown. He and his brother Lionel served in the US army during the Siancong War. Madison worked as a mechanic, Lionel as a medic. While Madison had always been uncomfortable with his powers, Lionel seemed to relish using his. Their unit was heavily damaged after a mission and Lionel seemed to go insane. He used his powers on the dead and wounded with horrific results. Madison had to use his powers to restrain his brother and had him committed.[6] After returning home, he became a mechanic in the Canadian town of Harbordale, where post traumatic stress disorder caused his powers to go out of control and take over the entire town. The Canadian government sent Wolverine, who was working for Department H at the time, to investigate. He found and woke up Jeffries, freeing the town. After bringing him back to Department H, Madison was checked into a clinic where he met Roger Bochs.[7]

Gamma & Alpha Flight[]

Madison was apparently recruited by Guardian and was part of the Gamma Flight training group. He became romantically involved with Diamond Lil, also part of Gamma Flight. However, he was let go along with the rest of the training teams when Department H was defunded.[8]

Madison worked on a new version of the Box robot with Roger Bochs. He was able to find or make a special type of living metal that allowed the operator to merge into the armor rather than control it via remote.[9] Bochs and Jeffries then both officially joined Alpha Flight. Madison's first major action was to dismantle Delphine Courtney when Omega Flight attacked Alpha Flight.[10]

Heather began looking into Madison's past and discovered his brother Lionel in a mental ward. Madison knew his brother was a danger and tried to stop her. Lionel was accidentally freed. Calling himself Scrambler, Lionel escaped and caused a great deal of trouble before supposedly being forced to use his powers on himself, curing his insanity.[6]

Lionel set up a "New Life clinic" where he would work on others, claiming he could cure any ailment.[11] Alpha Flight began using his treatments regularly, but Scramble was still insane. When Roger Bochs was transformed from a paraplegic into an athletic man with legs by Lionel, the transformation began to break down. When Bochs started to go insane, Madison took possession of the Box robot. With his powers he could form weapons and devices to augment it as needed. Bochs and Lionel then merged into Omega, wanting to use their combined power and skill. Although Persuasion was able to briefly separate the two, Scramble lobotomized Bochs and reformed Omega. Madison felt that his brother could never be rehabilitated, so he formed a large cannon and destroyed Omega.[12]

While James Hudson was presumed dead, Madison and Heather became close, and even became engaged. However, he continued to secretly see Lillian and eventually realized that he loved her and not Heather. He also helped James Hudson when he was captured by Roxxon.[13]

He and Lillian retired and married.[14] Lillian attempted to keep him from using the Boxbot. Madison finally admitted he was becoming addicted to using it, as well as being an adventurer.[15]

He still rejoined Alpha Flight after it was reinstated by Department H, although his wife asked him not to. However, she was able to convince him not to use Box unless it was absolutely necessary. On a mission with the team, Jeffries was knocked out battling the Zodiac.[16] They brainwashed him into being Gemini and had him create a robot duplicate to control. Despite Puck finding and unmasking him, he seemed to still think Alpha Flight were his enemies.[17]

Brainwashed and Neverland[]

Having been brainwashed repeatedly, Jeffries was then taken by Weapon X and was manipulated into thinking that Director Colcord was his ally and not to question the intended use of his projects. He was working on a new generation of Sentinels as well as using Box robots to keep the Neverland prisoners in line. So extensive was the brainwashing that he didn't even realize that his wife Lillian was one of the detainees in the camp. With Neverland now abandoned, Madison and his prototypes accompanied Colcord. Following infighting within the project and an attack by Cable's Underground, the Weapon X program was infiltrated and crippled. Colcord was almost killed by the turncoat agent Washout, but was rescued by Madison, after Colcord persuaded Aurora to join him, the three escaped the Weapon X complex using Aurora's superhuman speed to parts unknown, despite the Director's abusive behavior towards her.[18]

M-Day, Utopia, and X-Club[]

Madison Jeffries was one of the few mutants to retain their superhuman powers during the M-Day event.

Madison was later approached by Beast to join his scientific team in an attempt to find a solution to the Mutant Birth Crisis. Jeffries claimed he wanted to get away from people after being brainwashed into making Automated Mutant Death Camps so he moved away to create and get smarter. His robots learned to adapt and self-replicate and ironically decided they didn't need him anymore. Sealing off the bunker, they labored at trying to kill him. Finally Madison planted a bomb to deal with them and left to join Beast's team, which then traveled to Graymalkin Industries to meet the final member of the X-Club, Dr. Kavita Rao (who was formerly trying to cure mutation).

Together, the team tried to figure out what might turn the X-gene back on. They also created a time travel device to help them locate Cable and the Mutant Messiah, Hope, in the far future. However, the devices were only prototypes (albeit with some unique properties) that were put together in a relatively short time. The side effects included biological acceleration, therefore the travelers would have to return to the present within 33 and a half hours.

Madison Jeffries (Earth-616) from X-Club Vol 1 1 001

Madison, who communicated with machines frequently, brought up the point that they had already created a time machine to go into the future and suggested they might gain some insight by altering the machines to travel into the past in order to study "The Origin of The Species" or pre-mutant DNA. Rao suggested studying the parents of a first-generation mutant which would enable them to see what genetic indicators and eccentricities might have made such an evolutionary leap possible.[19]

Utopians[]

Some time following the conflict between the Avengers and the X-Men, after which Utopia was abandoned, Madison Jeffries formed part of the Utopians, a group of mutants that started inhabiting the ruins of the island.[20]

The X-Men were contacted by S.H.I.E.L.D. to investigate the island after a recon team went missing. The X-Men teleported to the island, and initially engaged the Utopians. After talking it out and discovering the Utopians wanted nothing but to be safe and undisturbed, the X-Men offered them a place at the New Charles Xavier School, which they gladly accepted.[21]

Age of X-Man[]

In the reality created by Nate Grey and a Life Seed, a world where everyone on Earth was a mutant and relationships were strongly discouraged or illegal, Madison was a history instructor at the Summers Institute for Higher Learning in Westchester County. Like its mainstream reality counterpart, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, the Summers Institute taught mutant children how to control their mutant abilities.[22][23]

He was first seen instructing a class of 10th year students, reviewing the facts of "The Resolution" (the day everyone worldwide gained mutant abilities) and the sacrifice of seven mutants (Gambit, Rogue, Cyclops, Professor X, Hope Summers, Cable, and Wolverine) that made it happen.[23] Although not shown on panel, it can be assumed that Madison returned to the mainstream reality with the rest of the trapped mutants through Nate Grey's portals.[24]

Krakoa[]

Madison Jeffries accepted citizenship of the sovereign mutant nation Krakoa. However, he broke one of its laws by attempting to build an inorganic environment for his robot flame Danger,[25] and was banished to the Pit of Exile by the Quiet Council, alongside Nekra, Melter, Oya, and Third Eye.[26] Once in the Pit, the prisoners were greeted by a hellscape shaped by Sabretooth, who up until that point had been its sole inhabitant.[27] In fact, this was not a physical confrontation, but a mental communion, for the inhabitants of the Pit were all held in stasis by Krakoa. Sabretooth taught the other prisoners how to channel their minds through Krakoa and manifest themselves on the surface.[26] Sabretooth eventually convinced Cypher to free him to avert a rebellion[25]. Cypher, having recognized his error, gathered Jeffries and the others prisoners, including the newly imprisoned Toad, Orphan-Maker, and Nanny, and sent them after Sabretooth to capture the fugitive.[28]

Exiled[]

While riding Madison Jeffries as a vehicle, the newly-formed Exiles tracked Sabretooth to a place called Noble Island. The island was a storage for Doctor Barrington failed experiments. When Third Eye sensed Barrington's arrival, the Exiles' took action against the doctor's Creation.[4] During the conflict with Doctor Barrington they learned about the captured mutant kids kept at Station Four. Unaware of who were their friend or foe, the kids lashed out in frenzy and Madison Jeffries was ripped in half.[29]

Attributes

Power Grid[41]
:Category:Power Grid/Fighting Skills/Some Training:Category:Power Grid/Energy Projection/Multiple Types:Category:Power Grid/Energy Projection/None:Category:Power Grid/Durability/Superhuman:Category:Power Grid/Durability/Normal:Category:Power Grid/Speed/Supersonic:Category:Power Grid/Speed/Normal:Category:Power Grid/Strength/Superhuman (75-100 ton):Category:Power Grid/Strength/Normal:Category:Power Grid/Intelligence/Normal

Powers

Technokinetic Transmutation: This power allows him to psychokinetically manipulate, alter, and restructure all inorganic materials[30] and their living variants (when/while he inhabits them, as they become living when he phases into them) into anything within his imagination. This included remote manipulation and control of devices made of such materials, even if not of his own creation. Madison can telekinetically manipulate, arrange, and alter objects at the atomic level. On at least one occasion, he was able to somehow utilize the thoughts of someone else via touching their forehead to create machines based off of blueprints in their mind.[31] He is particularly skilled at psionically creating technologies that duplicate or enhance the form and functions of parts of the human body.

  • Techno Possession: Jeffries could do more than just assume control of machines, he could also phase his own physicality and consciousness into them, thereby using and piloting any and all technological forms as his own body. He often used this function within the Box mecha suit he had developed utilizing it as his makeshift robotic combat form.
  • Remote Technoforming: He has evolved a secondary mutation of full technomorphation, allowing him to not only communicate with artificial intelligences, base appliances, machinery, and robotics, making it relatively easy for him to control and utilize most of these as a result. But better acclimate and affect distanced transformation of mechanical parts into whatever it is he needs.[32]

Intuitive Invention: He also has a talent for intuitive design similar to that of Forge, and it has been remarked by telepaths that his mind seems more like that of a machine than a man. (Some things he has created or had a hand in creating: In addition to modifying the Box armor and creating its fully robotic variants, were extensive Weapon X systems, including robots, Box-bots, and an entire concentration camp, devices that nullified mutant powers, a version of the Guardian suit for Heather Hudson when she replaced her husband as leader of Alpha Flight, time pieces that allowed himself and others to go forward and backward in time, a device to make one immune to telepathic influence[33] as well as one to amplify telepathic abilities enough to knock out anyone not wearing earplugs in a 100 foot radius[33] and more).

Fraternal Psychic Link: Madison could psychically sense the presence of his brother Lionel within a certain range.[5]

Abilities

Madison has experience both as a soldier and as a master mechanic and machinesmith. In the realm of technologies, he seems to have a genius level intuitive gift, allowing him to create amazingly advanced equipment with relative ease. It has been theorized that because he never embraced his powers, until much later in life that he had never fully utilized them before, nor his knack for innovative design.

Weaknesses

While merged with Box, Madison could formerly only transmute the armor itself and absorb added material into the armor, and had to separate from Box to use his powers to affect these materials in any other way. However, this no longer seems to be the case as shown when trying to restrain Sebastian Shaw, while inhabiting the Box robot, he also caused various wires, conduits, and pipes outside his robotic form to wrap around and attempt to hold the mutant in place.[34]

Jeffries' mental state has been severely damaged due to brainwashing and manipulation over the years. He seems to be under considerable strain from constant work on projects.

Paraphernalia

Equipment

Madison Jeffries (Earth-616) from Alpha Flight Vol 1 57 001
  • Box Robot: Through an act of will, Madison Jeffries can "phase" into the humanoid robotic body called Box in order to control it from within. The Box robotic body is principally composed of a "living metal," the exact nature of which has not yet been revealed. Jeffries mentally controls Box from within its body, and can perceive whatever its sensors perceive. Although Jeffries cannot actually feel physical pain while within Box, his psychic link with Box makes it so that he can feel psychic pain if enough damage is inflicted upon Box.
    • Superhuman Strength: The Box robot has vast superhuman strength and can lift 85 tons.[5] He has been able to kill the Thing of Earth-7475 by shattering his rock body with his blows.[35]
    • Superhuman Durability: The Box robot is highly resistant to physical damage[5] but extremely hard materials like Adamantium could damage it.[36]
    • Flight: Powerful jets either in the soles of its feet or emerging from its back allow the robot to fly at supersonic speeds, though he can just as easily alter its form to become an aircraft, etc.[5][37]
    • Technological Adaptation: Box also contains many different devices to fulfill various functions. In fact, Jeffries can use his psionic powers to create new technologies and adaptive equipment for Box, or to modify existing devices within Box and alter its shape, in any way that he can conceive.[5] When Box flies, he can cause its arms to become wings or extend them from his back and a rudder to appear on its feet. He has also caused a drill to emerge from Box's feet and has created weaponry adapted to face whatever foe is being confronted. Jeffries is able to alter the robot as needed such as forming weapons or adapting sensors, in addition by drawing upon outside material, he can increase the size of the robot to unknown limits. At one point he had developed prototypes for the Weapon X Project and seemed able to control them all simultaneously.
      • Energy Projection: For example, he has caused part of Box's body to become a cannon and a weapon capable of discharging living light. The energy blasts that his cannon could generate were powerful enough to kill his brother after he had turned into Omega.[38]

Trivia

  • Madison Jeffries' astrological symbol is Gemini.[16] This indicates Madison was born under this sign of the zodiac, sometime between May 20 and June 20.
  • Askani, Professor X and The Five would resurrect all combat-ready mutants killed during and after the Krakoan era to participate in the final attack on Orchis.[39] Although not seen since, it is thus likely that Madison Jeffries is alive once more.

See Also

Links and References

References

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