Jamie Braddock
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James Braddock Jr. is a fictional character appearing in the Marvel Comics universe. He is the elder brother by a decade of Brian Braddock and Elisabeth Braddock, his twin siblings. He is a mutant who has the ability to manipulate reality. Unfortunately, he also believes that the "real world" as we perceives it is nothing but a dream and that he must be the one dreaming it, which makes him essentially insane, like his fellow Marvel UK reality warper, Mad Jim Jaspers.
[edit] Fictional character history
Jamie was the oldest son of James and Elisabeth Braddock. He was nearly 10 years older than his brother Brian and his sister Elisabeth and always felt excluded from the twins, who were very close.
After he grew up, he made his name as a financial genius and was a successful racing car driver as well. Braddock Industries flourished under Jamie and the handsome, successful Jamie was a popular figure. Jamie came to know of his brother's secret identity as Captain Britain and assisted him on several occasions, but in his spare time, Jamie started to make illegal bets and his debts piled on. Soon Jamie became involved with various illegal activities to pay for his debts. Starting out with minor crimes, he eventually became involved with robbery, murder and slave-trade in Africa. Jamie was kidnapped by Doctor Crocodile, an African scientist/sorcerer who wanted to punish Jamie for his crimes. He made Jamie call his brother Brian, thinking that Brian was involved with Jamie's crimes as well. Crocodile's witch-doctor created an hallucination for Brian so that she and Crocodile could observe Brian's reaction to the crimes Jamie had committed. Convinced that Brian was innocent, Crocodile told Brian about Jamie. Brian was shocked and furious; he even tried to kill his brother. Brian left Jamie in the hands of Doctor Crocodile to be tortured further, and returned home.
Doctor Crocodile's treatments turned Jamie insane, Jamie now believed that the world around him was just a dream that he was having and his reality-warping powers awoke. Sat-Yr-9, in the stolen identity of Courtney Ross, had the Technet hired to free Jamie. She knew of Jamie's powers from her own world and the Technet freed Jamie. Crocodile then revealed Jamie's crimes to the Technet as well and they turned on Jamie, but he defeated them and erased their memories of these events. Jamie turned Doctor Crocodile in a real, baby crocodile and left with Sat-Yr-9. Jamie was taken to his home of Braddock Manor and used his reality warping powers to change things back to the way they were in his youth; he even resurrected the housekeeper Emma Collins.
Sat-Yr-9 used Jamie's reality warping powers to turn the London criminal Vixen into a dog. Moments afterward, he turned her assistant Nigel Frobisher (who had also been sent by Sat-Yr-9 to hire the Technet to free him in the first place) into a duplicate of Vixen. While Frosbisher had wanted to take over Vixen's criminal empire and had told Jamie as much, this was not how he had hoped to do so. After Frobisher got over the initial awkwardness of his situation, he and Jamie used their newly acquired resources to ambush Excalibur, a superhero team Brian had joined. During the ambush, Jamie Braddock killed Alysande Stuart. Jamie was defeated when Brian's girlfriend Meggan turned out to be immune to his powers and his sister, Elisabeth, now the X-Man Psylocke used her telepathic knife to knock him out. Sat-Yr-9 managed to take Jamie's unconscious body with her and they escaped. Jamie would stay in a coma for years, apparently abandoned by Sat-Yr-9 and taken to Muir Island for treatment.
Jamie was briefly seen in Uncanny X-Men #462-465, in the UXM four part tie-in story of House of M, in which also Mad Jim Jaspers mysteriously reappeared. In Uncanny X-Men #472, he reveals that he was the one who resurrected his sister Betsy, and also made her immune to the powers of reality warpers like Proteus and the Shadow King. Uatu the Watcher also reveals that he is present and implies that something of a cosmic signifance is about to happen. Jamie also talked about "a cosmic threat", now known as the Foursaken. Jamie was kidnapped through a mysterious portal and when the X-Men followed, all of them were captured(minus Psylocke, who was invisible to the Foursaken thanks to Jamie's alterations). At the last minute, he felt that he could not sacrifice Psylocke as a pawn. He later sacrificed himself to save the universe from the First Fallen, the Foursaken's master.
[edit] Powers
Originally Jamie had no superhuman powers, but Doctor Crocodile's mystical torture awoke Jamie's latent reality manipulation. Jamie perceives the universe as being made of quantum strings, which he can pull and twist to alter the fabric of reality. Originally, his powers were limited in nature: he could only affect dense forms and needed to be close enough to pull on the quantum strings, but his powers seem to have increased over time.
"Power runs deep in our family. He got the full measure. The ability to pull the quantum strings that define causality.
He got himself so tangled, he'll never twist free.'" - Betsy Braddock, Uncanny X-Men #464
[edit] External links
- Jamie Braddock's profile on the Unofficial Handbook of the Marvel Universe
