Tabitha Smith
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Tabitha Smith is a comic book superhero appearing in the Marvel Comics universe. Created by Jim Shooter and Al Milgrom, the character first appeared in Secret Wars II #5 (November 1985). She later appeared as a member of the X-Force and, more recently, as a member of Nextwave.
Since her first appearance, Tabitha has used a number of different codenames, including Time Bomb, Boom Boom, Boomer, and Meltdown.
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[edit] Character history
[edit] Origin
Tabitha Smith was born to Marty Louis Smith and Mandy Smith, in Roanoke, Virginia. Her parents divorced and her father later married Wanda Jo Bialowsky.
Tabitha Smith had not gotten along with her parents for most of her life. At thirteen Tabitha's mutant power, to create balls of explosive concussive energy, emerged. Her parents discovered them and were appalled. Resentful towards her father, Tabitha put a small explosive ball of energy in his lasagna. In retaliation, her father beat her severely. Soon after, Tabitha ran away from home, to find Professor Charles Xavier's Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, in Westchester, NY. This was the beginning of a whole new life for Tabitha.
[edit] The Beyonder
On a train to New York, Tabitha met the Beyonder. Thinking he was a mutant, Boom Boom accompanied him. The Beyonder abandoned her but returned and took her to Xavier's school. At the school, Tabitha was terrified when the teams of the X-Men and the New Mutants fought the Beyonder. Before that event, Tabitha had never seen so much power, nor so many people fighting, in one place. The Beyonder took her to a planet where the Celestials were located. There, threatening to destroy the universe, the Beyonder fought and seemingly defeated a number of Celestials. (It was eventually revealed that that planet was not truly the Celestials' headquarters, and the Celestials allowed the Beyonder to "defeat" them, presumably in order to observe him in action.) Fearful of the battle taking place between the Beyonder and the Celestials, Tabitha demanded to be returned to Earth. Back on Earth, Boom Boom alerted the Avengers about the Beyonder. Summoning the Beyonder, Boom Boom thereby led him into an ambush by the Avengers and other costumed champions. The Beyonder, who had regarded Boom Boom as his only friend, allowed the Avengers to defeat him, but then left. Boom Boom left during the battle.
[edit] Fallen Angels
Following the battle, Tabitha returned to traveling across the United States. During her travels, she met the teleporting criminal called the Vanisher. The Vanisher recruited her into the Fallen Angels, his gang of thieves, where she took up the codename Boom Boom. During her time with the gang, Tabitha learned many things from the Vanisher, including how to steal. Tabitha eventually became unsure of the Vanisher. She called Cyclops and the rest of X-Factor, who the world believed to be "mutant-hunters". Meeting with Beast and Iceman, Tabitha began to have second thoughts. After giving her situation more thought, Tabitha decided to leave and stay with X-Factor at their headquarters.
After her initial encounter with Iceman, Tabitha used a "time bomb" on him as a prank. This incident began a series of pranks between the two of them, over the years. During her stay with X-Factor, a former teammate, Ariel, rescued her. Ariel was an alien with powers of instant transportation and psychic coercion. With the Fallen Angels back together, Ariel duped them into becoming captured by her planet's scientists to serve as experiments. Eventually, Ariel changed her mind and helped her teammates escape. After the ordeal, Tabitha and the team returned to Earth. The members of the Fallen Angels went their separate ways and Tabitha was kidnapped by the Right, an anti-mutant organization. Tabitha, X-Factor, and other mutants regained their freedom. Afterwards, Tabitha joined her fellow X-Factor trainees as the X-Terminators.
[edit] New Mutants
After the events of the Inferno saga, Tabitha and some members of the X-Terminators joined the New Mutants. During her time with the New Mutants, Tabitha fell in love with a teammate, Cannonball. She even stayed with the team when a man named Cable came along. With Cable and his training, Tabitha possessed greater control over her abilities. She even became no longer afraid over her abilities and the danger of using them.
During the "X-Tinction Agenda" crossover when the mutant-hating country of Genosha began attacking mutants in the United States, taking place immediately after the events of the 1990 crossover "Days of Future Present", a group of Genoshan Magistrates (soldiers of the country of Genosha), backed by the cyborg Cameron Hodge, and including an amnesiac Havok (a member of the X-Men), attacked the X-Mansion and kidnapped Storm and the New Mutants Warlock, Boom Boom, Rictor, and Wolfsbane. Warlock was killed and Storm and Wolfbane were brainwashed, turned into mindless mutate slaves, which formed the backbone of the Genoshan economy and lifestyle. Cable, the New Mutants, Gambit, Forge, and Banshee recruited X-Factor and headed to Genosha to save their teammates. They were soon joined by Wolverine, Psylocke, and Jubilee, who independently went to Genosha to rescue their friends. Wolverine led his companions to the island itself to stop them. In the streets, the trio ran into Rictor and Boom-Boom, who were powerless, but had escaped the full mutate bonding process. They rescued them from Tam Anderson and her team of Magistrates. Jubilee was assigned to safeguard them. While Jubilee and Boom-Boom didn’t particularly get along, due to their somewhat similar attitudes, the three youngsters managed to avoid capture several times. Tabitha, Ric and Jubilation also planned to attack the citadel, but they arrived just in time to witness the fate of Jean’s team. Helplessly they watched from a safe distance, avoiding re-capture and eventually making their own way into the Genoshan citadel to join up with the other X-teams for the final showdown against Cameron Hodge, the villain behind Genosha’s recent attacks.
[edit] X-Force
Deciding that a hit-and-run strategy was best, Cable and Cannonball moved the team to a new base and renamed the New Mutants, X-Force. Their more aggressive methods put them at odds with the rest of the X-teams, however, making them outlaws from their former friends as well as law-enforcement agencies from all over the world. At that time, Boom-Boom and Sam started to get closer to each other and often questioned themselves why they stuck with the group that had so radically changed from its original purpose. Still thinking to be able to make a change and help people in need, they decided to stay and also to keep an eye on their mysterious leader. Meanwhile, with the new change in the team status, she changed her codename again to Boomer.
After the X-Cutioner’s Song crossover and X-Force's arrest following this event, Boomer made herself a new costume with a Shi’ar clothing synthesizer, when Lila walked in and talked to her about Sam. Boomer attempted to avoid the discussion, but Lila was determined. If Boomer didn’t want to talk (she had a broken jaw after all), then she’d just have to listen. Boomer was a little perturbed because she thought Lila and Sam had a thing going, but Lila assured her that Sam and her were just friends. Lila told Boomer that Sam was too young for her and she was too busy to be in a relationship. They only had a short fling together. She told Boomer that Sam was all hers. Lila turned and walked away. Behind her Boomer did a little dance and cheer. But before Lila left the room she made a snide comment of her own. She reminded Boomer that it might be hard to have a relationship with Sam if they were both in jail. Lila left, satisfied. Later on Boomer equipped the rest of X-Force with their new costumes.
The team got settled into their new home of Camp Verde, Arizona when they left the mansion, feeling like they needed a vacation. Sam and Boomer left the team to visit his family farm in Kentucky, introducing her to his family showed that Sam was serious about Tabitha. While there, they were kidnapped by Siena Blaze, a member of the mutant-killing Upstarts. In their latest hunt, the Gamesmaster had sent the Upstarts to capture all remaining members of the old New Mutants and Hellions teams. In the course of this hunt, the Upstarts encountered both X-Force and their allies, the New Warriors. While Siena Blaze captured Cannonball, Boomer, Empath, Karma and Moonstar, Shinobi turned in Firestar and her boyfriend, Justice. In the final battle with the Gamesmaster himself, it was Cannonball’s sister, Paige, who saved them when all seemed lost. She manifested transitional bodimorphing abilities and won in a battle of wills with the Gamesmaster, convincing him to free them all. After this was over, Sam and Boomer returned to the Guthrie farm, along with Paige, to continue their vacation.
Sam and Boomer then returned to the team in time to help battle the Phalanx. X-Force soon moved to another base in New York, the psychotic gamesman Arcade's former Murderworld, after their friend and ally, Prosh, cleaned out Camp Verde to facilitate a trip to the stars. Whatever, they didn't stay there longer as they were found by Arcade who detonated explosives in their base.
[edit] Tabitha and Sabretooth
The team moved back to the Institute and they started working more closely with the X-Men. During the first day back, Tabitha and Shatterstar ended up in the Danger Room control deck, but the program they found running shocked them: Victor Creed in his skivvies relaxing in an idyll. Sam burst in and yelled at them for fooling around. Xavier allowed Sabretooth to live in the mansion to receive some form of therapy. Creed had become docile after having Wolverine rammed his bone claw through his brain.
On a certain mission Boomer convinced Cable to let her stay behind so that she could spend some much-needed time with Cannonball, but he was further occupied with his duty as an X-Man. He went off with Storm and left Boomer with a heart full of questions about their newly confirmed love. During one night Caliban broke into the Danger Room to exact his revenge on Sabretooth for killing the Morlocks. Boomer, who had been bringing Sabretooth milk bowls every night, tried her best to stop the two, but it took Cable’s innovative idea to save the day. This complicated Cannonball's relationship with Tabitha though, a relationship that was already somewhat strained, as Sam (as well as pretty much everybody else) disagreed with Tabitha’s practice of looking after the seemingly lobotomized Sabretooth.
On her way out of the Danger Room one night, Boomer failed to notice that Creed spoke for the first time since his accident; he said his name. Later that night, Boomer got a night visit from Wolverine, who reprimanded her for taking care of Creed. Boomer lashed out at him, angry that everyone was telling her what to do. At night, Boomer visited Sabretooth again, though this time he talked to her. She was surprised and lost some trust in him because of it. Still, when Creed asked her that he wanted to go outside, as he was afraid of the Jungle projection in the Danger Room, she changed the holographic scenario. However Sabretooth became extremely scared when he saw the form of Wolverine hiding in the bushes and asked to go back inside.
Later, however, it was revealed that Sabretooth's healing factor grew back his missing section of brain, and so he betrayed the young girl, calling her an idiot. In the resulting battle, Psylocke was killed before the eyes of the helpless Tabitha, and Sabretooth escaped.
[edit] Boomer to Meltdown
Tabitha then decided to change her attitude. She became mentally tougher, more capable and changed her codename to Meltdown. She returned to throwing her explosive spheres, but with greater control than before. She could now mentally direct them and could reabsorb their energy if she chose not to detonate them.
In one mission soon after this change, Siryn, Domino and Meltdown returned to Camp Hayden, where they intended to follow up on their recent involvement there and the “Nimrod” project – they initially found nothing but an empty facility (and the word Onslaught scrawled across a wall), but the Blob then arrived and attacked - he also seemed to have enhanced his powers, easily knocking Siryn and Domino unconscious.
Tabitha, facing him alone, reacted by creating a time-bomb and shoving it down his throat - showcasing her new, harsher attitude. Siryn and Domino regained consciousness just in time to witness the Blob backing down as the bomb counted down to detonation - convinced that Tabitha's threat was not a bluff.
As Meltdown cancelled the bomb and walked away, the Blob declared that he could not believe he had been beaten by a bunch of women. Tabitha responded by bursting his eardrums with twin explosions.
[edit] On the road
When X-Force split from Cable and went on the road, Tabitha and Sunspot became close and shared a kiss, though Meltdown was technically still dating Cannonball, who was a member of the X-Men at the time. When Sam came to visit X-Force and caught Tab and Bobby in another kiss, he was outraged and flew off. Later Sam reconciled with Tab (and Bobby) after rejoining X-Force. In the meantime, Tab split from Bobby after he regained his trust fund and started throwing money around.
When the team went into the world of espionage under the management of Pete Wisdom, Meltdown gained a new expansion into her abilities. She learned to fire beams of concussive force. Wisdom also taught her to become a computer hacker. The team attempted to continue his campaign after Pete Wisdom was killed. Subsequently, the team faked their deaths while battling Pete's sister Romany Wisdom and Worldengine, an extra-terrestrial machine. She also rekindled her romance with her old boyfriend Cannonball. Then, when X-Force came upon a top-secret plot to use alien technology to recreate a planet-moving engine, they apparently could not stop the bio-engineered defenders of the facility, Tabby and her teammates (except Domino) were presumed dead following the explosion they set off, leveling the alien tech base. However, they soon appeared at a press conference for the new team calling itself X-Force, and got into a fight with the other mutants over naming rights. During the battle, Tabitha was teleported by U-Go Girl, left high into the air above a busy freeway. The new team subsequently took the name X-Statix, until nearly all of their members died in the final issue of the series.
[edit] After "Death"... Underground
When Cable discovered hints as to the existence of a revamped Weapon X program, one designed to use mutants to hunt down and intern other mutants, Cable created an organization to investigate the program and the existence of its internment camp, Neverland. He dubbed the organization the Underground, and invited Meltdown to join his elite group. Ultimately, Cable's Underground group was joined by Weapon X agent Brent Jackson, who hoped to stage a coup against the Director and had formed his own resistance group with fellow agents Washout, Marrow, Wild Child and Sauron.
With Washout's help and sacrifice, the Underground was able to infiltrate the Weapon X complex, ousting The Director and nearly crippling the program. However, before the final defeat, agent Jackson betrayed the Underground, turning Cable's psychic powers against his allies. Jackson captured the Underground members and altered their memories to erase everything they saw and learned about the program. Even so, Cable and the Underground escaped, aided by Weapon X's Marrow, and believed the program to be nothing more than a military cover story.
Later, she joined a reformed X-Force unit against the threat of Skornn, a creature that was going to threaten Earth. Afterwards, she helped them attack the headquarters of the Black Box, though the occupant turned out to be a robot.
Tabitha is one of the mutants who retained their powers after M-Day.
[edit] Nextwave
Shortly afterwards, Tabitha grew her hair long and eschewed her codename, re-appeared as a founding member of Nextwave, a new off-beat and more than slightly satirical super-hero team featured in an eponymous comic book series created by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen. The Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort, or H.A.T.E. (a subsidiary of the Beyond Corporation©) formed the team. Tabitha Smith's new team included other 2nd-string characters rescued from Marvel limbo, including Monica Rambeau (formerly Captain Marvel, the leader of the Avengers), Elsa Bloodstone, Aaron Stack and The Captain.
Tabitha stole the Marketingplan air craft from H.A.T.E after discovering that a former terrorist cell called S.I.L.E.N.T. morphed into the Beyond Corporation©. They found the corporation’s marketing plan, which involved using H.A.T.E. and their own resources to product-test unusual WMDs on the American public. The biological weapon was revealed to be Fin Fang Foom, a giant lizard which clambered from underground and proceeded to wreck the building site.
After putting an end to the threat of Fin Fang Foom in Abcess, North Dakota, Nextwave moved on to Illinois. Tabitha managed to subdue Mac Mangel, a corrupt police officer who had been taken as a host by the Ultra Samurai Seed, with a time bomb. The Ultra Samurai metallic shell disintegrated, leaving Mangel crushed on the ground. Upon learning that he was a police officer, Tabitha and Aaron began to beat Mangel before Rambeau intervened.
[edit] Powers and abilities
Tabitha has the mutant power to create balls of energy of an unknown kind, which she calls her "time bombs". These "bombs" explode with concussive force. She can produce marble-sized "bombs" which have little concussive impact and which she uses for playing pranks. She has produced "time bombs" ranging up to the size of beach balls, which, when they explode, can smash tree trunks and even metal objects. Tabitha can control the amount of time between the creation of one of her "bombs" and the time it detonates. She can mentally muffle the sound of the detonation. Under the direction of Pete Wisdom she learned to focus her power as beams of concussive force.
In Nextwave, her powers are summarized as "the mutant ability to blow things up and steal all your stuff."
[edit] Other versions of Tabitha
[edit] X-Men: The End
In X-Men: The End, a series set in an alternate future, Tabitha is still known as Meltdown and is still a member of X-Force. When Mister Sinister sends his minions to kill X-Force, Tabitha is one of the first casualties. Engulfed and possessed by Divinity, he uses her powers to try to kill Domino. Tabitha and Divinity are both killed by Apocalypse in the battle that follows.
[edit] Tabitha Smith in other media
[edit] Television
Tabitha appears in the X-Men animated series as a young child, in the episode "No Mutant is an Island" . She was among the mutant children that Cyclops' old friend Sarah takes care of, and Scott has to resuce her and the other kids when the villain of the day tried to imprision them, which forced Cyclops to cace his own ghosts and a former orphaned child whose powers made him an outcast.
In the X-Men: Evolution animated TV series Boom Boom was voiced by Megan Leitch. Originally one of the New Mutants, Tabitha has a troubled past and a criminal father. Her father took advantage of her mutant abilities to commit crimes when she was younger. She eventually found a home at the Institute, although her stay was short-lived. While not evil or malicious, the lack of discipline and mischievousness made her a troublesome guest for anyone willing to take her in. She spent an episode flirting with Kurt Wagner, whom she saw as someone similar to her since they were kind of outcasts (him, because of his looks; her, because of her family life and her rebelliousness).
At the end of this episode, she felt that she didn't fit in and moved in with the Brotherhood of Mutants, who were more her style, saying that there were too many rules at the Institute. She often played practical jokes on the boys (such as shaving off Blob's Mohawk while he slept) and abused their hospitality, though they did little to stop her. Also, at times she'd aid them; she took the always rejected and laughed at Blob and Toad as her dates for the party in Shadow Dance. Tabitha never actually took up a villainous role, though, and she was evicted upon the return of Mystique. She even discovered some of Mystique's plans and, after blowing up her bedroom, she went to the X-Men manor and tried to tlel them, but failed.
Her role in the series was significantly diminished afterward; she lived on her own and appeared mostly in the company of her best friend, Amara aka Magma from the New Mutants, appearing in several episodes of the series afterwards with no serious loyalties. Finally, according to the season finale, she took the decision of returning to the X-Men's side.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] List of titles
- Cable #21, 29, 71, 73-74
- Deadpool Vol. 2 #22
- Excalibur #82
- Fallen Angels #3-8
- New Mutants Vol. 1 #72-74, 76-80, 82-100
- New Mutants Annual #5-7
- New Warriors Vol. 1 #45
- New Warriors Annual #1
- Spider-Man #16
- Uncanny X-Men #270-273, 294-295, 304, 326, 328, 331, 375, 388
- Uncanny X-Men Annual #14-15
- Weapon X Vol. 2 #6-8, 10-13
- Wolverine Vol. 2 #92-93
- X-Factor Vol. 1 #11-18, 22-23, 27-33, 40-41, 60, 62, 84-85, 106
- X-Factor Annual #3, 5-6
- X-Force Vol. 1 #-1, 1-2, 5-17, 19, 21-29, 32, 34-54, 57, 62, 69-87, 89-115, 117
- X-Force Annual #1
- X-Force Vol. 2 #2-6
- X-Man #18
- X-Men (Second Series) #14-15, 30, 41, 47
- X-Men Annual 1996
- X-Men: Prime
- X-Men Unlimited Vol. 1 #23
- X-Terminators #1-4
