Meggan

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Meggan


Meggan, by Alan Davis

Publisher Marvel Comics/Marvel UK
First appearance Mighty World of Marvel #7 (December, 1983)
Created by Alan Moore
Alan Davis
Characteristics
Alter ego Meggan Braddock
Species Human Mutant
Affiliations Excalibur, Court of Otherworld
Abilities Shapeshifting
Empathy
Flight
See energy auras
Control of natural elements

Meggan is a comic book superheroine in the Marvel Comics universe.

[edit] Fictional character biography

Born in a blizzard to a Roma family, 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 webbed hands and feet, antennae, claws, and distorted features. They 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 fell in love with him. After she learned enough to stabilize her powers to a form that pleased him (and thus pleased her) he fell in love right back. 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. Brian could not deal with Nightcrawler's attraction toward Meggan and Meggan herself 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.

Meggan sacrifices herself. Art by Chris Bachalo.
Meggan sacrifices herself. Art by Chris Bachalo.

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 Multiverse. 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 in order to deflect a large amount of the impacting chaotic energies. 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 has three powers; empathy, elemental powers and shapeshifting. These powers actually blend together, aspects of one power affecting the others. Meggan has been referred to as an "elemental empath", an "empathic metamorph", and an "elemental metamorph". Meggan's primary 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. 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 because she was unused to walking anywhere 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 shapeshifter who can assume the form of any living creature, even those who only exist in legends (once she became a Godzilla-like dragon and actually breathed fire, and another occasion she became a werewolf that looked like fellow X-Man Wolfsbane, and had all of a wolf's natural abilities). Meggan can assume the form of other people as well. 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. Her elemental powers also cause Meggan to change in response to her surroundings, growing fur in extreme cold, or gills when she is submerged 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 even increase the density of her muscle tissue to boost her strength to superhuman levels. 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 weather nearby.

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