Jamie Braddock

James "Jamie" Braddock Jr. is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The elder brother of the twin superheroes Captain Britain and Psylocke, he is a mutant possessing the ability to manipulate reality in a variety of ways. Though his mutant powers are very powerful, he is limited in that he is also a schizophrenic who believes reality to be his own dream. Originally a supporting character in his brother's solo comic book series, the emergence of his superhuman powers and subsequent mental illness have led him to become a super-villain associated with both Captain Britain and various X-Men comics.

Publication history

Jamie Braddock first appeared in the UK title Captain Britain Weekly #9 (December, 1976), and was created by Chris Claremont, Herb Trimpe, and Fred Kida.

Fictional character biography

Jamie is the oldest son of Dr. James and Elizabeth Braddock. Nearly a decade older than his siblings, the twins Brian and Elizabeth ("Betsy"), Jamie had a relatively isolated childhood.^[1]

He made his name as a financial genius and was also a successful race car driver. He headed Braddock Industries, a company that flourished under his leadership. Eventually, Jamie came to know of his brother's secret identity as Captain Britain and assisted him on several occasions. In his spare time, however, Jamie started to make illegal bets and his debts grew. Soon he became involved with various illegal activities in order to pay his debts. Starting out with minor crimes, Jamie eventually became involved with robbery, murder, and slave-trading in Africa, resulting in him being kidnapped by Doctor Crocodile, an African scientist (also a former R.C.X. agent). He forced Jamie to contact his brother, thinking that Brian was involved with Jamie's crimes as well. Crocodile's witch-doctor created a 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 the truth about his brother's actions. Shocked and furious, Brian abandoned Jamie to his fate.

Jamie's treatment at the hands of Doctor Crocodile eventually fractured his mind, leading him to believe that the world around him was merely a dream. The torture and hallucinations forced upon him also awakened his latent mutant power; the ability to warp and restructure reality in his immediate environment. Sat-Yr-9, in the stolen identity of Courtney Ross, learned of Jamie's recently emerged powers, and hired the interdimensional mercenaries known as the Technet to free him. When confronted by the Technet, Crocodile revealed Jamie's crimes to the Technet. The group turned on Jamie, attacking him, but he defeated them easily and erased their memories of these events. He then used his power to transform Doctor Crocodile into an actual crocodile and departed with Sat-Yr-9. Jamie was taken to his family home, Braddock Manor, where he used his reality warping powers to change things back to the way they were in his youth, even resurrecting his family's housekeeper (who was also his childhood nanny), Emma Collins.

Sat-Yr-9 used Jamie's reality warping powers to turn the London criminal known as Vixen into a fox. 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 killed Alysande Stuart and took most of Excalibur and his sister Elizabeth (now the X-Man called Psylocke) captive, torturing them with his powers. He was defeated when Brian's girlfriend Meggan managed to override his powers, allowing Psylocke to break free and incapacitate him with her psychic blade. Sat-Yr-9 retrieved Jamie's unconscious body as she escaped. After these events, Jamie would remain comatose for some time, apparently abandoned by Sat-Yr-9 and taken to Muir Island for treatment. His brother and sister attempted to restore him and heal his fractured psyche using Psylocke's telepathy, but he ultimately rejected their offer, expelling them from his mind and returning to a catatonic state.

Jamie was briefly seen in Uncanny X-Men #462-465 in the tie-in story of House of M, in which Mad Jim Jaspers, another British villain with reality manipulation powers, also mysteriously reappeared. In Uncanny X-Men #472, he reveals that he was the one who resurrected his sister Betsy one year to the day after she was killed in Spain. In restoring her to life, Jamie also manipulated the quantum forces making up his sister, granting her complete immunity to psionics, magic, and reality-warping. Uatu the Watcher also appears inexplicably, implying that something of cosmic significance is about to happen. Jamie mentions a "cosmic threat", now known as the Foursaken (one of whom is Jamie's former girlfriend, Amina Synge), that has recently reappeared on Earth. He is pulled through a mysterious portal which the X-Men follow him through. Most of the team is captured, with the exception of Psylocke, who was invisible to the Foursaken thanks to Jamie's alterations. During the conflict that follows, Jamie decides that he cannot allow his sister to be used as a pawn again, sacrificing himself instead to save the universe from the First Fallen, the Foursaken's master.

Jamie appears briefly in Captain Britain and MI: 13, helping Brian find his way through an illusion created by the demonic Lord Plokta. Whether this was actually Jamie, or an illusion created by Plokta or Brian's own mind is unknown.

Jamie appears alive once more, alongside his brother and the Captain Britain Corps defending Otherworld from the forces of a powerful sorcerer called The Goat. He offers to "cleanse" Psylocke of the changes made to her mind and body over the course of her time with the X-Men, but she refuses. Though he initially appears to be reformed and cured of his insanity, it is eventually revealed that The Goat was in fact a corrupted future incarnation of Jamie who was intent on consuming the multiverse to achieve godhood. As his power grows, Psylocke, left with no alternative, telepathically forces her twin, Brian, to kill Jamie by breaking his neck, erasing The Goat from existence and ending his threat to the multiverse.^[2]

Powers and abilities

Jamie Braddock is a mutant possessing the ability to warp reality in his immediate environment. Unlike most mutants, whose powers manifest at puberty or even younger, Jamie's power remained latent well into his adulthood, only emerging as a result of extreme mental duress due to Doctor Crocodile's mystical torture. Jamie's power allows him to perceive the universe as a mass of quantum strings which he can pull and twist to alter the fabric of reality to his whims. Originally, his reality warping was relatively limited; he could only affect dense forms and needed to be close enough to pull on the quantum strings surrounding them. Over time, however, the strength of his power and his control of it have increased substantially; he is no longer limited to dense forms or his immediate surroundings.

Jamie's reality-warping power is immense in scope, limited only by his imagination and fluctuating sanity. He can create portals out of ordinary objects that can transport him across the planet or into other dimensions instantaneously, transform living beings into entirely different forms, grant others various superhuman abilities (though they tend to fade over time), and can even resurrect the dead.

Other versions

An alternate version of him appeared in Excalibur #18, where he killed his brother.^[3] And another one where he was on the side of Brian, facing the Chaos Commanders and the Ayranites.^[4]

House of M

In the House of M reality, the Mutant-Human war broke out and he helped preserve the peace, Jamie apparently had manifested mutant powers, and he was proud of his brother having no ill will against mutants, after the Mutant-Human war had calmed, Jamie disappeared without a trace, and Magneto had asked that the oldest should take control of the United Kingdom, Psylocke was appointed but refused, Brian accepted.^[5]

Ultimate Marvel

In Ultimate Marvel's Ultimate Fallout, Nick Fury is told that the European Union has reconstituted the Excalibur class Super Soldier Program which will be led by Brian's brother, Jamie as the new Captain Britain.^[6] He subsequently joined the Ultimates after the deaths of Captains France and Italy. These deaths are part of the world's long-running confrontation with 'The City', an adversarial army that Jaime works closely with Thor in battling.^[7]

References

External links

• Jamie Braddock's profile in the Unofficial Handbook of the Marvel Universe
• Jamie Braddock at the Comic Book DB