Madison Jeffries

Madison Jeffries is a male comic character who features in Marvel Comics.

Biography

Madison Jeffries

Despite their differences, Madison and Lionel enlisted in the United States Army during a war, as a mechanic and medic respectively. Tragically, their unit was struck by a bomb blast that killed all the other soldiers present, gruesomely scattering their bodies. Lionel Jeffries tried to bring back his friends using his power, but even his transmutating ability could not bring back the dead. He drove himself hopelessly insane trying to do so and became Scramble, the Mixed-Up Man. Madison had to forcibly restrain his brother and made arrangements to keep him locked up in a sanitarium at Montreal General Hospital. To keep him from using his powers, Scramble was denied any human contact, fed intravenously and constantly held in an all-encompassing straightjacket. (Alpha Flight v1 #30)

Jeffries’ experiences at war and the loss of his brother led to him spending time in the V.A. hospital after he returned from abroad. It was there that James MacDonald Hudson located Jeffries as a potential recruit for Department H’s superhuman programs. (Alpha Flight v1 #89)

For the next months, Madison Jeffries returned to a simple life digging ditches. One day, he was sent a plane ticket and $1000 cash by former Beta Flight member, Roger Bochs, to come visit him in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan. When he arrived at Bochs’ place, Madison learned that his former Gamma Flight teammates had been hired by an artificial woman named Delphine Courtney to work as Omega Flight for Jerome Jaxon, an old enemy of James Hudson. Bochs also explained his unwilling role in Guardian’s death – his “Box” robot had been commandeered by Jerry Jaxon as the instrument of James Hudson’s demise. To ensure no one could ever take over the robot from him again, Bochs wanted Jeffries’ assistance in repairing and upgrading Box. (Alpha Flight v1 #16)

Hearing of their return, complete with the Delphine Courtney robot dressed up as a 'dark' Guardian, Jeffries sought out his former teammates from Gamma and stopped them as they fled from their battle with Alpha Flight. Jeffries single-handedly disabled Omega Flight with his transmutative powers and used his abilities to gain vengeance for James Hudson by forcibly turning Delphine Courtney inside out, destroying the robot for daring to pose as the good man Jeffries remembered. He also had a regretful reunion with Lil. Although Madison correctly reasoned that Courtney must have been using some sort of behavior influencer to make his Gamma teammates become as hateful as they did, he knew that they still had to answer for their part in Hudson’s murder. He used his mechanical constructs to contain Lil and Omega Flight before turning them over to the authorities. (Alpha Flight v1 #28)

With that, Madison Jeffries was swept up into Alpha Flight, just as the team underwent substantial membership changes and moved to a remote headquarters on Tamarind Island. Jeffries went along with the team as their resident machinesmith, working with his buddy Roger Bochs as a two-man mechanical team to adapt “Mansion Alpha” to the team’s needs. Although he was not a full member of the team, his skills attracted the attention of the team leader, Heather Hudson, particularly when he made an off-hand mention of his super-powered brother.

Not knowing the history behind Lionel and his powers, Heather saw it as her duty to seek out other super-powered recruits for Alpha Flight and located Lionel at Montreal General Hospital. Her visit accidentally unleashed Scramble the Mixed-Up Man on the hospital staff, forcing Madison Jeffries and Alpha Flight to come to their rescue. Jeffries was forced to face his brother once again, as they attempted to turn their powers on one another. Locked together in a transmutative circuit, Scramble’s power was turned back on him as he used Madison’s 'sane' brain as a template to undo his own madness. Seemingly cured of his insanity, Lionel restored the people he had deformed and the brothers Jeffries were reunited. (Alpha Flight v1 #30)

Madison Jeffries’ assistance proved invaluable to Alpha Flight over the following weeks. His transmutative power enabled him to control their headquarters’ many systems as an extension of himself and he even served as a one-man “Danger Room,” animating the equipment in their combat suite to help train Alpha Flight. He and Roger Bochs also restored the Guardian suit to give Heather Hudson a chance to actively lead her team in battle as Vindicator. (Alpha Flight v1 #32)

His partnership with Bochs grew even stronger after they learned he could “mind-tap” with Roger, allowing Bochs’ inventive vision to guide Jeffries’ transmutative power and create technological marvels of which he would never have conceived on his own. (Alpha Flight v1 #36)

Overview

Powers and abilities

This power allows him to psychokinetically manipulate, alter, and restructure all inorganic materials. (Alpha Flight v1 #88)

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. (Alpha Flight v1 #36)

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 was he needed. (X-Men: Curse of the Mutants - Smoke & Blood v1 #1)

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. (Avengers Academy v1 #30)

Notes

• Madison Jeffries was created by John Byrne where he made his first appearance in Alpha Flight v1 #16 (November, 1984).

Alternate Versions

• In Amazing X-Men v1 #1 (1995), an alternate version of Madison Jeffries appeared in the Age of Apocalypse reality that was designated as Earth-295 in the Multiverse. Taking on the identity of Box, Madison Jeffries was loyal to Apocalypse and became a member of the Brotherhood of Chaos led by the Horseman of Apocalypse known as Abyss. The X-Men sought to assist the Sentinel evacuation of surviving humans in North America. Learning of the evacuation the Brotherhood was also sent to deal with it. When the X-Men programmed the Sentinels with a computer virus that would make the mutant hunting robots see them as allies, Box used his powers to reprogram the virus so that it was the Brotherhood and not the X-Men it recognized as their friends. Unable to prevent the evacuation due to the X-Men's interference, the Brotherhood changed tactics: They sent Box and Copycat to sneak aboard the evacuation crafts to smuggle their way into Europe and commit acts of sabotage against the Human High Council. Despite the X-Men's best efforts to stop Box and Copycat, they failed and the two evil mutants managed to smuggle themselves into Europe. Upon their arrival, they were instantly detected as mutants and attempted to fight their way through security. They ran afoul of Weapon X (Logan) and Jean Grey. During the fight, Logan slew Jeffries by impaling him with his Adamantium claws. Box and Copycat's sacrifices allowed the Reavers, human cyborgs loyal to Apocalypse, to sneak into Europe.
• In Weapon X: Days of Future Now v1 #1 (2005), an alternate version of Madison Jeffries appeared in the Days of Future's Now reality that was designated as Earth-5700 in the Multiverse. Malcolm Colcord forced Box to use his powers to make an army of Sentinels, which he used to take over Weapon X from Jackson by attacking his hideout and years later to wipe out the X-Men. Due to Colcord's constant demands for more Sentinels, Box became exhausted, causing Sentinel production to decrease. So, Box created Bot to carry some of the workload. Nineteen years later, Bot had transformed himself to the new Master Mold, imprisoning Box inside his newly transformed shell and took control over the Sentinel army. Bot's actions lead to Box's death.
• In House of M: Masters of Evil v1 #3 (2009), an alternate version of Madison Jeffries appeared in the House of M reality that was designated as Earth-58163 in the Multiverse. During the Human-Mutant war, he was captured by Weapon X, and interned into Neverland concentration camp for mutants, where he was forced to design weapons against his own kind. Part of Magneto's mutant army, Madison, and his brother Lionel were seen as too insane to remain in plain sight, and were sent to the small Central American country of Santo Rico to keep them contained. There, the brothers ruled the human populace with iron fists, conducting extreme experiments on them. Eventually, their rule came to an end when the Hood, a human criminal, and his army of super-powered humans sought to retake Santo Rico for their own gains. Madison was killed shortly after his brother Lionel's death.
• In New Mutants v3 #22 (2011), an alternate version of Madison Jeffries appeared in the Age of X reality that was designated as Earth-11326 in the Multiverse. Alongside with his brother Lionel, Madison Jeffries fused Tony Stark with his armor, changing him into Steel Corpse. He relocated to Magneto's Fortress X and battled the Exonims using his Box Armor.

In other media

Video games

• In Marvel Heroes, Madison Jeffries appeared as an NPC character in the setting of the MMORPG where he was voiced by actor Richard Epcar. This version acted as a vendor who supplied the various characters at the Strike Team Forward Base.

Appearances

• Alpha Flight v1: (1984)
• X-Club v1:

External Links

• Marvel Database Entry
• Wikipedia Entry

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