GUARDIAN
Real Name: James MacDonald Hudson
Other Aliases: Weapon Alpha, Vindicator, Antiguard
Group Affiliation: Alpha Flight. Former associate of the Master.
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #109
Creator: John Byrne

        James MacDonald Hudson, (known alternately as James, Jimmy or Mac to his friends) was a scientist employed by the Am-Can Petroleum Corporation when he developed a suit of armor to be used in exploratory work. The suit used a helmet Hudson had invented in his student days as a control mechanism. Hudson's supervisor, one Jerry Jaxon, arranged a deal with the American military to sell them the suit, presumably for use as a weapon. Hudson quit in protest.

        As Hudson was leaving he was stopped by Heather McNeil, Jaxon's personal secretary. McNeil informed Hudson that she had been forbidden to warn him of Jaxon's plans for the suit, but that she had given her notice when she learned what they planned to do to him. James was caught completely off guard by this expression of support from a woman he barely knew.

        Later that night, intent on preventing the American military from abusing his invention, Hudson went back to the plant and donned the armor. He then used the suit's capabilities to break into the company safe and destroy the only blueprints for his creation. Blasting out of the sub-basement, he flew away, and left the suit standing on a hillside. Hudson took the control helmet with him when he left. Since the helmet had been created prior to his employment Hudson believed Am-Can had no claim on it.

        The next day Jimmy was in a rather poor mood, realizing that he would soon be a suspect in the previous night's events. At that point his doorbell rang. Outside was Heather McNeil, carrying a box of groceries. After inviting herself in, Heather began putting the food away, chatting all the time how Hudson might have quit prematurely, since the suit plans had been destroyed and the control helmet was missing. Realizing that Hudson already knew all about it somehow, Heather then found the control helmet sitting on a coffee table.

        Heather McNeil then managed to completely shock James Hudson for the second time in two days: when James bitterly said that he didn't want Heather trying to shield him, Heather agreed... but quickly brought up the idea that a wife can't be made to testify against her husband. After making a lot of noise about Heather's youth, James confessed that he had felt an immediate connection the day before when they talked. He then added that he saw no way out of his current situation. Fortunately for him, Heather did.

        At Heather's suggestion Hudson met with numerous officials in the Federal Government at Ottawa. Realizing what a potential asset a man of Hudson's genius would be, the feds used some legal technicalities to declare that he had been "retroactively" working for them for six years.

        The government set up Department H, named after Hudson, and set him to work doing research for the Ministry of Defence. Shortly thereafter, he and Heather were married in a civil ceremony. Despite planning a church service to be held at a later date, the Hudsons went on a honeymoon when Department H offered to pick up the tab. The honeymoon was a camping trip, to scout some wilderness land for the department. While on the trip the Hudsons came across a beastial "wild-man" and brought him back to civilization with them. The man, Logan by name, joined Department H as an agent and eventually became known as Wolverine.

        After returning to work following the disasterous "honeymoon" James felt that something was missing, that things weren't quite "clicking." Then one day Heather showed him a newspaper wth a story on the Fantastic Four, the first super-heroes since the time shortly after World War II. After reading the article James was inspired to form a team of super-heroes to protect Canada.

        Before the ball really got going on this effort James and Heather finally had the church ceremony that Heather wanted. Logan acted as James' best man. James and Logan almost never made the ceremony; the two were almost killed battling the ugly results of a botched defence project. Once again it was Heather who saved Mac's skin, this time literally. She formed the final link in a human chain that stopped Hudson from being pulled through a space warp.

        The first full adventure of Hudson's super-hero program was chronicled in a special called First Flight. At this point James had turned the armor he designed over to a drafted police detective named Sean Bernard.

        During the battle Smart Alec froze under pressure. Bernard quit the team immediately after the mission. Each event had an effect. Firstly, Smart Alec's failure inspired Hudson to create a multi-tiered system of teams: one team of active operatives and the other teams for various stages of training. This led to the formation of Alpha, Beta & Gamma Flights. Secondly, James decided not to draft anyone else to use his armor and that he would use it himself.

        At this point James still intended to have Logan eventually lead Alpha Flight, the first tier team. That plan died when Charles Xavier recruited Wolverine for his team of mutants called the X-Men. After Wolverine's resignation [The higher-ups called it a defection. :) -C] Hudson felt forced to take the leadership of Alpha Flight permanently.

        James eventually refined the suit down from a bulky armor to a highly sophisticated and flexible suit of mail. After months of set-up he was sent to Westchester, New York to bring Wolverine back home. The mission was unsuccessful, and James returned home bearing the guilt of injuring a civilian. [Moira MacTaggert - C] When he had entered the States he was calling himself Weapon Alpha. After that mission he adopted the code-name Vindicator, feeling he had to vindicate himself.

        Hudson led Alpha Flight in an unsuccessful second attempt to capture Wolverine, and remained leader until Department H and the team were disbanded due to budget cuts. To his surprise and pleasure Alpha Flight elected to regroup as free agents after facing Tundra. On the advice of Shaman James then adopted the code-name Guardian. [Michael thought the name more appropriate to James' role as "Canada's Captain America" -C]

        Although Alpha Flight was reformed, Hudson was still unemployed. He then received an unexpected offer of employment from Roxxon Oil in New York. James accepted, but the entire thing was a set-up by his old boss, Jerry Jaxon. Jaxon had created Omega Flight from Department H's training teams, and Jaxon himself fought Hudson alongside them using the stolen Box robot.

        Hudson managed to even the odds by summoning Alpha Flight, but Jaxon isolated Mac from his team-mates and managed to severely damage Hudson's battlesuit. The suit's powerpack overloaded when James was distracted from his repair efforts by Heather walking into the room. The powerpack exploded, and James was seemingly reduced to ash.

        What actually happened was that Hudson managed to channel the blast to create a spatial rift. The rift took him to Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter's moons. There he was found by an outpost of the alien race called the Qu'wrlln. The aliens managed to save his life, but as they had never seen a human being before they didn't realize that his armor was not a natural part of his body. So they made a working synthesis of technological and organic systems, making James into a cyborg.

        When James had recovered sufficiently from his trauma he expressed a desire to return home, and the Qu'wrlln agreed to help. Using their technology the aliens scanned Earth to prepare for the trip. Hudson then received a nasty shock: the rift had gone through time as well as space, and he was 10,000 years in the past. The Qu'wrlln put James in suspended animation to await the proper time to go home.

        The Qu'wrlln, while friendly to Hudson, had a nearly pathological fear of Galactus. While awaiting the proper time to send Hudson home the Qu'wrlln observed the defeat of Galactus by the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer. The aliens were completely amazed that a world had managed to defeat the World-Eater. They decided to take Hudson, who was still comatose, and turn him into their agent in Earth's super-hero community. If Galactus ever troubled them they would use James to get super-human help. To this end they made modifications to the computer part of Hudson's cyborg mind.

        At the appropriate time Hudson was loaded into a Qu'wrlln probe ship and sent back to Earth. The ship crash-landed in the ocean, but James did not awaken from suspended animation as planned. The ship was found by the crew of a Roxxon Oil drilling platform and shipped to a Roxxon research facility. There Roxxon scientists were able to tap into Jimmy's computer systems enough to get most of the above history from his mind. The Roxxon-built robot called Delphine Courtney then used the information to impersonate James and lead Omega Flight on another battle against Alpha Flight. Hudson was placed in a holding area and monitored... until it became obvious that his computer systems were infiltrating and taking over Roxxon's systems through the medical monitors.

        Roxxon used its influence with the Canadian military to get help from Alpha Flight member Madison Jeffries in battling Hudson's subconscious computer takeover. Roxxon kept Jeffries in the dark as to the exact cause of their difficulties. As Jeffries battled for control of the Roxxon computers he realized that there was a living mind behind the problem. At that moment a Roxxon executive decided to turn off Hudson's life-support. This had disasterous consequences... for Roxxon, that is.

        The act of "pulling the plug," activated defenses that Hudson's subconscious mind had set up. The defenses blew up the facility. Jeffries survived and managed to reach Hudson's mind, pulling James back to consciousness. Hudson then returned to Alpha Flight. While he had been gone Heather had taken the name Guardian, so James returned to the name Vindicator, reversing the color scheme of his original costume to create a new look.

        James had numerous emotional problems after his return. The tampering that the Qu'wrlln had done to insure he would act as their agent had rendered the computer part of his cyborg brain slightly dominant over the organic part. The result was that he was an extremely logical, unemotional being who would've "out-Vulcan'ed" Mr. Spock on most occasions. This placed a great amount of stress on his relationship with Heather, but the two managed to work through it for the most part.

        While James, Alpha Flight, and the Avengers were dealing with an attack by an alien Consortium on Toronto, in deep space the Qu'wrlln homeworld was monitoring the approach of Nova, then-Herald of Galactus. The aliens activated the first of their defenses and shifted their planet into a pocket dimension. Nova was caught up in the transition effect, however, and Galactus travelled across the dimensional barrier to find her.

        The Qu'wrlln then played their final ace: They activated the programming they had subjected Hudson to years before. James immediately teleported the strongest super-humans of both teams dealing with the Consortium problem to the dimension containing the Qu'wrlln homeworld.

        Although troubled by the fact that they had been shanghaied, the assembled heroes came to the conclusion that they had to do something, or else all the Qu'wrlln would die. They attacked Galactus, and to the surprise of everyone, they started to win. The pocket dimension the Qu'wrlln had placed their world in was interfering with Galactus' lifeforce, preventing him from using his full power.

        After toppling Galactus, the heroes began negotiating for the safety of the Qu'wrlln. A bargain was struck: Galactus would use his technology to create a rift in space. The rift would return the heroes and himself to the regular universe, and it would also bring the Consortium mother-ship to Galactus. [Consortium mother-ships are powered by planets suitable to Galactus' appetites. -C]

        The problem was that Galactus was too weak to generate the necessary energy to power the device to create the rift. James and Heather could do it, but Galactus warned that they would most likely be killed in the process. Both heroes accepted this, but James decided to make the sacrifice by himself. Knocking out Heather, he forced her through the rift back to Earth. And so James Hudson seemed to die for the second time.

        The fates, however, weren't done with James. This time around Mac became trapped in a dimension of null space after the rift closed. It was there that he was somehow found by the Master of the World. The Master retrieved him and patched him up, claimed to have improved Hudson's intellect in many ways, and seemingly brought Hudson around to his way of thinking. Called the Antiguard, Hudson battled Alpha Flight alongside the Master and the new Omega Flight until Heather managed to break through the Master's conditioning. Hudson returned with his wife and his team only to find out that the Federal gov't had suspended them while an investigation was carried out regarding the Master's recent political machinations.

        For a time James and Heather were once more a happy couple. The Master's tampering had apparently undone the Qu'wrlln tampering; hence James' emotions were back to normal. The Hudsons worked as a husband & wife research team and had a few adventures alongside Wolverine. During one such adventure James was named executor of his old friend's will.

        The happiness was not to last. After the suspension ended and Alpha Flight was officially disbanded for the third time James and Heather came to realize that both of them had changed more than they cared to admit. Tensions in the relationship grew and eventually the Hudsons separated.

         James returned to Department H as it was setting up for the fourth time. Using advanced technology provided by H, he found some way of removing the Qu'wrlln technology from his body, leaving himself fully human once more.

        The new administration in charge of Department H had sinister goals and used methods that were, to put it mildly, dubious in nature. Hudson voiced his concern about these matters, and ended up being forcibly confined.

        Department H scientists transfered James' memories to a synthoid duplicate. James' mind was wiped in the process. Feeling that the original Hudson was no longer needed, technicians programmed his battlesuit to launch into deep space.

        [Compiler's notes: this little detail is one of the only things that truly bugs me about Seagle's run on Alpha Flight v2. Using a valuable piece of equipment like the Guardian battlesuit to dispose of a body seems unbelievably wasteful. However, I've come up with a possible explanation: Dr. Huxley, the head scientist for all of H's shady projects, came across as the type of moron who might pull this stunt just to see if the battlesuit was capable of getting into orbit.]

        Instead of heading into space, the battleshit ended up crash-landing in the Antartic. The suit kept Hudson alive until he was found by his old team-mate Sasquatch . Sasquatch brought Hudson to Shaman, who used his magic to restore James' mind.

        Upon learning, from James, what Department H was up to the three original Alphans decided to act. The first step was rescuing Aurora from Department H. Events snowballed from there until the original Alpha Flight, minus Snowbird, faced off against the modern version of the team. That conflict ended happily, and James Hudson rejoined Department H.

        Although James was reunited with Heather on a professional level, a personal reunion took more time. The Hudsons did eventually reconcile, and James & Heather celebrated the birth of their first child, a daughter. After a brief stay on the Plodex homeworld both James and Heather were seemingly killed in battle with the Collective.

        Guardian wore a suit of highly advanced armor of his own design that enabled him to utilize electro-magnetic energy for various effects.

        The Guardian armor acted as an electro-magnetic exo-skeleton, providing the wearer with super-human strength. In his first appearance Guardian was shown lifting a large tree with no difficulty.

        The suit enabled Guardian to fly at speeds of up to Mach 1. It was also capable of faster travel by rendering the user "at rest" relative to the rotation of the Earth. This creates a nearly instantaneous acceleration to extremely high speed in a westward direction. To the casual observer it looked like Guardian had teleported when he used this ability.

        Guardian's armor created an electromagnetic force-field for defensive purposes. The field was capable of shielding him from a great deal of harm. Activation of the "at rest" capability automatically turned on the force-field.

        The suit was capable of firing electromagnetic blasts for offensive moves. The blasts could exert a force ranging from a decent punch to a destructive power equivalent to 250 pounds of TNT, at the user's discretion. Using the blasts the wearer could tunnel through bedrock [The original purpose of the armor. -C] at up to 25 miles per hour.

        Finally, the suit could create and manipulate plasma, forming it into simple shapes such as funnels. Plasma is a super-heated form of matter.