MURMUR
Real Name: Arlette Truffaut
Group Affiliation: Beta Flight, former member of Alpha Flight
First Appearance: Alpha Flight v2 #1
Creators: Steve Seagle & Scott Clark

      Arlette Truffaut claims to be the love-child of a house-cleaner and the legendary French film director François Truffaut. According to Arlette, her mother left her at Hull House when her mother went to search for her lost love. However, the only source of verification for this story is Arlette's currently missing mother; M. Truffaut passed away a number of years ago. Therefore the accuracy of her tale is somewhat in doubt.

        In any case, Murmur was recruited from Hull House to serve in Alpha Flight, just as her team-mates Flex and Radius were. While at Hull House Arlette did not socialize with either of the other two; she has implied she is older than them both, but her exact age is not known.

        A vain, manipulative young woman, Murmur was nonetheless an effective member of Alpha Flight. Her powers were especially useful during encounters with Mesmero and the Zodiac. However, during Alpha Flight's second encounter with the Zodiac she was severely injured. She returned to Alpha Flight in a limited capacity during the Weapon X situation.

        After she recovered Arlette was placed in a new version of Beta Flight along with Flex, Radius, Manbot and Vindicator III. Her activities and whereabouts between Alpha Flight v2 #20 and the present day are unknown. However it's been revealed that Truffaut has lost her powers due to M-Day.

        Murmur was able to take control of another person by touching them and giving a verbal command. For example, she caused Puck to go to sleep and helped break Mesmero's hypnotic control of her team-mates. However, there were incidents that suggest that not everything was known about Murmur's powers.

        The first incident occurred during a fight with the Zodiac. Murmur touched the Zodiac member named Virgo and said "Paris." Following that, Virgo immediately vanished, and was later shown to have appeared in Paris. It is now known that Zodiac members use personal teleportation devices, but how Murmur would have known of the devices is a mystery. Another mystery is why Virgo would interpret the one-word command "Paris" as a command to "Activate your teleportation device and have it take you to Paris."

        The other two incidents occurred during the fight with Mesmero. During the fight is was shown that Arlette believed she could kill a person using her power. The second odd thing was that Arlette broke Mesmero's hold on Radius. It's been stated that Arlette needed to touch someone to affect them with her power, yet she affected Radius through his force-field.




PREVIOUS Entry "M" list MAIN page NEXT Entry