One of the things Peter David has consistently touched on with Jamie Madrox is how hard his powers make it for him to make decisions, or take any kind of first step. He can see many different sides to every issue, and that makes it hard for him to decide which side to take, or which direction to go. But this week's issue brought another part of that to mind for me, and I don't know whether David has specifically dealt with it or not, so I'll just put it out here.
Jamie's attached to his duplicates, which makes sense as they're part of him. I know in PAD's first X-Factor run, there was a point where there was a dead duplicate and Jamie couldn't absorb it, and it freaked him out quite a bit. Of course, by the end of that issue another Madrox popped up, so maybe that one wound up being the original, and that's why the freaked out Jamie couldn't absorb the dead duplicate.
Either way, Madrox can definitely reabsorb dead duplicates now. When his "x-factor" blew up Singularity, he reintegrated with Jamie. And as a result, Jamie got back some memories he'd forgotten, the ones about Tryp being responsible for the death of Jamie's parents. But here's what I started thinking about: When a duplicate dies, and Madrox reabsorbs it, does he experience the death as it was for the duplicate? Does Madrox see whatever might be on the "other side", and if so, would it be the sort of thing his mind would reject to protect itself?
Think about what that could do to someone's state of mind. To feel as though you died, to in fact, know that you did die, and yet, you didn't actually die, all at the same time. Doesn't that seem like the sort of thing that would drive you mad, if you had to live with it? Especially if it kept happening (I think it's only happened once to Jamie thus far, but it could happen again. Death is a certainty when you deal with comic books). And if a duplicate did make it to the other side, saw what lies beyond (assuming the dupes possess whatever attributes are required for that), what effect would seeing that have on someone?
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3 comments:
Well, he could talk to Ben Grimm about it. Guy died and met God himself, so he could help with the coping
That's a very interesting theory, Calvin, and one that I hadn't considered before. I do know that Jamie has gone from being a fairly one-dimensional character in the old Claremont/Byrne days to an extremely interesting and multi-dimensional character recently.
anonymous: That's a good idea. The two of them could discuss it over some poker. I figure Jamie's had a dupe out there mastering the game at some point, so that could be fun.
sallyp: Sometimes all it takes is a writer that's really interested in the character, I guess.
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