Alternate Favorite Marvel Character #9 - Multiple Man

Character: Multiple Man (Jamie Madrox)

Creators: John Buscema, Chris Claremont, Len Wein. Marvel's wiki thing lists all three, Wikipedia's only lists Len Wein.

First appearance: Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4. Neither this book or the one that was my first encounter have Jamie on the cover, which is why I went with Madrox #1.

First encounter: X-Factor #81. It's not a great issue as an introduction. Jamie and Quicksilver had been off on a separate mission, that wraps up in time for them to show up for the big fight with the group the rest of the team was fighting. Jamie had been twisted around by some blue woman with an entrancing music power, and was pretty sour about having to put her in jail.

Definitive writer: Peter David. I would say almost all the appearances of Madrox I've read were written by Peter David. He spent a lot of time exploring the idea of what those powers would mean for how Madrox would approach things that I found really interesting.

Definitive artist: Pablo Raimondi. He tends to give Madrox this attempt at cocky and laid-back (or maybe slovenly) air that suits the character. Jamie is trying for cool, noir look, and sometimes he even makes it. But he's also frequently a dope, and Raimondi captured that cluelessness well when he needed to.

Favorite moment or story: X-Factor (volume 2) #9. This is a Civil War tie-in, and Jamie is confronted with his greatest foe: making decisions. Whether to go along with Registration Act or not. Whether to let Pietro with his weird Terrigen-infused powers stick around or not. The X-Men show up, swinging their dicks around to add to the problems, and should Jamie let Pietro be their problem?

Jamie doesn't know what to do, because if he makes the wrong choice, it could be a disaster. There are people looking to him for leadership (you think they'd know better), people he cares about. So he can't screw this up, but he also can't afford to do nothing. With a nudge from Layla Miller, commits to a path. It was the right decision, morally, although there was a question of whether it was the smart decision for him and his team.

What I like about him: I often struggle with making decisions, mostly because I worry about wasting time. I only have so much of it, so should I read tonight, play a game, write, draw, waste time on the Internet (that one's easiest, so it wins frequently)? Is the possibility of having fun with friends worth the chance the evening is going to be an irritating mess? The paths not taken tend to cycle in my head.

Jamie Madrox is interesting to me because of the opportunity his power affords. If Jamie can't decide whether he wants to go out and party or not, he can send a duplicate to do it for him. The dupe comes home eventually, Jamie reabsorbs him, and he gets the experience of having gone out on the town (and the altered brain chemistry that comes with it).

He can send a version of himself to study law, another for religion, a third to seek enlightenment, or become the world's greatest detective, without having to fret about missing out on the rest of his life, or the chance to learn those other things. It doesn't extend his life, but it does broaden it. Provided he's willing to wait long enough for the duplicate to return. Assuming the duplicate does return.

Of course, if you subscribe to the theory it's the journey and not the destination, you could question if Madrox isn't missing out on the most important parts by letting his duplicates do all the work gaining these insights, while he goes on with the rest of his life. He gains the knowledge and their experiences along the way when he reabsorbs them, but I wonder if it's the same thing. Considering absorbing a duplicate that's near death can put him into shock, maybe it's close enough. Jamie's admitted once the duplicate's memories are in his head, he can't always discern which memories are things he did versus which are from duplicates.

That's always intrigued me, that he could have two (or more) entirely different sets of memories of the same time period, and know they're both real. He stayed home Friday night to watch a movie, and he went out and got hammered drunk Friday night. Trying to piece together the timeline of his life would be a challenge.

Although I notice when he decided to marry grown-up Layla Miller (I know she aged while trapped in the future, but that still felt dodgy) and become a farmer he didn't leave that to a duplicate. Still, it feels like he's trying to keep life at one step removed. Let other Jamies go out and do interesting things, and he can hear about it later. It isn't unusual for one of his friends to talk to what they think is the original Jamie, only to learn it's actually a duplicate and Jamie is off somewhere else. He'll learn about the conversation one way or the other, eventually.

Still, knowing you can always find another pair of hands when you need it is a useful power. Someone to help you run errands, have your back in a fight, rush you to the hospital after unfortunate accidents with fireworks. There's a quote of his, from X-Factor #75: 'I can be pretty self-reliant, especially when I have other selves to rely on!' I always liked that idea. You can't always be sure anyone else is going to be around when you need them, but you know you will be, for better or worse.

Jamie's tendency to be his own worst enemy, in a literal sense, is a side effect of his powers that plays out well. Jamie has, for most of his existence, regarded his duplicates as nothing more than pawns to be used. Extensions of him. It isn't him splitting into multiple bodies, each an equal part of the original. He's the original, they're knock-offs, that's how he sees it. He wants to learn Russian, guess what, some poor sucker of a dupe is going to Moscow for the winter! Even when he learns that he can't reabsorb a duplicate that has died, which certainly questions the accuracy of his perspective. If he weren't a comic book character, I'd expect he might stop using duplicates, because he'd think it was wrong for them to function as potential cannon fodder. Calling them "dupes" takes on a new light.

They see it differently. So you have a duplicate Jamie that tries to kill the original so he can take over, or duplicates that actively help people trying to kill him because they think he was being the bad guy and needs to go. Beyond that, the duplicates have tended, over time, to more accurately represent Jamie's state of mind at a given moment. Which makes for an easy window for us into his psyche, but doesn't always work out well for him. If Jamie is caught up in a lot of existential navel-gazing about his existence, that may be all the duplicate is able to focus on. Which means he isn't going to be very helpful when Madrox is locked in a room.

Because Jamie knows this about his duplicates, which means they know he knows, they'll even fool him sometimes. There was one duplicate that popped up twice in the first year of X-Factor Volume 2 that called itself the part that makes Jamie sometimes do the unexpected, or the "x-factor". On both occasions, he fooled Jamie into believing he was something else entirely. The first time, that he was a positive, life-affirming duplicate to keep Rictor from killing himself. The second, that he was the terrified part of Madrox, too scared to help fight Tryp and Singularity. So he's not simply that part of us that lets (makes?) us do things we normally wouldn't, but also represents our capacity for self-deception. Sometimes we don't understand what motivates us or drives us, and other times we know, but don't want to think about it.

Going back to the idea Jamie's dupes know what he knows, when Jamie originally joined X-Factor, he was the team prankster. Dumb gags and jokes all the time. Jamie lived alone on a farm for a long time growing up. That plays into his need during that government team stint to get attention, have people around and reacting to him. The pranks were one way to do that, one he could manage without opening up to anyone, but I also imagine it would have been difficult to pull a prank on a duplicate. They'd know he was thinking about it when he made them. Getting to spend time with people who don't immediately know everything in his mind (and who don't look just like him) is probably a godsend, at least for the first few years. Then they start expecting things, wanting you to make decisions, and that's rough.

It is odd that Jamie wound up as the leader of a team, given how much trouble he has choosing a course. Jamie was on a team led by Alex Summers, who seems able to make decisions, but second-guesses himself about them constantly. Jamie second-guesses himself before he ever makes the decision, which is one way of cutting to the chase, I suppose. He just wanted to play detective with a couple of his friends, and it turned into a whole thing. It helps that most of his friends are individuals with a strong sense of their own convictions. Jamie doesn't have to give orders often, which is good, since most of the team aren't likely to listen if they disagree with him.

Madrox is used to being able to do all the things he feels like doing, because of his powers. He's no good at weighing options, so when he has to do that, he gets lost in his own mind, unable to commit. His friends have never had that option, so they actually can make decisions, and state their case for them with conviction. Which helps him gain perspective, and then he can make a choice. Because it is possible for Jamie to get duplicates that are fully on board with helping him accomplish something, as long as he's fully committed to that goal. And having people around to remind him that no, this is not one of those times he can just sit back and wait for things to resolve themselves, helps with that.

Jamie Madrox interests me because his powers are an example of the way people want to have it all, and can struggle to make a move because they worry too much about what they'll miss out on. About how a personality or psyche can be a lot of shifting pieces that don't always work in concert, and how we don't always understand what's driving us. Basically, I recognize a lot of the things I struggle with myself in Jamie's difficulties, but for him the internal conflicts can easily and frequently become external conflicts.

On a final, less serious note, given Madrox' desire to learn all sorts of things, you can use that as a way into all kinds of stories. Maybe a duplicate went into space, and is using his knowledge of alien languages to negotiate a treaty between two worlds. Maybe one is a rodeo clown, and there are murders on the circuit. Maybe one of them is studying magic. The real world is a strange place, full of things to learn, and the Marvel Universe is stranger than that.

Credits! Jamie Madrox is the Running Man, er Men, on the cover of Madrox #1, by David Lloyd (artist), and Brian Reber (colorist). Jamie shows good sense and tries to dip the fuck out of Civil War, but comes back to flip Scott Summers the bird in X-Factor (vol. 2) #9, by Peter David (writer), Dennis Calero (artist), Jose Villarrubia (color artist(, Cory Petit (letterer). Jamie gets all the pain of drinking without the fun, calls in the cavalry, and engages in locked room navel-gazing in Madrox - Multiple Choice, by David (writer), Pablo Raimondi (penciler), Drew Hennessy (inker), Brian Reber (colorist), and Cory Petit (letterer). And finally, Jesus, Jamie's '90s hair is even worse when there's two of them in X-Factor (vol. 1) #87, by Peter and Shana David (writer), Joe Quesada (artist), Al Milgrom (inker), Marie Javins (colorist), Richard Starkings and Steve Dutro (letterers).