Cerebra's Files

Guardian


Real Name: James MacDonald ("Mac") Hudson
Affiliation: Alpha Flight, Department H
Previous Affiliations: Omega Flight, Roxxon, Am-Can Petroleum Co.
Aliases: Antiguard, Vindicator I, Weapon Alpha
Status: Married (Heather McNeil Hudson, Vindicator II)
Alternate-X Versions: Guardian (Earth X), James Hudson (Mutant X)
Codename Etymology: Pronounced gär'dē-ən [From Old French, gardien, from garder, from Frank warding: "to guard"]; A watchman, protector.
Powers & History: None (human). However, Hudson wears a special battle-suit that allows him to fly, fire energy bolts, and manipulate the E-M spectrum, while affording him super-strength and near invulnerability. When he created the first version of the suit, Hudson was an employee of Am-Can Petroleum Co. The suit was to be used for exploration of difficult and dangerous terrain, and utilized a cybernetic control helmet that Hudson had designed when he was a student. When Hudson's supervisor Jerry Jaxon realized what Hudson had created, he made a deal to sell the suit to the U.S. Army as a prototype for a new body armor and wepons package. Hudson quit the company when he found out, and later that night broke into the plant, stole the armor and helmet, and destroyed all of the blueprints. He abandoned the suit, useless without the helmet, and returned home with the helmet, which he felt was his. The next day, Jim was contemplating a very bleak future when Jaxon's secretary, Heather McNeil, rang his doorbell. She confessed that she had fallen in love with Jim, or "Mac," as she called him, and wanted to help him. At Heather's suggestion, Hudson met with various government officials who recognized his genius and set up some deals to declare that he had been working for them retroactively for six years. Hudson was given the top research position at the new Department H, named for him, which was essentially a sublevel of the Ministry of Defense. Heather and Mac were married civily, but went on their honeymoon before the church ceremony they planned when the Department offered to foot the bill. On their camping trip, suggested by Dept. H, which wanted Jim to scout out some wilderness for them, the newlyweds ran into the feral Logan, who had apparently escaped from the Weapon X Program some time before, and with little recollection of his past, was in a very animalistic state. The couple brought Logan back to civilization, and helped him get some control of his bestial nature. Logan was the best man at Heather and Mac's wedding, although on the way they were almost killed by a defense project run amok. Hudson still felt something was missing, but upon reading some newspaper coverage of the Fantastic Four he realized that the ultimate fulfillment of Department H as a defense organization would be with a group of Canadian super-heroes. The results of "First Flight," while less than spectacular, had a profound impact on Hudson and the future of the Canadian super-team. During the first mission, Logan (code-named Wolverine) could hardly control himself, Smart Alec froze under pressure, and Groundhog, who wore an early version of Mac's armor, left the team immediately afterwards. Consequently, Hudson set up a three-tiered training program comprising Alpha, Beta and Gamma Flights, and also joined Alpha in a sleek new version of his exploratory suit. Although Mac always intended for Logan to lead Alpha, he took the reins when Wolverine accepted Professor Xavier's offer to join the X-Men. Mac's first mission was actually to recover Wolverine, who was seen as a defector. Under the code-name Weapon Alpha, Mac tracked Logan down and engaged him. Unbeknownst to him, Mac had also stumbled upon the X-Men, who didn't want to let him take Wolverine. Unfortunately, during the battle one of Mac's energy blasts ricocheted off of Colossus and into Moira MacTaggert, who was injured and nearly drowned. Mac left in failure, using his suit's ability to put him "at rest" to the rotation of the Earth to make it appear as if he had disappeared. Feeling a need to vindicate himself after injuring Moira, he took the name Vindicator. Vindicator led Alpha Flight on another unsuccessful mission to retake Wolverine, but soon after gave up trying when Logan assisted in their capture of the Wendigo. Mac remained team leader until Alpha Flight's funding was cut by the government and Department H was disbanded. When the team regroup as free agents, Mac was again their leader, but took the name Guardian per Shaman's advice. While he was fulfilling his dream of protecting Canada as Guardian, Hudson was unemployed, so when a job offer came in from Roxxon, he jumped at the chance and moved to New York. Unfortunately, Jerry Jaxon had set the whole thing up, and attacked Hudson with Omega Flight, made up of members of the now-defunct Beta and Gamma Flights, and using the stoled Box robot. Guardian managed to even the odds a bit by summoning Alpha Flight, but his suit was severely damaged in the battle. While he was effecting repairs, he was distracted by Heather and the suit's poewrpack exploded, apparently vaporizing him. In reality, Mac managed to channel the blast's energy into creating a spatial rift, which took him to Ganymede, largest of Jupiter's moons. There he encoutered the Qu'wrlln, an alen racewith advanced technology. The Qu'wrlln set about treating Mac's injuries, but because he was unconscious at the time, and they had never seen a human before, they didn't realize that his battle-suit was not an integral part of him, and synthesized the technological and organic systems, turning him into a cyborg. Further complications ensued when Hudson used the aliens' technology to check on Earth and realized that he had traveled back in time, as well as in space. Per his wishes, the Qu'wrlln put Mac into suspended animation until his proper era came to pass. Years later, when Galactus was repelled from Earth by the Fantastic Four, Mac was further modified by the Qu'wrlln. The aliens had a terrible fear of Galactus the world-eater, and planned to use Mac as their agent among Earth's super-heroes. They programmed his computer half to receive transmissions from them in the event that they were attacked by Galactus, whereupon he would bring super-heroes to assist them. Unfortunately, their tampering caused the cybernetic half of Mac to dominate slightly, which upon waking, made him very cold and logical. When Earth reached approximately the year that James had "died," he was sent via spaceship to Earth. However, instead of coming out of suspended animation on arrival, his ship crash-landed, and Mac, still in stasis, was found by a Roxxon oil drilling crew. He was shipped back to their HQ and his computer systems were accessed enough for the company to download his history. The robot Delphine Courtney then impersonated Mac and using his knowledge led a new Omega Flight against Alpha Flight. Meanwhile, Mac was held in confinement until his computer systems starting infiltrating the Roxxon HQ's computer through his medical monitors. Roxxon used its connections to summon Alphan Madison Jefferies, who had a telepathic link to machines, to combat Mac's takeover, although he was not told the true nature of what he was fighting. As he worked Jefferies realized that a living mind was on the opposite side of the table, just as someone pulled the plug on Mac's life-support. Mac's built-in safeguards blew up the building, but Jefferies survived and was able to reach Mac's mind and pull him back to consciousness. Mac returned to Alpha Flight and took the name Vindicator again, because Heather had donned a copy of his battlesuit and become Guardian II in his absence. The tampering that the Qu'wrlln haddone to make Mac their agent on Earth now revealed itself, as Mac's computer systems dominated his personality slightly, and he became very cold and logical. As Vindicator, Mac remained with Alpha until Galactus finally attacked to Qu'wrlln, who promptly took control of Mac's mind and cuased him to transport to them with most of AF and the Avengers in tow. The Qu'wrlln had taken refuge in a weird dimension upon the arrival of Galactus' herald Nova, and when the heroes arrived there, the strange physics of the place allowed them to defeat Galactus. Galactus propsed a bargain: he would spare the Qu'wrlln and send the heroes home, and switch their places with the ships of the alien Consortium, which were attacking Toronto at the time. Unfortunately, Galactus was so drained of energy that he couldn't power the transfer, leaving Mac and Heather's suits as the only available sources of energy. Galactus warned them that completing the transfer would probably kill them, so in an uncharacteristic burst of emotion, Mac knocked Heather out and sent her home, dying once again. Except that he didn't die this time, either. Mac was trapped in null space, where he was found by the villainous Master of the World. The Master apparently healed and brainwashed Mac, who took the name Antiguard and led another Omega Flight against his old teammates. Finally Heather broke through to the real Mac, and AF defeated the Master, only to find themselves suspended pending a full investigation, as the Master had also attempted a political takeover. Although Alpha Flight was subsequently disbanded, Mac's emotions had returned to normal as a result of the Master's conditioning, and he and Heather were reunited, and shared a few adventures and research projects. As time passed, though, tensions grew between them and eventually they separated. Mac disappeared for a while, and when Heather and fellow Alphan Puck were somewhat forcibly recruited into the new Alpha Flight, they met a non-cybernetic, 19-year old Mac. They were told that Mac had once been critically wounded once by Wolverine, and Department H had put him into a device which de-aged his body by one day, to make it as if the wounds had never occured. Mac tried to use the same machine to regress his body back to a point in time before he became a cyborg. The process worked, but the machine overloaded and he came out much younger than he had planned. However, this was not the real Mac, who actually reappeared with the original Alpha. The two teams fought, but eventually worked together to defeat Weapon X III. The new head of Department H then revealed that many clones of Mac had been made, at various ages, but refused to tell either Mac which one was the original. Both Macs agreed to stay with Alpha Flight. Later it was revealed that the younger Mac was a synthoid duplicate. The older Mac and the original team whent back to active duty as Alpha Flight, while the younger Mac took the name Vindicator III and the newer recruits and re-started the Beta Flight program. recently, Guradian and Vindicator were captured by A.I.M. Wolverine and Alpha Flight came to rescue them, but Alpha was captured. Logan managed to free Guardian and Vindicator, but in freeing Alpha Flight, Vindicator sacrificed himself inside a giant battlesuit. Guardian returned to Department H to work on Snowbird, whom A.I.M. had somehow revived. He still leads Alpha Flight, and appears to be completely back to his old self. Recently, Mac was assaulted by a jealous Dept H worker who was after Heather and was nearly killed, just as his first daughter was being born. Fortunately, Archangel's healing abilities saved him. Later, Mac upgraded his suit and led Alpha Flight to the X-Mansion to return Sammy "Squidboy" Pare to his parents, bringing him and his team into conflict with the X-Men and Juggernaut.
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