Madrox

Last week I went to see X3 with Donan and Sean. Donan and I had seen it already, but Sean had not and it was being shown at our local cheap theater. I actually enjoyed the movie more the second time through, my nerdy qualms have mostly been dismissed. I however struggled more with one character than I did my first time through; Jaime Madrox, "Multiple Man".

As one can guess by the code name, Madrox is able to create duplicates of himself. No one is really sure how many he can create. In the movie, he uses these duplicates to rob banks and to fool the police into thinking they had found a giant mutant camp. That's it. That is all we get about my favorite comic hero of the moment (obviously, on film he is not heroic).

Madrox has he is portrayed in the comics, is infinitely more interesting. For one he is not a petty bank robber, but a hero. He leads a team called X-Factor, who function as a mutant private detective organization of sort. While teams like the X-Men focus on the global issues, X-Factor lives in a place called "Mutant Town", where less glamorous mutants live in a slum-like community. These are the people X-Factor serve. They rarely save the world, instead they save the forgotten and neglected members of their own minority population.

Madrox's power is also more interesting in the comics. While the movie gets it basically right, it leaves out all of the good questions that arise when you are truly a "Multiple Man". Madrox's dupes are not exact duplicates, they are actually physical representatives of his own personality. So one duplicate can be fool-hearty, but brave hero. Another, a complete coward. Still another, an over-sexed ladies man. When they return to Madrox they bring with them all of their experiences, memories and knowledge. One dupe became a lawyer. As a result of all of this extreme multi-tasking Madrox is one of the most intelligent people on earth. He also is an Olympic gymnast. He is a martial arts master. Not bad skills for a one man army! This comes at a cost though, he is borderline insane. He doesn't know what thoughts are his own. Some of his duplicates have done some villainous things. But what does that mean? Doesn't the evil that leads to those acts come from his own soul? And what happens when your power is to create duplicates, but you are not even sure if you can trust those duplicates?

Madrox is the reason that I love comic books. I have these same questions about myself. I can I long to do good, yet commit evil? How can I be drawn to things I view as wrong? How do I sometimes surprise myself by doing something brave? Just what is going on inside of me?! As Paul puts in Romans 7:15; "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate to do". I am a conflicted person, trying to do right, but often desiring and doing wrong.

In comics these questions can be given a dramatic platform to be asked in. In comics you can create Jaime Madrox, a normal and conflicted guy, trying to fight evil around him and inside of him at the same time. You can create a character capable of doing great good and great evil. You can create the most vividly human character that I have ever encountered in any form of fiction.