MURMER
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 Francois 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; Truffaut passed away a number of years ago. Therefore the accuracy of her tale is somewhat in doubt.
      In any case, Truffaut 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.
      Truffaut is quite vain, and seems to have a self-esteem problem. Much of her self-esteem is tied up in her looks, and she gets quite upset at any possibility of her looks being damaged (such as a punch to the face.) Since her arrival at Department H she has been flirting almost constantly with Radius, and she was also hitting on the youthful version of James Hudson. Murmer has a habit of threatening to use her powers when she does not get her way.
      Arlette was severely injured in Alpha Flight's second encounter with the Zodiac. She returned to Alpha Flight in a limited capacity during the Weapon X situation.
           It was revealed in Wolverine #142 that Arlette is now part of a revamped Beta Flight.

     Murmer is able to take control of another person by touching them and giving a verbal command. For example, she has caused Puck to go to sleep and helped break Mesmero's control of her team-mates. [Mesmero is a mutant with hypnotic powers. -C] However, there have been incidents that suggest that not everything is known about Murmer's powers.
      The first incident occured during a fight with the Zodiac. Murmer 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 Murmer would know 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 occured during the fight with Mesmero. The fight demonstrated that Arlette believes she can kill a person using her power. This does not exactly fit the picture of a mind-controller. The second odd thing was that Arlette broke Mesmero's hold on Radius. It's been stated that Arlette needs to touch someone to affect them with her power, yet she affected Radius through his force-field.