Former Aliases: Jean-Paul Martin
Height : 5' 11‘‘
Weight : 185 lbs
Hair colour : black with silver streaks
Eyes : blue
Known Relatives: Jeanne-Marie Beaubier / Aurora (twin sister), Joanne (adoptive daughter, deceased), Louis Martin (adoptive father, deceased)
Profession: trapeze artist, ski champion
Group Affiliation: X-Men,formerly Alpha Flight, Cell Combattre, Front de Libertation du Quebec
When Jean-Paul was in his early teens, he was caught shop-lifting by Raymonde Belmonde. The kind man saw more than just a petty thief and realized the boy‘s loneliness and confusion. Belmonde spoke to Jean-Paul to freedom of choice, and helped him understand and accept, who and what he was - a mutant and gay. Without ever asking for anything in return, Raymonde made it his business to see that Jean-Paul steered right, and he also took him skiing as a means to learn to control his growing power of superspeed.
In the next months, Jean-Paul joined a circus where he worked as a trapeze artist. He was welcomed without question or reservation, and soon the new made friends became the family he had never known. However beneath the surface, there was also a lot of anger, built up in years of silence and frustration.
Jean-Paul finally found a way to express this anger when he joined the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ), a Separatist movement that petitioned for recognition of Quebec as a sovereign nation through loud protests and acts of terrorism. Soon Jean-Paul became part of a radical underground group of the FLQ called Cell Combattre. Northstar acted as special courier, carrying their communiqués too swiftly to allow detection or interception. Yet once Jean-Paul realized that Cell Combattre did not even stop when it came to murder, he severed all ties with them.
Jean-Paul decided to become a professional skier, and by cheating a little with his superpowers of speed and flight, he quickly rose to fame as he won olympic gold medals and other championships. By that time, Jeanne-Marie had already recruited by Department H, and seeing a picture of Jean-Paul in the newspaper James McDonald Hudson, Alpha Flights founder, recognized the uncanny resemblance. Closer examination of their birth and adoption records revealed their history and Department H invited Jean-Paul Martin too. Learning his history, he almost immediately changed his last name into what it had originally had been and soon found himself arriving at Parliament Hill. At first Jean-Paul had no intention of working for the government, but this changed when he was introduced to his twin sister. Shaking hands, the siblings discovered that they possessed one more ability - to generate a brilliant dazzling light upon physical contact.
Jean-Paul told Hudson of his terrorist activities in the past, but has he had severed all ties to the FLQ, Hudson decided to keep it secret. Using the codenames Aurora and Northstar, the siblings entered Department H’s Flight program, where they met other potential recruits for Canada’s own superhero team. One year later, Alpha Flight was ready for their first mission, which ironically was to hunt down one of their own - Wolverine, who had defected and joined the american X-Men instead. Alpha Flight did hold their ground in this first battle, but they caused much destruction in Calgary, and although the managed to capture Logan, he quickly escaped again. The government decided to finally let him go, and also they were beginning to fear that they could afford an official superhero team and the damages caused by their battles.
Indeed only a few weeks later Department H was closed, and their operatives had to go back to their former lives. When Northstar visited Jeanne-Marie in the school she had been raised in and was now working as a teacher, he found his sister almost a complete stranger. The usually free-spirited Aurora was very reserved and shy, her beautiful features hidden behind a pair of glasses and some prissy clothes. His sister was actually a split persona, and Alpha Flight had given her the strength to maintain the light Aurora-mood, which was actually hated and feared by the “Jeanne-Marie“ persona. Northstar managed to snap her back into Aurora, and together they answered a call from the Hudsons who wanted to keep Alpha Flight running even without governmental funding. Following Alpha Flight’s disbanding, Northstar was stalked by several reporters who were interested in his activities. One of them kept asking about the Quebec City Bus station bombing, an incident that happened during his days with the FLQ, but Jean-Paul avoided to answer. Later that day, this reporter was found killed, and evidence seemed to point towards Northstar, therefore Canada’s government assigned Weapon Prime to bring him in. About the same time, Jean-Paul discovered that some of his closest friends had been targeted by Arcade. For about 24 hours Northstar was kept busy, flying to Paris and Russia, disarming several bombs and rescuing his friends, as well as battling Weapon Prime. When he finally got to Arcade, the owner of Murderworld claimed that he had been hired for the job and told Northstar the address where he would find the mastermind behind it all. Too exhausted to fly or use his speed, Jean-Paul had to rent a car to get to Vancouver, wondering which of Alpha Flight’s many villains was behind this scheme. To his surprise it was a businessman named Carl Kerridge, a man who Northstar did not know. Kerridge in turn had made it his business to know everything about him.
Wanting to cleanse society of any abnormities, he had chosen to terminate Northstar for making a stand. As a gay man and a mutant, Jean-Paul seemed the perfect target. Stating that Arcade’s purpose was to tire him, Kerridge then started to fight Jean-Paul, intending to kill him. He also kept reminding him of the victims of the Quebec incident, trying to break Northstar’s fighting spirit, though this proved to be a mistake. When years ago the FLQ planted the bomb at the bus station, they were unaware of one of the busses returning late. It’s passengers would have died, though Northstar saved them in time. Still the news reported of several people having died, as the government was eager to turn the incident into propaganda material. Thus Kerridge actually reminded Jean-Paul of an hours of heroism, and he managed to defeat him. In the villa, Jean-Paul found enough evidence that linked Kerridge with the murder of the reporter and he was put into custody.
Northstar wrote a book entitled “Born Normal”, and during it’s promotion tour, he was approached by Jean Grey, who asked him to join an interim team of X-Men. Magneto was about to start a third world war, but most of the X-Men were unavailable to deal with this crisis. Northstar only reluctantly accepted, and the fact that Paulie Provenzano, another member of this makeshift group, was a strict homophobe sure did not make this decision easier. Once Magneto had been stopped and the crisis had passed, the members of Jean’s emergency group departed to pick up their former lives
Powers and Abilities: direct the kinetic energy in his molecules to propel himself through the air at superhuman speeds, generate innate radiant energy as dazzling flashes of light
