Whitmann Knapp is a medical doctor who first came into contact with
Alpha Flight while he was working with Lionel Jeffries (AKA Scramble) at
the New Life Clinic. When Jeffries returned to his psychotic ways he revealed
that he kept Knapp around because of his latent mutancy. It seems the Whitmann
has
the odd and sometimes confusing ability
of summoning three different evolutionary versions of himself to help him
in battle. These three evolutionary peers are the always likeable proto,
an amoebae like thing, Highbrow, the techno/phsychic super human, and the
often crude Apeman a well caveman.
Whitmann was inducted into Beta Flight until one of the team's many
disbandings. Knapp then even went through an 'interesting episode of being
able to see and talk to the writer of the comic though this was supposedly
a delusion caused by the Dream Queen. Manikin didn't actually come back
to the team until his medical services were required to assist in treating
Diamond Lil's breast cancer.
Knapp then stayed on as an adviser to Beta Flight until he received
injuries so serious that his evolutionary peers were forced to give up
their own lives. Whitmann then could become anyone of his evolutionary
stages on his own. Manikin has disappeared into obscurity since the breakup
of the classic Alpha Flight team.