GUARDIAN
Real Name: James MacDonald Hudson
Other Aliases: Weapon Alpha, Vindicator, Antiguard
Group Affiliation: Alpha Flight, former associate of the Master
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #109
Creator: John Byrne

      James MacDonald Hudson was a scientist employed by the Am-Can Petroleum Corporation when he developed a suit of armor to be used in exploratory work. The suit used a helmet Hudson had invented in his student days as a control mechanism. However, his supervisor, one Jerry Jaxon, arranged a deal with the American military to sell THEM the suit. Hudson quit in protest.
      Later that night, intent on preventing the American military from turning his invention into a weapon, Hudson went back to the plant and donned the armor. He then used the suit's capabilities to break into the company safe and destroy his blueprints. Blasting out of the sub-basement, he flew away, and left the suit standing on a hillside. Hudson took the helmet with him, as he believed he owned it.
      The next day Jimmy was in a rather poor mood, realizing that suspicion of the theft would soon rest on him. At that point his doorbell rang. Outside was Heather McNeil, Jaxon's personal secretary. She was carrying a box of groceries. After inviting herself in, McNeil soon found the control helmet sitting on a coffee table. She then confessed that she had fallen in love with "Mac" and proceeded to create a plan of action to help him out.
      At Heather's suggestion Hudson met with numerous officials in the Federal Government at Ottawa. Realizing what a potential asset a man of Hudson's genius would be, the feds used some legal technicalities to declare that he had been "retroactively" working for them for six years.
      The government set up Department H, named after Hudson, and set him to work doing research for the Ministry of Defence. Shortly thereafter, he and Heather were married in a civil ceremony. Despite planning a church service to be held at a later date, the Hudsons went on a honeymoon when Department H offered to pick up the tab. The honeymoon became a camping trip, as H wanted James to scout some wilderness land for them. While on the trip the Hudsons came across the beastial man that the world has come to know as Wolverine.
      After returning to civilization things were not quite clicking for Hudson at work. He felt as though something were missing. Until one day he looked in a newspaper and saw an account of the Fantastic Four, the first super-humans since the time shortly after World War II. Hudson was inspired to form a team of super-heroes to protect Canada.
      Before the ball really got going on this effort James and Heather finally had the church ceremony that Heather wanted. Logan [Wolverine -C] acted as James' best man. James and Logan almost never made the ceremony; the two were almost killed battling the ugly results of a botched defence project. It was Heather who turned the tide. [She had gone looking for Mac when she thought he was skipping out on the wedding. -C]
      Another early result of Hudson's super-hero program was the events referred to as First Flight. During the battle the novice hero called Smart Alec froze under pressure. Sean Bernard/Groundhog quit the team immediately after the mission. Each event had an effect. Firstly, Smart Alec's failure inspired Hudson to create a tier of teams: one of active operatives and the other teams for various stages of training. This tier became Alpha, Beta & Gamma Flights. Secondly, Hudson donned the armor he had built to act as a field operative, replacing Bernard.
      At this point Jimmy still intended to have Logan lead Alpha Flight, the first tier team. This intention died when Charles Xavier recruited Wolverine for his team of mutants called the X-Men. After Wolverine's resignation [The higher-ups called it a defection. :) -C] Hudson was forced to take the leadership of Alpha Flight himself.
      Hudson eventually refined the suit down from a bulky armor to a highly sophisticated and flexible suit of mail. After months of set-up he was sent to Westchester, New York to bring Wolverine back home. The mission was unsuccessful, and James returned home bearing the guilt of injuring a civilian. [Moira MacTaggert - C] When he had entered the States he was calling himself Weapon Alpha. Soon after that mission he adopted the code-name Vindicator, feeling he had to vindicate himself.
      Hudson led Alpha in their unsuccessful second attempt to capture Wolverine, and remained leader until Department H and the team were disbanded due to budget cuts. When the team regrouped as free agents he was once again leader. On the advice of Shaman James adopted the code-name Guardian. [Michael thought the name more appropriate to James' role as "Canada's Captain America" -C]
      Although Alpha Flight was reformed, Hudson was still unemployed. He then received an unexpected offer of employment from Roxxon Oil in New York. Hudson accepted, but the entire thing was a set-up by his old boss, Jerry Jaxon. Jaxon had created Omega Flight from Department H's training teams, and Jaxon himself fought Hudson alongside them using the stolen Box robot. Hudson managed to even the odds by summoning Alpha Flight. During the fight Jaxon isolated Hudson from his team-mates and managed to severely damage Hudson's battlesuit. The suit's powerpack overloaded when James was distracted from his repair efforts by Heather walking in the door. The powerpack exploded, seemingly reducing Hudson to ash.
      In actuality Hudson managed to channel the blast to create a spatial rift. He plunged through the rift to Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter's moons. There he was found by an outpost of the alien race called the Qu'wrlln. The aliens managed to save his life, but as they had never seen a human being before they didn't realize that his armor was not a natural part of his body. So they made a working synthesis of technological and organic systems, rendering Hudson a cyborg. When Hudson used the Qu'wrlln's scanning technology to check on Earth he discovered that the rift had taken him through time as well as space. Wishing to further aid their new friend the Qu'wrlln put James in suspended animation to await the proper time to go home.
      The Qu'wrlln, however, were a race with a paranoid fear of Galactus, the world eater. When in recent human history Galactus was turned away from the Earth by super-humans, the Qu'wrlln were amazed. They decided to turn Hudson, who was still in suspended animation, into their agent in Earth's super-hero community. If Galactus ever troubled them they would use James to get super-human help. To this end they made modifications to the computer part of Hudson's cyborg mind. This would have severe repercussions for James later.
      At the appropriate time Hudson was loaded into a Qu'wrlln probe ship and sent back to Earth. On crash-landing in Earth's oceans, however, Hudson did not awaken from suspended animation. He was found by a Roxxon drilling platform and shipped to a Roxxon research facility. There Roxxon scientists were able to tap into his computer systems enough to get most of the above history. The Roxxon-built robot called Delphine Courtney then used the information to impersonate James and lead Omega Flight on another battle against Alpha Flight. Hudson was placed in a holding area and monitored... until it became obvious that his computer systems were infiltrating and taking over Roxxon's systems through the medical monitors.
      Roxxon used its influence with the Canadian military to get help from Alpha Flight member Madison Jeffries in battling Hudson's subconscious computer takeover. Roxxon kept Jeffries in the dark as to the exact cause of their difficulties. As Jeffries battled for control of the Roxxon computers he realized that there was a living mind behind the problem. At that moment a Roxxon executive decided to turn off Hudson's life-support. This had disasterous consequences... for Roxxon, that is.
      The act of "pulling the plug," so to speak, activated built in defenses that Hudson's subconscious mind had set up. The defenses blew up the facility. Jeffries survived and managed to reach Hudson's mind, pulling James back to consciousness. Hudson then returned to Alpha Flight. While he was gone Heather had taken the name Guardian, so Jimmy returned to the name Vindicator.
      Unfortunately James had numerous emotional problems upon his return. The tampering that the Qu'wrlln had done to insure he would act as their agent had rendered the computer half of his cyborg brain slightly dominant over the organic half. The result was that he was an extremely logical, unemotional being who would've "out-Vulcaned" Mr. Spock on most occasions.
      James remained with Alpha until Galactus indeed attacked the Qu'wrlln. The aliens then took over his mind and used him to take most of the strongest members of Alpha and the Avengers to the Qu'wrrln homeworld.
      The Qu'wrlln had shifted their planet into another dimension at the first hint of Galactus' approach: his herald, Nova. Unfortunately, they took Nova with them, and Galactus followed. However, the weird dimension the Qu'wrlln planet was now in enabled the assembled heroes to defeat the world-eater.
      A bargain was then struck: Galactus would use his technology to bring the mother-ship of an alien group called the Consortium to him, and send the super-heroes home in its place. [The Consortium was at the time attacking Toronto. Consortium mother-ships used miniaturized planets as power sources. -C] However, due to his weakened state, Galactus was unable to power the device that would swap the mother-ship for the heroes. The only other suitable power sources were James and Heather. Galactus warned them that powering the device would likely cost both of them their lives. Jimmy Hudson, his emotions breaking through as they sometimes did, knocked out his wife and sent her through the rift home. And so Hudson "died" for the second time.
      This time around James became trapped in a dimension of null space. There he was somehow found by the Master of the World. The Master retrieved him and patched him up, claimed to have improved Hudson's intellect in many ways, and seemingly brought Hudson around to his way of thinking. Called the Antiguard, Hudson battled Alpha Flight alongside the Master and the new Omega Flight until Heather managed to break through the Master's conditioning. Hudson returned with his wife and his team only to find out that the Federal gov't had suspended them until an investigation was done of recent events. [The Master had attempted a behind- the-scenes political takeover of Canada. - C]
      For a time James and Heather were once more a happy couple. The Master's tampering had apparently undone the Qu'wrlln tampering; hence James' emotions were back to normal. The Hudson's worked as a husband & wife research team and had a few adventures alongside Wolverine. During one such adventure James was named executor of his old friend's will.
      The happiness was unfortunately not to last. After the suspension ended and Alpha Flight was officially disbanded for the third time James and Heather came to realize that both of them had changed more than they cared to admit. Tensions in the relationship grew and eventually the Hudsons separated. Heather lost track of Mac.
      After seperating from Heather, James went back to Department H as it was setting up for the fourth time. After voicing concerns over the new H's goals and methods, Hudson was attacked and forcibly confined. His mind was wiped clean, as if the memories had been sucked out and placed elsewhere. [Namely, a synthoid duplicate> See Vindicator III. -C] His body was then to be disposed of by literally launching it into space using his own battlesuit.
      That didn't exactly work however, and Hudson instead crash-landed in the Antarctic. There he was found by his old team-mate Sasquatch. His suit had kept him alive, and Sasquatch brought him to Shaman, who succeeded in bringing back his mind.
      This led to a reunion of sorts of the original Alpha Flight, with Northstar & Aurora soon joining in on a fight with Department H & the latest incarnation of Alpha. Hudson and his duplicate managed to get the two teams working together against the threat of Weapon X and afterwords the older Hudson and his team learned that Department H had mostly mended its ways.
           Although Department H originally refused to reveal which Hudson was the human one, it eventually came out that it was the younger one who was the synthoid duplicate. The younger Hudson has since been killed.
     The only mystery remaining from the time period between Alpha Flight v1 #130 and AF v2 #13 is why James Hudson is no longer a cyborg.
     Hudson is currently on good terms with Heather Hudson. The two may have formally divorced off-panel between AF v2#20 and Wolverine #142. There are hints that Mac still cares a lot for his estranged wife.
            Guardian wears a suit of highly technological armor that enables him to utilize electro-magnetic energy for various effects.
      The Guardian armor acts as an electro-magnetic exo-skeleton, providing the wearer with super-human strength. In his first appearance Guardian was shown lifting a large tree with no apparent difficulty.
      The suit enables Guardian to fly at speeds of up to Mach 1. It's also capable of faster travel by rendering the user "at rest" relative to the rotation of the Earth. This creates an extreme westward velocity.
      Guardian's armor creates an electromagnetic force-field for defensive purposes. The field is capable of shielding him from a great deal of harm. Activation of the "at rest" capability automatically turns on the force-field.
      The suit is capable of firing electromagnetic blasts for offensive moves. The blasts can be equivalent of up to 250 pounds of TNT. Using the blasts the wearer can tunnel through bedrock [The original purpose of the armor. -C] at up to 25 miles per hour.
      Finally, the suit can also create and manipulate plasma, forming it into simple shapes such as funnels.