SASQUATCH
Real Name: Walter Langkowski
Former Aliases: Box III, Wanda Langkowski
Group Affiliation: Alpha Flight
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #120
Creator: John Byrne

      Walter Langkowski happened to meet Robert "Bruce" Banner while in graduate school. Banner would end up having a profound effect on Walt's life, though neither student realized it at the time.
      After graduating, Langkowski enjoyed a short but extremely profitable pro football career in the NFL that left him independantly wealthy. It also left him with an ex-wife, Veronica.
      After leaving football, Langkowski somehow became involved in Department H. Walt was a member of H's scientific staff during the events chronicled in First Flight. The details of how Walt hooked up with H have yet to be revealed.
      Langkowski managed to talk James Hudson into funding his pet project: reproducing the conditions that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk in a laboratory. Walt himself would be the test-subject. Hudson agreed, and the lab was put in the high arctic to avoid potential radiation hazards. [Compiler's note: Langkowski also used over a million dollars of his own fortune in the project.]
      The experiment apparently met with success, gaining Walt a large, anthropomorphic, orange-furred second form. [Langkowski attributed the fact he was orange (not green like the Hulk,) to heavy sunspot activity during the experiment. -C] As Sasquatch Walt became one of the founding members of Alpha Flight. Unknown to Langkowski however, his new alter-ego was not a result of gamma-ray mutation.
      Instead Langkowski had briefly created enough physical energy to breach the barrier that held the Great Beasts. He had entered into a mystic symbiosis with the beast known as Tanaraq. Eventually the Beast gained control of their form, and Snowbird, hereditary foe of the Beasts killed both the Beast and Langkowski.
      Alpha Flight managed to rescue Langkowski's soul from the realm of the Beasts, and for a time it lived in the Box robot. However Walter eventually went looking for a new biological body, and found one in the crossroads of reality. It turned out to be the Hulk, however, and rather than condemn his friend Bruce to death Walter let his own soul drift away.
      Walter eventually came accross the mindless body of Smart Alec, and took up residence there. He then started searching for a way back to Earth and found one, crawling out of Shaman's medicine pouch just in time to reanimate Box and battle the villain known as Pestilence. After the battle he took up residence in Snowbird's Sasquatch form. He was quite perturbed when he switched back to human form... and it was female.
      Walter took it fairly well, even adopting the name "Wanda" for a time for fun. However, deep in his mind it bothered him... and the Dreamqueen was able to use this to manipulate him into stealing the Talisman. To prevent the Dreamqueen from gaining this powerful mystic tool, the spirit of Snowbird returned from the realm of the Eskimo gods and turned Langkowski's human form into a duplicate of his original one. [Right down to his need for glasses. :) She also apparently arranged for the Sasquatch form to be orange instead of white... - C] Langkowski served quite capably with Alpha from that point until the team's most recent disbanding. He then went back to gamma radiation research.
      Walt remained ignorant of Alpha Flight's restart until a comatose James Hudson fell out of the sky near his Antarctic research facility. Walt sought out Shaman for aid, and after James was awakened Walt & Michael were filled in on the dark deeds of the new Department H. The three decided to take steps, unaware that H was undergoing its own internal transformation. Rescuing Jeanne-Marie from H, the next recruit for the group was Northstar. The five original Alphans then proceeded to conflict with the latest Alphans during the Weapon X crisis. At the conclusion of those events Langkowski and his comrades rejoined their old team.
Walter Langkowski is able to transform into a large, orange-furred anthropod. In this form he has tremendous super-human strength and resistence to injury. Langkowski is also an expert in the field of biochemistry.