Character Distillation: Meggan (Excalibur)

Eventually, I am going to post something that has nothing to do with comic books, I swear. In the meantime, these posts are coming most easily.

I often randomly browse through websites like Wikipedia, the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and various others. Sure, there are probably better ways to spend my time, but this generally gives me lots of ideas and occasional genuine insights.

Case in point: I was reading this, and once I read through it, within a short time I realized that the subject, Meggan of the Captain Britain, Excalibur, and X-Men comics, could easily have her character boiled down into three main components.

1. She is defined by her relationships, especially those she has with men.
2. She is by nature innocent and at least a little simple.
3. She is insanely powerful, and the only reason she doesn't trample everyone is because she's not very assertive.

When I finished these thoughts, the first thought that came into my head was, "Man, Meggan's depiction must drive feminists nuts."

The first sentence can be explicated by the vast majority of her interactions with other characters. Meggan's very appearance is dictated entirely by the fancies of the men she loves most, and before she gained conscious control of her powers, it was also dictated by the loathing that others bore for her in her monstrous form. Thus, Meggan can often be summed up in the phrase "wish fulfillment" simply for her appearance. (I'm probably going to dig a hole for myself with feminist types when I say that if Meggan is drawn in a way that isn't especially attractive or fetching, the artist has done a bad job.) Even in Meggan's relatively recent death/disappearance during the House of M, she was sacrificing herself for her friends and husband.

The second sentence can be summed up in various ways. Meggan was illiterate for most of her life, and only recently learned to read. She was cut off from other people because of her appearance, and sheltered for her entire life. These are not in and of themselves bad things; it makes one vulnerable in ways, but it gives the character some distinctive features (such as her perpetual shoelessness), and it also gave her a really nice line at one point: "You think me stupid because I cannot read or understand clever words. But life is bigger than words. Words are just small noises that hide the truth. I see more than you could know."

And that line segways nicely into the third sentence. The only reason Meggan doesn't trash everything in her path is because it isn't in her nature. She has pretty much any superhuman powers she could ever need whenever she wants them: She can change her shape, has some degree of telepathy, can draw energy into herself to increase her strength, resilience, and the like, and she has the ability to disrupt or control any kind of force or energy imaginable. The previous quote attributed to Meggan was one that she made in response to Jamie Braddock, an insane reality-warping mutant (and her boyfriend's brother). (Note: If you are a sensitive soul, don't click the above link, for you may be scarred for life. Jamie Braddock always runs around in his teeny tiny underwear.) The act that brought on the quote itself was her total defiance of his ability to warp reality around himself, to which almost no one else was resistant. And in the aforementioned incident where she sacrificed herself, she used her powers to stop what the others could not-and one of the others was Rachel Summers, sometimes host of the Phoenix Force. (Okay, so the others helped a little.) And according to Wikipedia, she has successfully replicated the powers and abilities of Godzilla, Dazzler, Rogue, Colossus, Longshot, Storm, Wolverine, Havok, and has imitated the powers of a werewolf, Sandman, Hydro-man and confronted Galactus.

I can't even make this stuff up.

So, in closing, Meggan may look cute and innocent, but she can kick your rear end seven ways to Sunday on her worst day.