Mad Jim Jaspers
Encyclopedia
Sir James Jaspers is a fictional character
created by Dave Thorpe
and Alan Davis
for the Captain Britain
stories in Marvel UK
comics and later developed by Alan Moore
.
Jaspers was a British member of Parliament
with a mutated brain that enabled him to alter reality; an unfortunate side effect of this power was that it quickly drove him mad once he began to use it on a larger scale. He led an anti-superhuman campaign so that he could play with the world without interference. His character design was based on the English comic actor "Terry-Thomas
".
first encountered him when he travelled to an alternative temporal reality with Jackdaw. They interrupted a bank robbery being perpetrated by the "Crazy Gang", a criminal group themed around characters from Alice in Wonderland
with Jaspers taking the role of The Hatter.
It later emerged that, before indulging in a campaign of mayhem, Jaspers was a member of Parliament who successfully campaigned for the outlawing of superheroes. He then created The Fury
, a highly adaptable android created to exterminate superheroes. Within two years all the superhumans of the world (many of them referencing classic British comic characters like Marvelman
and the Steel Claw
) had been killed by the Fury. The only surviving superhero of this world, Captain UK, had fled to Earth-616 and abandoned her heroic identity. However, the Fury was programmed not to kill Jaspers, who himself had the ability to warp reality to his will at the cost of his own sanity.
The Fury was reactivated by Jaspers and later succeeded in killing both Captain Britain and Jackdaw
. Captain Britain was then removed from Earth-238 by Merlyn
and revived on Earth-616. The Fury, somehow detecting this, adapted itself to travel between realities.
Saturnyne
and her Avant Guard attempted to give Earth-238 "the Push", an evolutionary boost when Jaspers unleashed the Jaspers' Warp
, a wave of unreality that affects everything in the continuity. Fearing contamination, Saturnyne's temporary replacement, Mandragon, destroyed the Earth-238 continuity, and presumably Jaspers along with it.
and Sebastian Shaw
(suggesting that Jaspers is a member of the Hellfire Club
). Jaspers later won a landslide general election victory on his anti-superhero platform and became Prime Minister. Events mirrored those of Earth-238 and Jaspers unleashed the Jaspers' Warp upon London. The Fury arrived on Earth-616
and attacked Jaspers after recognising that this Jaspers was not the same man it was forbidden to kill. After a reality-warping battle, The Fury managed to kill him by teleporting the pair outside of the universe, where Jaspers had no reality to control and was thus powerless. The Fury then, in its weakened condition, was destroyed itself by the one hero that had escaped from Earth-238, Captain UK. Although Saturnyne took a sample of Jaspers' DNA with the intention of cloning him, the DNA was secretly destroyed by Merlyn's daughter, Roma
.
Sir James Jaspers later appears as an anti-mutant prosecutor during the trial of Magneto
. However it's not stated whether this is the revived mutant Jaspers, a clone, or some lasting effect of the reality warp.
Some years later, a large-scale reality warp
originating on Earth-616 resulted in the recreation of the exterminated Earth-616 Jaspers and Fury as a single combined being. It is unknown if Mad Jim Jaspers retained his mutant powers after the M-Day
.
This return leads to the events of the mini-series, X-Men: Die by the Sword
.
A different alternate version of Jim Jaspers appears in Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis.
, with the power to warp reality. The less powerful Earth-238
version of Jaspers was able to warp his entire universe
beyond recognition to such a degree that it became necessary to destroy the Earth-238 timeline completely just to stop the Jaspers' Warp from spreading to other universes. From what Merlyn hinted during his telepathic
alert to Captain Britain, the more powerful Earth-616 Jaspers was an omniversal-scale threat whose power would continue to grow exponentially
:
Mad Jim Jaspers has vast reality-warping powers. He can restructure matter and energy on an enormous scale and bend and distort space to create tesseract
spaces which are far larger than what would otherwise fit into their three-dimensional volume. He can warp and disrupt the laws of physics
to make entire universes unsuitable for life if left unchecked. During his battle with the Fury, Jaspers altered his own form to change into completely different lifeforms and even non-living objects while maintaining his own human mind. He reanimated his entire body after having been fried into an empty skeleton by the Fury. He has shown himself capable of resurrecting the dead and creating sentient lifeforms. However, his powers are seen to have limitations. Unlike the Scarlet Witch
, Mad Jim Jaspers needs existing reality in order to function his powers, as seen when the Fury took him outside the known universe, rendering him powerless.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
created by Dave Thorpe
Dave Thorpe
Dave Thorpe is a British writer who is best known for his work on Captain Britain.-Biography:Thorpe's career began with Marvel UK's Captain Britain character in the early 1980s. He created many of the characters later used by Alan Moore...
and Alan Davis
Alan Davis
Alan Davis is an English writer and artist of comic books, known for his work on titles such as Captain Britain, The Uncanny X-Men, ClanDestine, Excalibur, JLA: The Nail and JLA: Another Nail.-UK work:...
for the Captain Britain
Captain Britain
Captain Britain , briefly known as Britannic, is a fictional character, a superhero appearing in the comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe, he first appeared in Captain Britain Weekly, #1...
stories in Marvel UK
Marvel UK
Marvel UK was an imprint of Marvel Comics formed in 1972 to reprint US produced stories for the British weekly comic market, though it later did produce original material by British creators such as Alan Moore, John Wagner, Dave Gibbons, Steve Dillon and Grant Morrison.Panini Comics obtained the...
comics and later developed by Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
.
Jaspers was a British member of Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
with a mutated brain that enabled him to alter reality; an unfortunate side effect of this power was that it quickly drove him mad once he began to use it on a larger scale. He led an anti-superhuman campaign so that he could play with the world without interference. His character design was based on the English comic actor "Terry-Thomas
Terry-Thomas
Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens was a distinctive English comic actor, known as Terry-Thomas. He was famous for his portrayal of disreputable members of the upper classes, especially cads and toffs, with the trademark gap in his front teeth, cigarette holder, smoking jacket, and catch-phrases such as...
".
Earth-238
Captain BritainCaptain Britain
Captain Britain , briefly known as Britannic, is a fictional character, a superhero appearing in the comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe, he first appeared in Captain Britain Weekly, #1...
first encountered him when he travelled to an alternative temporal reality with Jackdaw. They interrupted a bank robbery being perpetrated by the "Crazy Gang", a criminal group themed around characters from Alice in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
with Jaspers taking the role of The Hatter.
It later emerged that, before indulging in a campaign of mayhem, Jaspers was a member of Parliament who successfully campaigned for the outlawing of superheroes. He then created The Fury
Fury (Marvel Comics)
The Fury is a fictional character created by writer Alan Moore and illustrator Alan Davis as an antagonist for the Marvel Comics hero Captain Britain...
, a highly adaptable android created to exterminate superheroes. Within two years all the superhumans of the world (many of them referencing classic British comic characters like Marvelman
Marvelman
Marvelman, also known as Miracleman for trademark reasons in his American reprints and story continuation, is a fictional comic book superhero created in 1954 by writer-artist Mick Anglo for publisher L. Miller & Son. Originally intended as a United Kingdom home-grown substitute for the American...
and the Steel Claw
Steel Claw
The Steel Claw was one of the most popular comic book heroes of British weekly adventure comics of the 1960s and 1970s. The character was revived in 2005 for Albion, a six issue mini-series published by the Wildstorm imprint of DC Comics....
) had been killed by the Fury. The only surviving superhero of this world, Captain UK, had fled to Earth-616 and abandoned her heroic identity. However, the Fury was programmed not to kill Jaspers, who himself had the ability to warp reality to his will at the cost of his own sanity.
The Fury was reactivated by Jaspers and later succeeded in killing both Captain Britain and Jackdaw
Jackdaw (comics)
Jackdaw is a fictional character featured in Marvel Comics publications.-Fictional character biography:A now-deceased hero, the sidekick of Captain Britain. Jackdaw was an Otherworld elf. Jackdaw had been mortally wounded earlier in his adventures, but was revivied by Merlin and given new powers...
. Captain Britain was then removed from Earth-238 by Merlyn
Merlyn (Marvel Comics)
Merlyn is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe. He claims to be the Merlin of British Legends and has served for many years as the Omniversal Guardian, a function his daughter Roma took from him...
and revived on Earth-616. The Fury, somehow detecting this, adapted itself to travel between realities.
Saturnyne
Saturnyne
Opal Luna Saturnyne is the name of a fictional comic book character created by Dave Thorpe and Alan Davis for their Captain Britain stories. She is the Omniversal Majestrix of Otherworld, and a servant of Roma, charged with the safety of the Omniverse....
and her Avant Guard attempted to give Earth-238 "the Push", an evolutionary boost when Jaspers unleashed the Jaspers' Warp
Jaspers' Warp
"Jaspers' Warp", also known as "Crooked World", was a Marvel UK storyline featuring primarily the character Captain Britain. It was originally published between 1982 and 1984 in Marvel Superheroes, #387-388, The Daredevils, #1-11 and The Mighty World Of Marvel, volume 2, #7-13.The story is a...
, a wave of unreality that affects everything in the continuity. Fearing contamination, Saturnyne's temporary replacement, Mandragon, destroyed the Earth-238 continuity, and presumably Jaspers along with it.
Earth-616
Upon returning to his own reality, Captain Britain found that another Sir James Jaspers was leading an anti-superhero campaign, with the aid of Henry Peter GyrichHenry Peter Gyrich
Henry Peter Gyrich is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Avengers Vol. 1 #165 and was created by Jim Shooter and George Pérez.-Fictional character biography:...
and Sebastian Shaw
Sebastian Shaw (comics)
Sebastian Hiram Shaw is a fictional comic book supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe, and an adversary of the X-Men.A mutant, Shaw possesses the ability to absorb energy and transform it into raw strength...
(suggesting that Jaspers is a member of the Hellfire Club
Hellfire Club (comics)
The Hellfire Club is a fictional society within the Marvel Comics Universe that often comes into confrontation with the mutant superhero team, the X-Men...
). Jaspers later won a landslide general election victory on his anti-superhero platform and became Prime Minister. Events mirrored those of Earth-238 and Jaspers unleashed the Jaspers' Warp upon London. The Fury arrived on Earth-616
Earth-616
In the fictional Marvel Comics multiverse, Earth-616 or Earth 616 is the name used to identify the primary continuity in which most Marvel Comics titles take place.-Origin of Earth-616:...
and attacked Jaspers after recognising that this Jaspers was not the same man it was forbidden to kill. After a reality-warping battle, The Fury managed to kill him by teleporting the pair outside of the universe, where Jaspers had no reality to control and was thus powerless. The Fury then, in its weakened condition, was destroyed itself by the one hero that had escaped from Earth-238, Captain UK. Although Saturnyne took a sample of Jaspers' DNA with the intention of cloning him, the DNA was secretly destroyed by Merlyn's daughter, Roma
Roma (comics)
Roma is a fictional character featured in numerous Marvel Comics titles. She is the daughter of Merlyn. Roma is the Omniversal Guardian, charged with the safety of the Omniverse...
.
Sir James Jaspers later appears as an anti-mutant prosecutor during the trial of Magneto
Magneto (comics)
Magneto is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. He is the central villain of the X-Men comic, as well as the TV show and the films. The character first appears in X-Men #1 , and was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby...
. However it's not stated whether this is the revived mutant Jaspers, a clone, or some lasting effect of the reality warp.
Some years later, a large-scale reality warp
House of M
House of M is an eight-issue comic book limited series and crossover storyline published by Marvel Comics in 2005. Written by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by Olivier Coipel, its first issue debuted in June 2005 as a follow-up to the events of the Planet X and Avengers Disassembled...
originating on Earth-616 resulted in the recreation of the exterminated Earth-616 Jaspers and Fury as a single combined being. It is unknown if Mad Jim Jaspers retained his mutant powers after the M-Day
Decimation (comics)
Decimation is the late 2005 Marvel Comics storyline spinning off from the House of M limited series. It focuses on the ramifications of the Scarlet Witch stripping nearly all of the mutant population of their powers, thereby reducing a society of millions to one of scant hundreds.This event, which...
.
This return leads to the events of the mini-series, X-Men: Die by the Sword
X-Men: Die by the Sword
X-Men: Die by the Sword is a five-issue comic book limited series published by Marvel Comics in 2007. It was written by Chris Claremont, drawn by Juan Santacruz, and inked by Raul Fernandez.The story featured the teams New Excalibur and Exiles...
.
A different alternate version of Jim Jaspers appears in Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis.
Powers and abilities
Sir James Jaspers is one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel universeMarvel Universe
The Marvel Universe is the shared fictional universe where most comic book titles and other media published by Marvel Entertainment take place, including those featuring Marvel's most familiar characters, such as Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, and the Avengers.The Marvel Universe is further...
, with the power to warp reality. The less powerful Earth-238
Jaspers' Warp
"Jaspers' Warp", also known as "Crooked World", was a Marvel UK storyline featuring primarily the character Captain Britain. It was originally published between 1982 and 1984 in Marvel Superheroes, #387-388, The Daredevils, #1-11 and The Mighty World Of Marvel, volume 2, #7-13.The story is a...
version of Jaspers was able to warp his entire universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
beyond recognition to such a degree that it became necessary to destroy the Earth-238 timeline completely just to stop the Jaspers' Warp from spreading to other universes. From what Merlyn hinted during his telepathic
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
alert to Captain Britain, the more powerful Earth-616 Jaspers was an omniversal-scale threat whose power would continue to grow exponentially
Exponential growth
Exponential growth occurs when the growth rate of a mathematical function is proportional to the function's current value...
:
- "This version of Jaspers. Is too powerful, too dangerous. His counterpart could at least be halted, even if it meant destroying his entire continuum. This one is not so easily containable. And if he cannot be defeated, then the omniverse shall fall into chaos, and a new and hostile god shall play dice with matter."
Mad Jim Jaspers has vast reality-warping powers. He can restructure matter and energy on an enormous scale and bend and distort space to create tesseract
Tesseract
In geometry, the tesseract, also called an 8-cell or regular octachoron or cubic prism, is the four-dimensional analog of the cube. The tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of 6 square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of 8...
spaces which are far larger than what would otherwise fit into their three-dimensional volume. He can warp and disrupt the laws of physics
Physical law
A physical law or scientific law is "a theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present." Physical laws are typically conclusions...
to make entire universes unsuitable for life if left unchecked. During his battle with the Fury, Jaspers altered his own form to change into completely different lifeforms and even non-living objects while maintaining his own human mind. He reanimated his entire body after having been fried into an empty skeleton by the Fury. He has shown himself capable of resurrecting the dead and creating sentient lifeforms. However, his powers are seen to have limitations. Unlike the Scarlet Witch
Scarlet Witch
The Scarlet Witch is a fictional comic book character that appears in books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appears in X-Men #4 and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby...
, Mad Jim Jaspers needs existing reality in order to function his powers, as seen when the Fury took him outside the known universe, rendering him powerless.