HEATHER HUDSON

Publication Date: 22nd Apr 2014
Written By: Peter Luzifer.
Image Work: Peter Luzifer and Providence.
Biography

BIOGRAPHY - Page 1

Dr. Heather McDaniel stems from Earth 3470, a reality where the cold war never ended. Her life as a superhero began in her mid-twenties, when she was thought to be one of the most gifted scientific minds of her time. In her attempts to find a cure for cancer, Heather had performed all sorts of research studies from gene-splicing to anthropological analysis of the human condition.

During her cancer research alongside a fellow physician, Heather picked an ozone hole for conducting her experiment by collecting ambient gamma rays. What she had not expected, though, was that the ozone hole was a portal to the realm where the Great Beasts of the North had been imprisoned by Nelvanna, one of the three Arctic gods. Unfortunately, Dr. McDaniel's research resulted in an explosion. Whereas her colleague's  fate remains unclear, Heather was at the brink of death when one of the Great Beasts, Tanaraq, approached her with a deal for crossing over from his dimension to hers, in exchange for residing in her body and healing her wounds. Light-headed and desperate, Heather accepted Tanaraq's deal. Although she had no recollection of her deal with Tanaraq, Heather soon discovered she could turn into a giant white-furred creature and believed her newfound powers to be a result of the bombardment of gamma-radiation she had received during the explosion.

Shortly thereafter, Heather joined Alpha Flight, taking on the codename Sasquatch as she resembled the legendary creature. Alpha Flight was a new Canadian group of superheroes and Heather believed it to be a great experience to utilize both her super-powers and her medical skills for the greater good. When a wild madman with mutant abilities was found in the Canadian wilderness, Heather was assigned to a project attempting to rehabilitate this feral mutant, so that the Flight program could use his abilities for themselves. This program was called Project Lazarus.  It took her a whole month, but eventually Heather managed to get through to the man known simply as Logan and restore his sanity.

As Wolverine, Logan too joined Alpha Flight and not only proved to be a real asset to the team, but eventually became their leader. More importantly, Heather had bonded with him and they fell in love. Within a year, Heather and Logan celebrated their wedding. Everything seemed to be working out perfectly for Heather until an incident two years later, when remaining members of a clandestine government project, Weapon-X, activated a dormant chip hidden in Logan's adrenal glands, causing him to go insane. It was Heather who finally stopped Logan by killing him. She mourned him for the years that followed until James Hudson, the man behind Alpha Flight's creation, brought her back from the brink. Heather found more than comfort and understanding in Hudson's arms, and eventually she married him. However, despite the new love in her life, Heather still missed Logan. [Exiles (1st series) #33, 57]

An unknown amount of time later, Heather Hudson was plucked out of her reality. It was then that she first met the entity calling itself the Timebroker,  who revealed to her that cascading ripples in time endangered the fabric of the multiverse, and that they had affected her homeworld as well. Not only had they caused her to become unhinged from time, but the person she loved most was burnt to death as a result. The only way Heather could save her husband and return home was to fix the chain of broken realities as a member of the Exiles, a reality-hopping team of heroes who were all in the same situation as Heather. In fact, the Timebroker claimed to be a construct of the Exiles' subconscious.

Sent to meet her new team, Heather arrived right after one of their own, Thunderbird, had gone into a coma and became his replacement. When she reverted to her human form, she obviously surprised her teammates both for being a woman as well as being black.  Sure, most of them knew of a "Heather Hudson" and a "Sasquatch," but none of the Exiles had heard of these two names referring to the same individual. The members of Weapon X, another team of reality-hoppers, reacted just the same way, which brought on the possibility that Heather did not exist in most other realities. [Exiles (1st series) #10, 12]

Like most female members of the group, Heather found herself the target of Morph's romantic affections at some point. Also like all the others, she turned him down, reminding him that she was a married woman after all, not that it would have bother him that much. [Exiles (1st series) #17]

One would think that having been in a leading position herself, Heather would have problems accepting orders from Blink, the Exiles' leader, but that wasn't the case – at first. After a while, though, she complained about commands being bossed around and also that the others only saw the super-strong side of her, somewhat neglecting her scientific background.
[Exiles (1st series) #18-19] Things changed a bit after Blink had been taken off the team, and leadership was passed on to Mimic. He would ask Heather for her advice from time to time, and he also shared her suspicion that the Timebroker wasn't everything he claimed to be. [Exiles (1st series) #26]

Several missions later, the Exiles were on a world where the Avengers had become vampires. Although they completed their assignment, the aftermath of the battle left the Exiles separated, as a magical spell caused the team to be dispersed over several different realities when they teleported out.  Along with fellow Exile Morph, Sasquatch ended up in the Canadian woods of some alternate Earth, where they found themselves hunted by a feral Wolverine. It was Logan at his worst, right after he had escaped from the Weapon X program, angry and deranged, roaming the Canadian wilderness like an animal. Heather knew that they were hopelessly outmatched and decided to knock Morph out for his own safety. Due to the fact that Morph has no scent, she could be sure that Logan wouldn't find him and would instead follow her. When he finally tracked her down, Logan seemed to sense Heather's distress and, instead of attacking her, started to bond with her. Right then, the Timebroker had tracked down the missing Exiles and Sasquatch was teleported away. Heather was thankful for this one moment of calm because if Logan had decided to attack, she probably could not have brought herself to kill him a second time. [Exiles (1st series) #32-33]

The team continued to move from one reality world to another, until they arrived on an Earth that had been enslaved by Weapon X's most powerful member, Hyperion. Apparently, the Timebroker had enough of  Hyperion constantly disobeying his orders and he opted for a rather extreme solution. Both teams, Weapon X and the Exiles were to face each other to the death, with only the six surviving members getting to move on as the new and only team of reality-hoppers. The Exiles opted to work together to defeat Hyperion, but they were betrayed by one of their own, Magik, who stabbed Heather in the back with her sword. She would have died from the loss of blood, if her teammate Nocturne had not possessed her and triggered her transformation into Sasquatch, which activated her healing factor. Magik ended up getting killed by Hyperion, who was later tricked by Heather's teammates into blasting himself apart. [Exiles (1st series) #43-45]