Who the Clix? is a series of articles featuring information on comic book characters that have been made into figures for the popular tabletop game Heroclix. These articles are meant to help Heroclix players learn more about the characters behind their favorite pieces.

Today we look at the multiplicitous master of mayhem: Jamie Madrox

Appearances in Heroclix: Wolverine and the X-Men, Giant Size X-Men, Sinister

First Appearance: Giant Size Fantastic Four #4

Team Affiliations: X-Factor, X-Corps, X-Corporation, Fallen Angels, Nasty Boys, S.H.I.E.L.D., HYDRA



Jamie Madrox was born near the Los Alamos research facility in New Mexico and it has been theorized that the background radiation caused his mutation. When Jamie is born, the doctor’s slap causes him to multiply for the first time into two identical babies. Professor Xavier, a friend of Jamie’s father Dr. Daniel Madrox, suggests that they move to Kansas and raise the boy in privacy. Dr. Madrox designs a special suit that absorbs kinetic energy, the trigger of his mutant power. Damian Tryp, of Singularity Investigations, makes an offer to look after Jamie as he believes that Jamie is something more than a mutant. The Madroxes refuse and are killed in a tornado when Jamie is fifteen, supposedly caused by Tryp. Jamie then uses his “dupes” to run the family farm until the day when his protective suit is damaged.

Madrox meets Mister Fantastic during his trip to speak with Professor Xavier. Xavier sends Madrox to Muir Island where Jamie helps Moira McTaggert with her research as well as helping Havok and Polaris in their search for Proteus. One of Jamie’s renegade dupes later helps Siryn search for the New Mutants Sunspot and Warlocks, with this dupe joining the Fallen Angels.

Jamie temporarily comes under the control of the Shadow King during the mutant’s attack on Muir Island. After the Island is destroyed and the Shadow King is defeated, Jamie is offered membership in the government-sponsored X-Factor by Val Cooper. Alongside X-Factor, Jamie learns many new things about his powers: he cannot absorb a dead dupe, dupes can absorb him with enough will power though he is usually strong enough to reassert himself, and that he can even create a dupe of himself inside another being. During this time, Jamie also fights evil doppelgangers of many of earth’s heroes during the Infinity War as well as being taken by the entity known as Goddess during the Infinity Crusade.

Jamie eventually seems to succumb to the Legacy Virus, only for it to be revealed that this Jamie was actually a dupe. The real Jamie is alive and suffers from amnesia, which he eventually recovers from. When the government tries to convince X-Factor that Jamie and his dupes are super-terrorists, the team splinters off and goes underground.

After the formation of the X-Corps, Jamie spends many years as “majority staff” for Banshee before transferring to the Paris location under Charles Xavier’s leadership. When the X-Corporation collapses, Madrox becomes a private detective in the Mutant Town area of New York. This reunites him with Wolfsbane and Strong Guy. During this time, Madrox has been sending his dupes off to live their own lives and gain skills that he will gain when he reabsorbs them (such as a Shaolin monk and an Olympic Gymnast). However, because of these long sojourns, the dupes remain stronger even after absorption and become more erratic when they reappear. Some of them even beg Jamie not to reabsorb them, such as one that spent his time becoming a priest.

After M-Day, Jamie upgrades his one man agency into “X-Factor Investigations.” A dupe that Jamie sends to help talk a de-powered Rictor out of jumping off of a building actually pushes the mutant off. When Jamie confronts him, this dupe claims that he is the “X-Factor” and warns Jamie that he will be fighting to get out every time he can and Jamie will never know…until it’s too late. Soon after, X-Factor Investigations is joined by Rictor, M, and Siryn. One night, Jamie celebrates with a night with Siryn. Unbeknownst to him, a dupe is also with M at the same time. When Jamie discovers this, he instantly absorbs the dupe but this does not stop both women from being furious with him.

Soon after, young Layla Miller comes to Jamie with the claim that she “knows stuff.” She tells Jamie that they’re going to get married some day and that Wolfsbane will kill both of them on their wedding night. Another dupe of Jamie’s becomes an agent of SHIELD and enforces the Superhuman Registration Act, registering Rictor and M. This dupe is eventually reabsorbed by Jamie during an investigation into a Hydra cell. At the same time, Jamie and the rest of X-Factor Investigations publicly oppose the Act and offer the now abandoned Mutant Town as a sanctuary to fugitive superheroes. This is a calculated move by Jamie to aggravate Cyclops, who had taken a neutral stance on the subject, because Madrox is angry with Cyclops for holding back the truth about M-Day. Siryn reveals to Jamie that she’s pregnant with his child.

After the birth of the first mutant baby since M-Day, Cyclops sends Jamie and Layla to Forge, who has developed a time machine that is able to monitor possible futures. Jamie creates two dupes to send through a portal connected to this machine, they will be able to learn about the futures and then be reabsorbed by Jamie. Before anyone can react, Layla follows one of the dupes through as Jamie prime collapses.

Layla and the Madrox dupe arrive in the negative future, where the mutant baby came to be a terrible monster. They are captured and placed into internment camps where they receive M tattoos over their eyes and meet a very young Lucas Bishop. The young Bishop claims he would be happy to kill the mutant that caused all of this if he could go back in time. Feeling that this is important information, Layla steals a grenade and straps it to the duplicate. Though dead dupes can not be absorbed, Jamie has been able to develop the ability to absorb their memories after their death. When he receives his memories, Jamie prime awakens and develops a M tattoo.

Decimated by the loss of Layla to the alternate future, Jamie returns to X-Factor Investigations. He is only brought joy as Siryn proposes to him during labor. A beautiful baby boy is born and Siryn names him Sean, after her deceased father Banshee. Just a few hours later, Jamie holds his newborn baby and the child is absorbed into him completely against his will. In shock, Jamie realizes that it was a dupe that spent the night with Siryn. Creating a dupe offspring that would naturally be absorbed by Jamie. Furious with him, Siryn breaks his finger and kicks him out.

Jamie goes to speak to his preacher dupe, John Maddox. Jamie shares his revelation: if an infant dupe is absorbed, then John’s son must not be his. John admits that he knows his wife has been unfaithful and Jamie shares that he plans to kill himself after the loss of Sean and Layla. However, a holographic projection of an adult Layla appears and stops him by bringing him into the future.

Jamie arrives in the middle of the Summers Rebellion. Mutants are rising up against Sentinel and human oppression led by Ruby Summers, the daughter of Cyclops and Emma Frost, Layla and a cyborg Cyclops. Cyclops reveals to Jamie that mutants are simply blinking out of existence and they have to find out why. The group travel to an aging Doctor Doom who reveals that a younger Layla had told him this meeting would happen.

In the present, former mutants are being killed and then seemingly made to appear as a suicide. One such mutant, Lenore, enlists the help of X-Factor and accidentally leads them to the answer. After her mother attempts to kill Lenore, Monet St. Croix attempts to read her mind and is hit with massive psychic backlash. When she awakens, she grabs Longshot by the throat and says, “Cortex.” At nearly the same time, Strong Guy and Rictor visit John Maddox in Vermont only to be attacked by Shatterstar. Shatterstar only says the same single word, “Cortex,” before being freed of this mysterious mutant’s control. Monet seems to calm down and claims to be free of Cortex’s control, only to later reveal herself to still be working for the entity in trying to eliminate Lenore because she is on Cortex’s “list.”

Monet eventually is freed and attacks Cortex, knocking his hood back and revealing him to be a Jamie Maddrox dupe. Cortex reveals that he was the dupe sent to the other alternate future and was transformed into a “doomlock;” he was cybernetically enhanced with a chronal variance inhibitor that prevent his actions from creating more divergent timelines. He is then sent back in the past with a list of mutants that need to die because of the impact they could have on the future. It is then that the circle is completed and Maddrox realizes that someone is killing mutants in the past to affect the future, resulting in mutants blinking in and out of existence as the universe tries to correct itself.

Multiple Man fights alongside Hercules against the forces of Amatsu-Mikaboshi. He is shocked when all his dupes that have died also rise and fight along the other dead X-Men. Soon after, Madrox is fatally impaled by a demon and then repeatedly transported to a series of alternate Earths. He returns home only to find that several of the alternate heroes have followed him back.