Aurora and Jeanne-Marie Beaubier: primer + history + where to find the good stuff, Part 3/3

[erinptah]

This is it! This is actually the last part! About time.

Previously, on Part One: the first run of Alpha Flight! Then, on Part Two: writers scrambling to figure out what the heck to do with all the characters after Alpha Flight got canceled.

Jean-Paul Beaubier, Marvel figured out pretty quickly. He joined the more-mainstream X-Men in 2001 (Uncanny X-Men Volume 1 issue 392), and has been on-and-off with them ever since — and it’s been great. He’s a breakout hit!

Aurora and/or Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, on the other hand, Marvel is still trying to figure out. Doesn’t help that “hey, they’re canon plural” — the system’s biggest source of Unique Story Material You Couldn’t Do With Any Other Character(s) — is a trait the writers seems to just straight-up forget half the time.

Part Three covers the rest of the major Beaubier system content, up to the present day. The main reason it got long is, I keep stopping to think in detail about the continuity errors. And then trying to reverse-engineer the Headmate Action we aren’t getting on-page.

If you just want a recommended reading list, here it is:

tl;dr Read These For The Good Stuff:

• Alpha Flight Volume 1 (1983) issues 1-10, maybe 11-20, and 104
• Dark X-Men: The Beginning (2009): the Aurora bonus story in issue 3
• Alpha Flight Volume 4 (2011): the whole miniseries
• Astonishing X-Men Volume 3 (2004): Northstar’s wedding in issue 51 (2012)

For the rest of the detailed tour, read on:

 

Various X-Books (2009-2015): Second Fiddle to Northstar

Jean-Paul, as mentioned, is doing great as a major X-Men character. He gets character development. He gets significant roles in ongoing plots. He gets a romance!

And remember, this starts back when canon m/m relationships were overwhelmingly Not Done. Much less non-tragic romances that lead to a happy marriage where nobody dies.

…I mean, sometimes these guys die, but not permanently. Other times, one of them gets kidnapped and brainwashed to attack the other, but it always gets fixed, and they make up afterward.

Comics!

So, aside from Alpha Flight 2011 (covered in part 2), most of Aurora and/or Jeanne-Marie’s appearances for a solid decade are “here’s a book where Jean-Paul is a main character, we should wrangle in a guest spot for his sister.”

Some highlights:

Uncanny X-Men Volume 1: Northstar goes from “off” back to “on” with the X-Men in issue 508 (published 2009). In the meantime, he’s been the CEO and famous face of an extreme-sports company.

His sister is the COO. Kyle Jinadu, his eventual husband, is a public-relations rep. (Seen here with Jean-Paul in the top panel.)

Look at the twins in their fluffy sweaters! Both knit with the pattern from their matching superhero costumes! Extra props to the artist for adding that in.

…and, uh, let’s talk about the timeline. This is very close in time to the Dark X-Men special (also covered in part 2). Even if Aurora has mellowed over the years, it’s not so far that I can see her being patient or responsible enough to run a company. But this is before Alpha Flight 2011, so Jeanne-Marie wouldn’t be this happy and relaxed in general, let alone around her brother and his (gasp!) boyfriend.

Listen, it would feel cheap to use “this is one of the secret bonus headmates” to handwave every character point that doesn’t make sense. But if I only got to use it once? I’d put it here.

Astonishing X-Men Volume 3: Jean-Paul and Kyle have Marvel’s first gay wedding in issue 51 (published 2012). Aurora shows up to stand by her brother’s side.

Jean-Paul addresses her as Aurora, even when they’re not in costume, and yeah, I believe it’s Aurora fronting. Totally supportive of the gay stuff, as long as her brother is happy! Comfortable in a sleeveless, backless dress! Not as frenetic as the last time we saw definitely-her, but totally up for a race!

Look at them, just having a cute happy moment together in the air.

Amazing X-Men Volume 2: A guest appearance from Alpha Flight in issue 10 (published 2014), with some more typical bad-guy fighting, and a much tenser relationship between the twins.

Northstar addresses her as Jeanne-Marie, even when she is in costume…and, again, I buy that Jeanne-Marie is the one fronting. Mostly because of the line “They told me you were married, Jean-Paul” — which reinforces the idea that she wasn’t co-fronting with Aurora at the wedding, she only got brought up-to-speed afterward.

(…I mean, the alternative explanation is that the writers totally forgot Jean-Paul’s sister was at the wedding at all. But I like this take better.)

Captain Marvel Volume 9 (2016): We’re Saying “DID” Now, But…

Finally, Marvel finally takes another shot at “giving the Beaubier system their own regular spot in a team book.”

Good news: this is the point when someone finally learned the term “dissociative identity disorder”, and put it whatever Master Character File the Marvel writers have on Aurora!

Bad news: nobody since 2011 has thought real hard about what that means.

So we regularly get lines like “she has worked to get her disorder under control” or “I have learned to live with DID.” But never “they have worked so hard to understand each other” or “we have learned to be co-conscious.”

This Captain Marvel miniseries sets the pattern. There’s just one headmate in play (Aurora, the more-mature version we’ve seen since the wedding). She doesn’t communicate with Jeanne-Marie, or any of the auxiliary headmates we’ve seen over the years. None of them get their own relationships, feelings, opinions or needs.

…To be fair, the first half of the series relegates all its Alpha Flight alumni (Aurora, Walter, and Puck) to “mostly-background staff members.”

But then — when they finally get more panel time — it involves a “has someone betrayed the team?” subplot. In which Carol invokes “hey Aurora, since you have DID, maybe one of your headmates did it behind your back?”

There’s not even a second of considering, say, “which headmate would do that? What would their motivations be? Can you, Aurora, confer with your headmates and look into this? If one of them is responsible, can we talk to that person directly, and work out a deal?”

Such a huge letdown after Alpha Flight 2011! Which did a headmate-betrayal plot where all these character details mattered.

X-Factor Volume 4 (2020): Yes, More Mutants

Another miniseries, set in the new, all-mutant nation of Krakoa. Northstar has been roped into running the latest incarnation of X-Factor Investigations, a mutant detective agency. Their first case: solving Aurora’s suspicious death!

…it’s fine, she’s back in the next issue. Marvel has gotten amazingly cavalier about character resurrections. There’s a team of mutants for whom this is their day job. They have offices. Jean-Paul brings Aurora’s body to the front desk, and they put her in the resurrection queue.

Comics!

Aurora doesn’t full-on join X-Factor. But she moves into their base, and hangs out with them as a secondary character. Honestly, she gets more development here than in some books where she’s supposedly on the headlining team.

For one thing, they let her have some great, heartwarming sibling moments with Jean-Paul.

For another, she gets a romance that feels in-character! As with Walter back in the day, her thing with Akihiro (currently an X-Factor team member) is a stable, monogamous relationship with a decent guy who treats her well.

Also, he’s hot and spends a lot of time shirtless, and she enjoys the sex. (In the panel above, Jean-Paul just called her away from a hot tub…which a naked Akihiro is still in.)

This is another run where they mention DID by name, but totally starve us for headmate action. No internal conversations. No switching — or at least, nothing I would peg as “deliberately-written switching.” Jean-Paul mostly calls his sister Jeanne-Marie, the other X-Factor members mostly call her Aurora, and we don’t even get a single “that’s not my name, she’s the other one” scene.

A partial-fix-it headcanon: at this point in their lives, the system has reached a mutual agreement to go stealth with the general public. With the rest of their new housemates, too. That would make sense!

But come on. After all this time? We deserve a scene with Jean-Paul openly acknowledging and accepting both his sisters.

There is one nice scene in issue 5 that I’m gonna go ahead and interpret as “tonight it’s actually Jeanne-Marie, not Aurora answering to her name.” For one thing, most of the conversation is (translated from) French. For another…memory issues:

This is a reference to Walter’s power-altering Comics Technobabble from the 1980s. Originally, Aurora and Northstar could use Wonder Twin Zappy Light Powers when they held hands. One of the effects of the Technobabble was to reverse that, so touching each other would drain their powers.

But that hasn’t been an issue for years. They’ve used the restored Zappy Light Powers in multiple cameos before now! They hugged at Jean-Paul’s wedding, while flying! If dying and being brought back was the fix, that explains it: both of them have already died!

So, another headcanon: this isn’t a continuity failing on the writers’ part, it’s a memory hole on Jeanne-Marie’s part. Aurora was fronting for so many of those experiences, Jeanne-Marie straight-up missed the reveal that “holding hands” is an option again.

And, good news: she knows it now.

Marauders Volume 2 (2022): Well, Now I’m Mad

The plot from the X-Factor miniseries wraps up, so Aurora leaves Earth again, to join the crew of Kitty Pryde’s cool new spaceship. A lot of her co-stars are more popular with fans, and/or have unique powers that lend themselves to cool story ideas. Once again, Aurora keeps getting sidelined.

She’ll be in the corner of panels, in the background of fight scenes. Her lines are usually generic exposition that anyone could’ve said. Her expressive, energetic body language is replaced with “just kinda standing there.”

(That’s Akihiro behind her in this panel. The one without the shirt. He came on the trip, and they’re still dating, but I don’t feel like their relationship gets much material here, either.)

But! There is one major exception.

See, there’s another ongoing Threat To The Entire Marvel Universe. As usual. The flavor of the week is basically the Inquisitor from Red Dwarf back in 1992: bopping around the cosmos, ordering every individual Earth-being to justify their existence.

So Aurora tells the crew, “Hey, I conveniently have a psychic therapist — me being in therapy hasn’t come up before or since, the narrative has no interest in what feelings or personal traumas I need ongoing mental-health treatment for, it’s not like I’m Moon Knight or anything — but what if she walked everyone through a simulation of the Inquisitor Knockoff, so we feel more mentally-prepared for it?”

Captain Pryde goes with it.

Issue 6 is mostly a montage of psychic therapy sessions, every teammate getting a couple pages.

Aurora’s turn comes around — and, suddenly!

Headspace!

And it’s crowded!

And as I stop to look closely at the crowd, all of a sudden it hits:

Pink undercut — goth fashion and covered wrists — that must be Four! Teal workout gear, sitting with a camera and a toy dinosaur — that’s Five! Red dress — opera gloves and gardening shears — definitely Six! In the background, holding the riding crop — gonna guess that’s Three (likes horse racing), so the red corset and handcuffs can be for Seven (likes mild S&M), and the one with the skateboard and all the bandages can be Eight (the reckless masochist)!

(We’ve never had more than 8 headmates listed in a group, and there are 9 here. I have no theories about the one in the bunny hat.)

And that’ll be Original Jeanne-Marie (or, as you might say, One) in the buttoned-up shirt and pencil skirt. With Original Aurora (Two) in the black bodysuit and cape — that’s her superhero outfit this run, which is a nice little way to confirm that she’s been the one fronting.

So here I am, super excited to see Headmate Action. And not just any headmate action, but this incredible deep-cut continuity reference.

And then I turn the page.

And here’s how the system handles Knockoff Inquisitor:

Excuse me?

Jeanne-Marie stays sitting sitting meekly in a chair? While the other headmates gather around to defend her, and Aurora fights her battles for her?

This Jeanne-Marie?

This Jeanne-Marie?

This Jeanne-Marie??

Look, I get how it can be confusing. On a normal day, in a non-traumatic environment, she’s a soft-spoken, churchgoing, mild-mannered schoolteacher.

When she’s just trying to live her life, this is Jeanne-Marie:

But when she’s trapped? And scared? And doesn’t see any option but to defend herself?

This is also Jeanne-Marie:

Writers. Writers, what are you even doing??

Jeanne-Marie is not the weak one! Our girl doesn’t recklessly throw herself into combat situations the way Aurora does — fighting isn’t fun for her — but if you get her cornered, and there’s no way out except fighting back? She’ll do whatever she has to! She’ll shiv you with a piece of broken glass. She’ll shiv herself with a piece of broken glass!

Trapped and threatened Jeanne-Marie is terrifying. She scares Aurora. She should scare you.

If another psychic villain burst into their headspace like this, in the present day? Aurora would smirk and say “uh-oh, you’ve made her angry, you won’t like her when she’s angry.”

While Jeanne-Marie would grab the nearest possible weapon — Six’s gardening shears, Eight’s skateboard, Five’s toy plastic dinosaur — and lead the charge.

And they would all attack as a team.

Ugh.

This Marauders book is, as far as I can tell, still ongoing as of now (May 2023). If you’re reading this post from The Future, and there’s been more good Beaubier system content in the meantime? Drop a comment and tell us about it.

In the meantime…I’ve, ah, gotten myself annoyed enough to write a whole comicverse fix-it fic about that Marauders issue. Keep an eye on my works tagged with Jeanne-Marie, it’ll get posted there eventually.