History: (Excalibur Annual#2/1 (fb) ) - As young children Jamie was left in charge of his younger siblings. Jamie resented this, and tormented them, trying to get them to play the "Civil War". Instead the twins ran away from him and hid, which only deepened Jamie's resentment.

(Excalibur Annual#2/1 - BTS) - Jamie was sent to boarding school, and thus grew up away from his siblings much of the time. This served to heighten his sense of exclusion from the twin's and their increasingly close rapport.

(Captain Britain Weekly#9 - BTS) - Dr.Synne begins a reign of terror in the area around Braddock Manor. Those who oppose him are soon hypnotised to become his slaves. Soon only Jamie Braddock, local lord of the manor, is left free of his influence.

(CB Weekly#8 - BTS) - Jamie was testing his Formula 1 racing car on the track behind Braddock Manor, running it flat out. The cockpit of the car was struck by a strange beam of light and the car suddenly went out of control. It span out, clipped some trees and exploded. Jamie was thrown clear, and his sister Betsy, who had witnessed the accident, managed to smother the flames on him before they could burn through his protective driving suit. Leaving Jamie in the care of the staff, Betsy raced to London to alert her twin brother Brian to the incident.

(CB Weekly#9) - Having witnessed Betsy's plane going down in the fields near the Manor, Jamie and Mick, one of the Manor's staff, rushed out to help. They found Brian and Betsy both alive and uninjured, though Brian appeared to be hallucinating (a result of a mental attack from Dr.Synne). Jamie snapped his brother out of the trance, and then transported his two siblings back to the Manor. There he explained about the Doctor's growing tyranny, and that the car crash was a declaration of war between him and Synne. However as he said this to Brian, he failed to notice that Betsy, under the influence of the evil mind-controller, had taken a battle-axe off a wall display. At the last second he spotted her and cried out a warning. As she swung the axe at Brian's head, Jamie lunged forward, trying to stop her before the axe-blow landed.

(CB Weekly#10) - Betsy swung round at Jamie, and the axe crashed into the table next to him, as he narrowly dodged aside. The two brothers continued to duck and dive, as their possessed sister turned furniture into kindling around them. She narrowly missed Jamie, whose burned leg was slowing him down, so Brian tried to draw her attention, only to receive a glancing blow on the arm. With him down, Betsy returned her attention to Jamie, who snagged his leg on a chair and fell helpless in front of her. Deaf to Jamie's cries for mercy, the axe came down to sever his head from his shoulders, only to be blocked at the last instance by Captain Britain's staff: Brian had decided to sacrifice his secret identity to save his brother's life, and transformed into his costumed alter-ego. The astonished Jamie, in shock from his close encounter with death, watched in stunned silence as the axe shattered against the staff, and his sister then tackled the masked hero, taking them both through a window and into the grounds outside.

Recovering his wits, Jamie followed them into the snow, where he found his brother had finally subdued Betsy. Captain Britain asked Jamie to watch over her, while he searched for the real villain of the piece: Dr.Synne. Finding tracks, but no sign of the man himself, the hero returned, and the two brothers took their sister to Morder Research Centre, the nearest clinic in the area. While Betsy was checked over, Jamie discussed his brother's new role with him, and promised to keep his secret. Then they spoke to Dr.Ramsey, who had examined Betsy. He advised them to go home and get some sleep, leaving Betsy behind for further tests and some rest in the clinic's care.

(CB Weekly#11 (fb) ) - Jamie continued to try and talk with his brother about his new identity as Britain's premiere hero. Brian, needing a break from this, decided to go out for a drive and clear his head.

(CB Weekly#12) - Jamie returned to Morder to see how Betsy was progressing, but was told by Dr.Ramsey that it was hopeless - she was not expected to regain consciousness. Even as the physician said this, Betsy awoke, and Jamie rushed to her side, proclaiming her recovery a miracle (in fact, miles away, Captain Britain's fight with Dr.Synne had caused the villain to lose his control over her).

(CB Weekly#15 - BTS) - Freed from Synne's control, Dr.Ramsey reverted to his true loyalty - as an agent of the Red Skull. He took Jamie and Betsy hostage to prevent Captain Britain trying to challenge his master's plans.

(CB Weekly#15) - Having broken into Braddock Manor, the Red Skull watched on a monitor as Dr.Ramsey, gun in hand, guarded the two hostages, Jamie and Betsy, tied back to back in a pair of chairs, prisoners in Morder.

(CB Weekly#17 and CB Weekly#18) Captain Britain and Captain America discovered the Skull hidden in Braddock Manor, but when they tried to subdue him, he drew their attention to a viewscreen which displayed his two hostages. With Dr.Ramsey holding a gun on them, the two captives pleaded for their brother to save them.

(CB Weekly#20) - The two Captains located the hostages at the hospital, where they were being guarded by Ramsey and two of the Skull's neo-Nazis. With both of the Braddock's still tied to a chair in the middle of the room, the heroes came to their rescue from different directions. In his civilian identity, Brian Braddock cam to the door, then Captain America smashed in through the window. Having subdued the guards in seconds, Jamie and Betsy were then untied. Jamie, having heard on the television that the heroes had died in the bombing of Braddock Manor, then demanded to know if his rescuer was really his brother, or someone else in the costume.

(CB Weekly#21) - Captain America asked Jamie to tell him how he and his fellow hero were reported to have died, but Jamie refused to do so until he was reassured that the two weren't impostors. To convince him, Captain Britain transformed back into his non-heroic identity. Brian ordered Jamie to take Betsy home, while the two heroes depart to deal with the Skull. 

(CB Weekly#31) - Jamie and Betsy watched the battle between their brother and Lord Hawk on television, sitting in Jamie's London flat. Betsy was worried at first that Brian might have been killed, though the News eventually revealed this was not the case. However Jamie decided that he should lend his younger brother a hand. He went over the Brian's student accommodation, and hammered on the door, demanding to be let in. Brian felt that Jamie would only get hurt trying to help, and so turned into Captain Britain, then knocked Jamie out as he opened the door. He dragged his unconscious sibling into the flat, and tied Jamie securely to a chair.

Jamie awakened to find himself restrained, and his brother, still in his Captain Britain form, asleep with his head atop a pile of blueprints. The elder Braddock demanded (not unreasonably) to know why he had been tied up. When Brian told him it had been to prevent him trying to tackle Lord Hawk, Jamie informed him that he had only wanted to help, "but my enthusiasm has waned", then demanded to be released. Before Brian could respond, they heard a loud explosion outside. Fearing it was Lord Hawk attacking Captain Britain made to leave. When Jamie asked to be untied first, he was told that there was no time. Then the hero leapt from the window.

(CB Weekly#34 (fb) ) - Jamie worked his way free of the ropes holding him, and returned to his flat, where Betsy was waiting. In spite of their hopes, the News carried no information as to the fate of their brother.

(CB Weekly#34) - Jamie rushed to his sister's side after she awoke screaming Brian's name. As she told him of a dream where she had seen Brian bleeding and near death, Jamie thought of the last time he had seen his brother, and though he far from certain of it himself, he tried to reassure her that Brian was alright.

(CB Weekly#39) - Some weeks later, Brian and Betsy were around at Jamie's flat in Chelsea. They discussed a newspaper article which detailed Captain Britain's attack on the Queen, and Brian stated that he had done so under the influence of hypnosis.

(Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain Weekly#243) - Looking for background information on one of Slaymaster's victims, Brian visited his brother Jamie, who had once worked for one of them, Lord Quayne. Jamie was working on his car at a race track, just prior to racing in a major event. He informed Brian that Quayne was into collecting thoroughbred horses as well as motor car racing. Seeing a pattern in Slaymaster's victims, Brian then asked him who he thought was the U.K.'s most famous collector,  and Jamie stated that one of them would be Major Jock Gunn. Gunn, a collector of race cars, was due to start the race that Jamie was to take part in later that day.

(SSM&CB Weekly#243 - BTS) - Jamie was in his car and ready to race when Captain Britain tried to stop Slaymaster from killing Major Gunn as the retired military man fired the starter's pistol.

(SSM&CB Weekly#244 - BTS) - Jamie was probably in the crowd of people who rushed to help Captain Britain after the hero was caught in an explosion at the starter's line.

(Excalibur Annual#2/1 (fb) ) - Jamie became addicted to the good life his career brought him. Paid to lose a race, he double-crossed the local Maggia who had wanted him to do so, and received a beating for his troubles. He gambled heavily in an attempt to repay this debt, only to drive himself further into the hole. This cycle continued, and each loss drove him further down a slippery slope, as he took illegal but highly paid jobs to make the money he needed. Each job was more immoral than the last, and soon he was trading in human lives. 

(CB Monthly#10/Excalibur I#15 (fb) ) - Jamie became involved in a variety of lucrative criminal activities in Africa, among them robbing and murdering aid convoys to sell their famine relief; and the kidnapping and selling into slavery of both white aid workers and African natives.

(CB Monthly#9, bts) Jamie took part in the Trans-African Rally. In Mbangawi he was detained by Dr.Crocodile, who had come to learn of his despicable criminal activities.

(CB Monthly#9) - Jamie, tied up again and threatened with torture, was forced to call his brother in England. As he watched the Witch-Woman heat up some barbed prongs in a fire Jamie passed on an ultimatum from his captors: Brian had to come to Mbangawi by Wednesday or they would do something "savage and unpleasant" to him.

(CB Monthly#10) - Jamie was with Dr.Crocodile when Captain Britain and Meggan broke into Mbangawian ruler's compound, and watched as his captor spoke to the intruders over a phone. Captain Britain was exposed to a gas that caused him to have visions of Jamie's crimes, and came to holding Jamie by the throat. Realising what his brother had been doing, Captain Britain lost his temper. When Jamie tried to plead for Captain Britain to rescue him from his captors, the hero began striking him, and informed Jamie that he was going to kill him. Dr.Crocodile stopped Britain, and assured him that local justice would take it's course. Captain Britain and Meggan departed, leaving Jamie to Dr.Crocodile's tender mercies.

(Excalibur I#15 - BTS/ Excalibur Annual#2 (fb) ) - Dr.Crocodile oversaw Jamie's punishment, using African mystical rituals undertaken by his Witch Woman. Jamie, in agony, blamed his siblings for abandoning him. Eventually he was driven mad by the Witch Woman's torture, and came to believe that he was dreaming the world. The same process also unlocked his mutant powers of reality manipulation, although like his body, these remained bound by the Witch Woman's enchantments.

(Excalibur I#15) - Gatecrasher and her Technet were hired by Nigel Frobisher to rescue Jamie. They travelled to Mbangawi, and penetrated Dr.Crocodile's compound, where Gatecrasher found Jamie being tortured by the African ruler and his Witch Woman. Gatecrasher was exposed to the gas which, like Captain Britain before her, gave her visions of Jamie's crimes. Like the hero before her, she decided Jamie did not deserve rescuing. However her associate Yap, sensing the power and evil in Jamie, panicked and teleported them all, Jamie and Dr.Crocodile included, back to the Technet's base in Brighton.

Freed from his restraints, Jamie began to wander. Bodybag of the Technet tried to swallow him, but Jamie, now seeing the world as a network of threads, tugged on some of them, and virtually pulled the alien inside out. Thug and Ferro² fare no better, and when Fascination tried to overload his mind, her power backfired. She was stunned, and Jamie was partially returned to sanity. He finished off the rest of the Technet in seconds, then transformed Dr.Crocodile into a tiny version of his namesake.

Having returned the Technet to normal (but not Dr.Crocodile) and wiped their memories of the encounter, Jamie was trying to decide what to do next, when Nigel Frobisher approached him and recruited him into the service of Sat-Yr9.

(Excalibur I#27 - BTS) - Jamie moved into the Braddock's London townhouse. Missing the familiar things, he recreated Emma Collins, the long-dead housekeeper of the Braddock family.

(Excalibur I#18 - BTS, #19) - Since his brother was at this point travelling through various alternate dimensions, Jamie located the one Brian was on, and made contact with one of his own counterparts. Through this alternate Jamie, he attacked Excalibur. Shadowcat was returned to Earth-616 during the conflict, and witnessed her own reality's Jamie playing with figurines of Excalibur. When Jamie's back blistered and burned after one of the figurine's appeared to flash with light, Shadowcat realised there was a connection between the activities in both realities. Unsure of how else she could stop him, Shadowcat tried ordering the child-like Braddock around as if he was a misbehaving toddler...and bizarrely it worked. He put down his toys and went to bed...and in the other reality, the other Jamie faded away into nothingness.

(Excalibur I#21) - Nigel Frobisher arranged a meeting with British crimelord, the Vixen. When she arrived along with several of her men, she was met by Nigel and Jamie. Unimpressed by Nigel's statements about taking over, she ordered her men to fire at him, but Jamie turned Frobisher into a giant puffball so that the bullets passed through him harmlessly. Then Jamie froze Vixen's men into place, and transformed Vixen into a small white fox. Petting the animal, he was berated by his associate, who pointed out that they needed Vixen alive and human to take over her organisation. Jamie's response was to change Nigel into a duplicate of the crimelord. As they drove off with Vixen's men, Nigel complained about his new female form. Jamie, stroking his new pet, pointed out that there were worse fates.

(Excalibur I#27) - Jamie sat in the Braddock townhouse with the vulpine version of Vixen next to him, still believing that the world around him and everything in it was a dream for him to play with. Emma Collins brought him some tea, but when Nigel Frobisher arrived and was rude to Emma, Jamie once more turned him into a copy of the Vixen. When Nigel expressed concern about Excalibur being back from their dimensional travels, Jamie transformed the television into a portal through which they could monitor the team of heroes. Excalibur were in the middle of a case involving another incredibly powerful reality warper, Alfie O'Meagan, a resident of another reality. In the middle of this conflict, Nightcrawler witnessed Jamie watching and waving at them, manifested on a giant television next to Alfie. Alfie demanded to know who Jamie was, certain that he wasn't one of Alfie's manifestations, and was incensed at the suggestion that their was another being like him somewhere in the multiverse.

Jamie watched as Phoenix battled Alfie, and Nightcrawler then tried to talk to Jamie. He begged Jamie to end the battle if he could, but Jamie instead reached through the screen, and tried to kill Nightcrawler. His questing hands accidentally touched the television's remote control, and hit the rewind button. Instantly the hands vanished. Figuring the remote was the key to the situation, Nightcrawler tried using it to channel hop, and spotted Jamie and Vixen (actually Nigel) watching events back on Earth-616.

After the situation resolved itself, Jamie was left looking at a copy of the Nth Man Comic, the cover of which showed Alfie battling Phoenix. Jamie decided that he couldn't play with other realities, and would have to make do with his own in future. He put his comic down: this time the cover showed it to be an issue of Excalibur with the team as marionettes on strings manipulated by the puppet-master Jamie.

(Excalibur I#55) - While Excalibur and their friends were holding a party in Braddock Manor, Jamie approached the building through the grounds. He encountered Feron, one of the team's newer members, and rendered him unconscious. Then he broke in through an upper floor window, into the room where Brigadier Alysande Stuart of WHO was getting ready for the shindig. She kicked the intruder in his face. Angered at being hurt, Jamie responded by breaking every bone in her body, killing her. Excalibur arrived seconds later, alerted to Alysande's distress by their telepathic associates. Psylocke detected danger back downstairs, and most of the team raced back down, leaving Cerise, Shadowcat and Alistair Stuart behind. Jamie stepped out from the window where he had been hiding, and swiftly took out Cerise and Alistair. He grabbed Shadowcat with his powers too, but she managed to phase loose, and vanish through the floor. On the floor below most of the members of Excalibur were ambushed and shot by masked gunmen. Psylocke, attempting to avenge Meggan, was stopped in mid-air by Jamie as she leapt at Meggan's attacker. A few seconds later Captain Britain, the only member of the team still standing, was confronted by Sat-Yr-9 and Jamie.

(Excalibur I#56) - Jamie tortured and warped most of Excalibur for more than sixteen hours. Psylocke, his sister, telepathically compared notes with Brian, but Jamie violently intruded into their conference, and painfully yanked Betsy back into her twisted body. A little later some of Vixen's men glance into the room, and are disquieted by the grotesques within. Moments after this, Shadowcat, the only member of Excalibur still free, turned up and knocked them out, then put a gun to Jamie's head and demanded he return her friends to normal. Jamie awakened and yanked her strings, leaving Shadowcat on the floor in agony. Meggan begged for him to stop, and Jamie rounded on her angrily, telling her that no figment of his imagination was allowed to interrupt him. Meggan told him that what he was experiencing wasn't a dream, but he refused to believe her, citing his ability to alter reality as proof of his viewpoint. He tugged at the strings that Meggan was composed of, only to have her transform back into her humanoid form. With the drugs from the gunmen's bullets that she had been exposed to having worn off, her shapeshifting powers allowed her to resist Jamie. She began to beat him up so that he would transform her friends back to normal, and with each blow she struck, this began to happen. Sat-Yr-9 and her troops arrived, but too late to stop Excalibur from recovering, and battle was joined. During the fight Jamie grabbed Meggan from behind and attempted to stab her with a banana. Before he could strike, his sister Psylocke grabbed his arm, and struck him with her own psychic knife. His mind overloaded, Jamie released an explosion of energy which stunned most of the people in the room. Jamie collapsed unconscious, and with Sat-Yr-9 out too, her troops fled, taking both Jamie and Sat-Yr-9 with them.

BTS - At some point Jamie, still in a coma from when Psylocke hit him with her psychic knife, is recovered from Sat-Yr-9's possession and taken to Moira McTaggert on Muir Island for treatment.

(Excalibur Annual#2/1 (fb) ) - Psylocke felt a psychic blast which she originally took to be from Brian, but now believed came from Jamie, an indication he was about to emerge from the coma she had put him in. She travelled to Muir Island to check on him and warn her twin.

(Excalibur Annual#2/1) - Brian Braddock, now known as Britannic, dreamed of fighting a war in the future, and of Jamie coming to his rescue. He shared this dream with his sister, as well as his belief that this was a vision of the future, subconsciously witnessed during a period when he had been adrift in the timestream. Brian felt that they must help Jamie by reaching the core of goodness Brian believed was still within him, but Betsy, who had merged minds with her brother when she stabbed him, was not so sure that he could be trusted, and wondered if Jamie was manipulating their minds. The twins decide to try using Betsy's telepathic powers to enter Jamie's mind and seek out the childhood experiences Moira McTaggert felt might be the underlying cause of his resentment of them.

On the psychic plane they travelled back to a time when Jamie tried to force his younger brother and sister to play his choice of games, and they ran away and hid from him. The adult Jamie interrupted the memory at this point, and fought a mental duel with Jamie. However Betsy had grown much stronger over the years, and started to win. There was a brief flash of a saner Jamie hidden beneath the resentment, although that might have been feigned to get Psylocke off her guard, as Jamie sucker punched her, and fled into Brian's mindscape.

Brian's mental form was searching for Jamie, when his brother arrived, looking like the suave playboy he had been before his torture at Dr.Crocodile's hands. Jamie had decided that things had been better back then, and his mind reflected this by altering his appearance. Confronted by his superhero brother, Jamie insists that Brian had always wanted him dead so that the younger brother could take his place. Brian denied this, stating that Jamie's madness stemmed from his inability to accept his own guilt over what he had done. But Jamie responded that this was a lie, and that Brian stole his heritage, his right to be Captain Britain. They came to blows, and Jamie hit Brian with a blast of energy.

Things shifted, and now in their childhood forms again, the three siblings relived a memory that never was. This time, when the twins hid from Jamie, he found their hiding place, only to be invited to join them there, an action which allowed the three to bond for a lifetime. In the real world Jamie lashed out at this false memory, one that Psylocke had manufactured. Brian, angered that all Jamie seemed to understand was violence, slammed Jamie up against the wall, and their eyes locked. For a second they saw eye to eye, then Jamie went comatose again.

A medical check by Moira McTaggert showed that Jamie was still in his coma, but did register an increase in brain activity. Brian and Betsy reaffirmed to each other their determination to help their brother find himself again, and then Betsy left to return to America and the X-Men. And somewhere in Jamie's mind, he played with his siblings in a secret hiding place he shared with his siblings.

Comments: Created by Chris Claremont, Herb Trimpe and Fred Kida.

As the eldest child, Jamie should have inherited his father's peership, and become Lord Braddock, complete with the right to sit in the House of Lords, one section of the British Parliament. However, hereditary lordships were abolished in the 1990's by the current British government, and with Marvel's sliding timescale in operation, in a few year's time, the Braddock parents will no longer have died before this change in the law.

Paul O'Brien wrote in with a correction to my statement above "Not quite. During the 1990s, the law was changed to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords (save for a few who remained for a transitional period). Nonetheless, the titles remain in existence and will continue to be inherited down the existing line.

However, this all assumes that "Lord Braddock" was a hereditary title in the first place. Most peerages created in recent years were life peerages (ie, they don't transmit to the next generation, but simply cease to exist when the holder dies). The point of life peerages is to give the holder a seat in the House of Lords. One of the oddities of the UK political system is that life peerages were (and are) regularly given out to people who have no party political affiliation whatsoever. The House of Lords contains a significant number of non-aligned peers, who simply vote according to their personal conscience.

It is extremely unlikely that Captain Britain's father was a hereditary peer. He could only have become a hereditary peer in two ways. First, he could have inherited the title down the male line. Tricky, since he was supposedly a soldier from Avalon sent here to father Captain Britain - so there shouldn't be a male line to inherit from. Second, he could have been given the peerage - ie, he could be the first Lord Braddock. Even that is extremely unlikely - aside from a few party political cronies who were given hereditary peerages by Margaret Thatcher, they've gone completely out of fashion as an honour.

It is much more likely that Brian and Jamie's father was a life peer, if he had a seat in the House of Lords at all. In that case, the question of inheritance doesn't apply."

While I bow to Paul's more detailed knowledge of the peerage, I have to disagree about the James Sr's title being a life peerage. According to Captain Britain Weekly#9, Braddock Manor "was built a quarter millennium ago", "on land that's been part of the Braddock heritage since before the Romans came." The odds are that any family which has owned an estate that far back, and who circa 1725 had enough money to build a house the size of Braddock Manor, is part of the nobility. The Braddock family clearly goes way back before the arrival of James Sr. from Otherworld - he appears to have attached himself to an existing family, perhaps even replaced his counterpart, the James Braddock of Earth-616. As such I still believe his title would thus have been hereditary, which means it would now have passed on to Jamie.

Its not stated how Jamie and Mick came to rescue Brian and Betsy from their downed aircraft in CB Weekly#9. Since Jamie was injured at the time, its unlikely he was out in the snowy fields by chance. It's most likely that he witnessed the plane go down from the Manor, and set off at that point, and I've written the History above to reflect this ASSumption. I also presume that Mick must have been the only staff member around when the crash happened, because I'd think that if you spotted a plane crash, you'd bring every available hand, since you wouldn't necessarily know how many injured people you might find at the wreck.

When Captain Britain confronts Mastermind in CB Weekly#14, and the computer's hologram reveals it knows his real identity, we briefly see Jamie for a single panel as part of Brian's recollections that his brother is the only person who should know his real identity. However this is his only appearance in the issue, and is so slight I don't think it even counts as a flashback.

Due to a misprinting which caused the pages of the CB strip in CB Weeklies#17 and#18 to be mixed up, the scene of the Red Skull showing Captain Britain his two siblings being held hostage actually first appeared in CB Weekly#17. A week later they printed the corrected strip, as well as the new installment, putting things into the right order. That's why in the history above, I've noted both issues as the place it appears - but it belongs in the latter of the two.

In CB Weekly#20, Jamie demands to know if it is really his brother in the Captain Britain costume. This allows a dramatic close to the episode, but is a pretty dumb question, considering that it was an uncostumed Brian who had come to the door of the room they were being held captive in. Mind you, it was a stressful situation, so he might be forgiven this lapse. Less forgivable is blabbing his brother's secret identity in front of some of the Skull's men (as#21 shows, they aren't all unconscious at the point he does this). Lucky for him the Skull hires such stupid henchmen. They kept Jamie and Betsy in a ground floor room, which appears to have had multiple windows (the angle of the window Captain America comes through relative to Jamie means it isn't the same window the two Captain's spied through earlier). The hostages are visibly tied up, and all the curtains are left open so that anyone outside could see them, being held captive by guards in full paramilitary uniform (complete with large red Swastika's on the their chests). There also weren't any guards outside the door of the room, or the grounds near the windows. If Captain Britain is lucky, none of these goons will be smart enough to recall his true identity. No thanks to Jamie though.

As I re-read the early stories with Jamie in them, it struck me that I have a lot of sympathy for him eventually coming to hate his brother. He spends a lot of time tied up or otherwise restrained, usually because of his brother, and on a couple of occasions, by his brother. Long before Jamie got into criminal activities, Brian's response to an offer of help wasn't to talk to Jamie, but to smash him across the face hard enough to inflict unconsciousness (ask any medical person the kind of damage that can inflict), then tie the poor sod to a chair! All for popping round and offering to lend a hand!

Jamie isn't seen in Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain Weekly #244, but since he would have been present in his race car at the end of the previous episode, ready to start the race, and since his brother Brian was caught in an explosion next to the starter's line, so that a number of people rushed to Brian's side to help him at the start of the next issue, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume Jamie would have been somewhere in that crowd.

Excalibur I#18 and#19 don't make it clear whether the Jamie in the other dimension is real or not. The world he lives in is certainly an idealised version of what Jamie would consider a paradise - one where racing drivers are revered as the top celebrities of the planet. Until the second installment we are led to believe this is just another alternate reality, but then we learn that Earth-616's Jamie is in some way manipulating what is happening. When the mainstream Jamie goes to sleep, not only does his counterpart vanish, but so too do the Dirty Angels and the city around them. This certainly seems to imply that mainstream Jamie created all of them, though it is also plausible that he simply empowered his counterpart, and that when the power was withdrawn, all the damage Meggan inflicted (enough to vaporise him and more) came home to roost.

Likewise Excalibur I#27 is very weird reading. It isn't entirely certain whether Excalibur accessed another reality where the Nth Man, Alfie O'Meagan, etc are all real, or if it was all a creation of Jamie's warped mind. I'd go for the former, but it's by a narrow margin. If Alfie is real, there is the slight suggestion that he might be that reality's version of Jamie (or perhaps Sir James Jaspers?).

Speaking of Mad Jim Jaspers, is it pure coincidence that Jamie's powers resemble a weaker version of his in a large number of ways? In Excalibur Annual#2, Jamie insists he should have been Captain Britain, being the eldest. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps when Merlyn arranged for the elder Sir James Braddock to go to Earth-616, it was an off-spring with Jamie's powers he was seeking to create as a way of battling this impending foe. That would seem to make more sense to me. I certainly don't see him wanting a power like Jamie's to be left loose and doing as it willed - after all the measures he took to eliminate Jaspers, that seems unlikely.

If Brian's dreams in Excalibur Annual#2 is a genuine vision of the future, we can add the following to Jamie's history:

(Excalibur Annual#2/1, bts) Jamie, his sanity restored, reformed and became a hero.

(Excalibur Annual#2/1, ff) Jamie fought alongside his brother Brian against the Aryanites and their leaders, the Chaos Commanders, to save Britain from their evil.   

Profile by Loki

CLARIFICATIONS: Jamie Braddock should not be confused with

• his  counterpart, who may or may not have been a creation of his, @Excalibur I#18
• Brian Braddock, his brother, better known as Captain Britain, @Captain Britain I#1
• Betsy Braddock, his sister, better known as Psylocke, @ Captain Britain I#8
• Elizabeth Braddock, his mother, @ Captain Britain I #14
• Sir James Braddock, his father, @ Captain Britain I #14

He also has no known connection to, and should not be confused with

• Joe Braddock, father of Lucy, @Wolverine III#3
• Lucy Braddock, victim of the Brothers, @Wolverine III #1
• anyone else called James, Jamie or Braddock

Jamie's counterpart

(Excalibur I#18) During the "Cross-Time Caper" Excalibur's transportation, a flying train, materialised on a world very similar to Earth-616, except that racing cars was this reality's greatest obsession. They narrowly missing racing driver Jamie Braddock's car when they first appeared, and Meggan was thrown from the train to land in Jamie's passenger seat. None of this strangeness seemed to perturb Jamie. Shadowcat did some quick research which established that Jamie was this world's top driver, and that his rivals had started dying under mysterious circumstances. Captain Britain pursued Jamie and Meggan, but as he caught up with Jamie's car, Jamie turned and stripped the hero of his powers. Jamie then took Meggan to a hotel called the Pitte Stoppe, where he let slip that he had killed his rivals, including his own brother. He treated Meggan to dinner, but became aware that her energy matrix was mixed with another's (Phoenix), and grabbed hold of the second one. Miles away Phoenix saw Jamie reach through a nearby mirror and start to pull her through. His attack was interrupted by the arrival of local law enforcers The Dirty Angels. He drove them off just as Shadowcat, Widget, Lockheed and Captain Britain caught up with him. Jamie set a transformed Meggan on his brother, while he attacked Shadowcat. Though they put up a good fight, the heroes were no match for Jamie's powers - Shadowcat fled, Jamie collected the unconscious forms of Widget and Lockheed, and then he walked off, leaving Captain Britain and Meggan buried under rubble.

(Excalibur I#19) Carrying his captives around with him like trophies Jamie was hunting Shadowcat when Captain Britain grabbed him from behind. At first the hero appeared to have the upper hand, but then Jamie flicked one finger, and sent his brother flying. Jamie modified Lockheed to make him switch loyalties, and then proceeded to torture Captain Britain. Widget meanwhile located Shadowcat nearby. She called to Jamie to stop hurting his brother, but the new Lockheed tried to fry her. In order to survive she ducked through a cross-time gate that Widget had created. 

When Meggan recovered and came after Jamie, she discovered he had turned Brian into a car. Still linked to Phoenix, Meggan manifested the forms and powers of different X-Men in order to stop him, an effort which garnered applause from the watching Jamie. In Dazzler's form, Meggan tried to hit Jamie with a laser, but he eliminated all the sound in the area, removing her power source. Shadowcat, who had returned to Earth-616 through the gate and arrived at the Braddock's London home, heard the sound of Dazzler's laser. Back in the other reality, Meggan switched to the form of Havok, whose energy blast didn't require sound, and blew a hole clean through Jamie. Shadowcat meanwhile discovered a room where she witnessed Earth-616's Jamie directing his counterpart's attacks on Excalibur through tiny figurines, and realised there was a connection when the Havok figure, dressed in Meggan's costume, lit up, immediately followed by the Earth-616 Jamie's back burning.

Meggan's battle continued, in spite of the injuries she had inflicted on Jamie, and she switched to first Storm, to blast her opponent with lightning, then Colossus, to pound on him. Finally she turned into Rogue, to drain his powers, only to discover that he began to drain hers, and Phoenix too, through the link they shared. His victory was interrupted by the timely intervention of Alistair Stuart, the Dirty Angels and Nightcrawler, who shot him then ran him over with the Cross-Time Train. Even this didn't stop him, and Jamie emerged unperturbed from the rubble. Before he could re-start the battle, Shadowcat got the Earth-616 Jamie to stop playing and go to bed (see above), and as that Jamie fell asleep, the one fighting Excalibur, as well as much of his reality, vanished into nothingness.

- Excalibur I#18,  (19