bradley_catherine-facebradley_catherine-gunsCATHERINE BRADLEY

Real Name: Catherine Bradley, nee Price

Identity/Class: Human (late 19th century and early 20th century)

Occupation: Warrior, adventurer

Group Membership: None

Affiliations: X-Club (James Bradley/Doctor Nemesis, Madison Jeffries, Dr. Kavita Rao, Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi), X-Men (Hank McCoy/Beast, Warren Worthington/Angel, Betsy Braddock/Psylocke);
    Cornelius Shaw posed as an ally and financed her husband

Enemies: Hellfire Club-San Francisco chapter circa 1906 (Lord Molyneux, Salome, League of Sensitives/Seers), Sentinel of Hellfire Club-San Francisco circa 1906

Known Relatives: Nicola Bradley (husband, deceased), James Bradley (Doctor Nemesis, son);
    John Price (father, presumably deceased), Mary Price (mother, presumably deceased)

Aliases: Mrs. Nicola Bradley

Base of Operations: Unrevealed;
    formerly had a home in the Mission District, San Francisco, California;
    she was also sometimes active in her husband's office in Telegraph Hill, San Francisco

Education: Unrevealed

First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men#512 (August, 2009)bradley_catherine-face-guns

Powers/Abilities: Catherine Bradley was a skilled fighter and a master of the advanced technology they possessed.

    She was highly proficient in using a pair of energy pistols simultaneously and with great accuracy.

    She also operated an advanced viewing camera-like device from their house.

    She was brave, confident, and loving. She took on a sextet of rifle-bearing masked men armed only with a basin.

Height: Unrevealed (approximately 5'6")
Weight: Unrevealed (approximately 130 lbs.)
Eyes: Blue?
Hair: Blonde

History:
(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - Catherine lived with her husband, Nicola, an inventor far ahead of his time, in San Francisco's Mission District.

    Their home was filled with advanced gimmicks and pneumatic tubes.

    With Nicola constantly driven with his work, Catherine took care of him, mastering his advanced weaponry and other technology.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - Seeking a power source for their large, robotic Sentinel with which they intended to exterminate "overmen" (mutants), the Hellfire Club, under the direction of Lord Molyneux, targeted Dr. Bradley to produce that source. Working alongside his agent Salome, Cornelius Shaw met with and bankrolled Bradley, investing thousands of dollars and allowing untold hours in his efforts.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - Members of the X-Men (Hank McCoy/Beast, Warren Worthington/Angel, and Betsy Braddock/Psylocke), and X-Club (James Bradley/Dr. Nemesis, Madison Jeffries, Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi, and Dr. Kavita Rao), having traveled from over 100 years in the future in hopes of gaining blood samples from Nicola and Catherine Bradley as homo superior mutantkind had seemed to increase markedly in number around that point in time; they were specifically chosen as they were James Bradley's parents.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - Frustrated with Nicola's lack of results, Cornelius sent a quartet of Hellfire Club agents (who had been gathered by Salome) to ambush Nicola in his office in Telegraph Hill and steal the device.bradley_catherine-guns-close

(Uncanny X-Men#512) <1906> - As Nicola dozed off while working, the Hellfire Club agents prepared to ambush him, but Catherine suddenly nailed one of the men with an energy blaster before calling out to Nic that it was time to go. Taking out another of the men and then laying protective fire as Nicola fled with the generator, she cordially greeted Nic.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - Nicola and Catherine fled back to their home with the device and contacted Cornelius Shaw immediately. Not wanting any additional attention, they did not contact the authorities.

(Uncanny X-Men#512) <April 18, 1906> - The following morning, Cornelius and Salome met with Nicola and Catherine Bradley in their home, telling their seeming benefactors of their encounter. Cornelius asked about the device's location and then if Catherine was all right when she had to fight back a wave of nausea as she tried to answer. Recovering, Catherine assured Shaw that both she and the device were fine.

     As Cornelius had assured Nicola he could just collect himself and get his work done, Catherine detected, via their advanced viewer, parties approaching their home. Nicola wondered if it was more of the masked men they had faced at his office, but Catherine -- seeing the time-traveling X-Men and X-Club members in their true forms -- said she didn't know what she was seeing.

    As the time travelers approached the Bradley's front door, Psylocke mentally projected an image of the group as a group of normal people, after which Beast rang the doorbell. Catherine answered the door, but when Beast tried to tell her they were travelers from New York, she pulled both of her handguns and told them she didn't care why they came or where they were from, and she instructed them leave immediately and never come back. Acknowledging that his statement would make no sense to her, Beast told her that her apple would not fall from her tree (meaning James Bradley would be harsh to deal with, as well).

    After the travelers departed, Catherine shut the door and noted that the travelers were perhaps mormons, with a pair of Celestials (presumably referring to the Asian Takiguchi and Rao; see comments) with them.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 - BTS) - Left alone with his thoughts and without distractions at his home, Nicola experienced a vision that allowed him to complete his generator-battery, adding a ferrite rod to the line output transformers.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - Experienced further nausea and vomiting into a basin, Catherine suspected she was pregnant.bradley_catherine-pregnant

(Uncanny X-Men#512) - Nicola rushed in, beaming about his accomplishment before realizing she had been ill. Assuring Nicola she was fine, she told him she was proud of him, and then also revealed that she suspected that they had "invented a child."

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - Nicola arranged a meeting with Shaw at his office.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 - BTS) - Nicola met with Shaw at his office and revealed his working generator-battery, which Shaw then claimed for himself.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - Cornelius and Salome had Nicola and the device taken to the Hellfire Club facility.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 - BTS) - As Catherine was in the bathroom (presumably emptying her basin), a sextet of Hellfire Club agents invaded her bedroom, entering from its upstairs windows.basin

(Uncanny X-Men#512) - Emerging from the bathroom and seeing the agents armed with rifles, Catherine exclaimed "Merciful Mary" before smashing one of them in the head with basin and then running out the bedroom door.

    As she fled down the stairs, she was startled to see the winged Angel standing over at least a pair of Hellfire Club agents (with Rao and Takiguchi off to his side) on the first floor, and she lost her balance and tumbled the rest of the way down the stairs.

    When Angel identified her by name and told her they were there to help, she advised him of the six upstairs, with one already taken down. Flying upstairs to take care of the rest, Angel instructed Rao and Takiguchi to get Catherine to safety. As they assisted her out, Catherine asked them "Does that man have wings made of knives?" Takiguchi confirmed that he did, but that normally they were just wings.

    However, as Takiguchi and Rao exited her house and assured Catherine that their associate could take care of those men, Catherine noted that she didn't feel right, and then she fainted.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - They took Catherine back up to her bed, and they summoned James Bradley, who was a physician.

    James examined Catherine, confirming her pregnancy, as well as assessing her with placenta previa (where the placenta sits down on and closes off the opening to the cervix) and obtaining the desired blood sample.

(Uncanny X-Men#512) - Beast, Jeffries, and Psylocke arrived at the Hellfire Club base,and they rescued and escaped with Nicola. bradley_catherine-face-full-shadow

(Uncanny X-Men#512 - BTS) - The generator-battery was inserted into the Hellfire Club's Sentinel, activating it, and Cornelius, Salome, and some Hellfire Club agents rode in a railed off booth area in its upper chest.

(Uncanny X-Men#512) - As Catherine awakened and called out for Nicola, James assured her that she was OK, back in her home, that her attackers had been dealt with, and that she had fainted and was pregnant.

    As she began to get up, James informed her of her medical condition and the need for strict rest, as her life depended on it. When she asked about her baby, James assured her the heartbeat sounded strong, that her son was a fighter, and if she took care of herself, the boy would be fine. When Catherine questioned if it was now possible to determine sex from the sound of the heartbeat, James covered up, telling her it was rather the rate, but that he really just had a hunch.

    Catherine then shared her concern regarding her husband's driven work nature and that she did want to be alone when the baby came, and James assured her she would not be alone.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 - BTS) - Outside, James confirmed to his associates that he did get the blood, and he also told them that his mother had died in childbirth.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 - BTS) - As the Sentinel rampaged through the streets of San Francisco, the Angel and James joined the other X-Men in opposing it while Takiguchi and Rao stayed with Catherine.

    At Nicola's instruction, Madison Jeffries destroyed the generator by overloading it by hitting it square with as much electricity as possible. The Sentinel exploded, and Nicola was mortally wounded by debris.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - As the vibrations involved caused the house to shake and the room to start coming down around her, Catherine, Rao, and Takiguchi rushed outside.

(Uncanny X-Men#512) - As Nicola lied dying, Catherine called to him and rushed to his side. Noting that that had been no ordinary explosion and they should leave immediately, Catherine (see comments) said, "Not. yet."

    Nicola told Catherine he was so sorry, but Catherine told him his device had worked. As James Bradley took a blood sample from Nicola, Catherine asked what the Hell he was doing, and he apologized for the timing but explained that there was something significant about the two of them, and that they were why his group had come there. Nicola realized that the visitors were overmen and that he thought he understood; he asked James his name, and then told Catherine that James would be a fine name for a boy.

    Giving Catherine the special preservation tubes containing the blood (as the time warp devices were uniquely fixed on their unique biologies, and foreign genetic material would not have made the trip), James instructed her that she must bury the tubes in Golden Gate Park, as the future depended on it.

    Catherine watched as the X-Men and associates returned to their present.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - Catherine buried the preservation tubes in Central Park as instructed.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 - BTS) - Back in the X-Men's present, James noted that something about the generator-battery detonating and/or wherever he was drawing power from somehow affected the San Andreas Fault and triggered a massive earthquake...or it was all a coincidence.

    Tracking the tubes, the X-Men and X-Club members found them underneath the feat of the immense Dreaming Celestial that had located there. When Beast commented on the odds of her burying the tubes where the Celestial would appear, James Bradley instead speculated that the Celestial had chosen that location because the blood (which represented the past and future of mankind's evolution) being there.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - Catherine's parents came from Lemon Grove, California, to help her after Nicola's passing and to keep her off her feet the best they could.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - After locating the blood tubes, James returned to the past.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) <December 1, 1906> - When the time came, James arrived before the Catherine's parents could call for a doctor.

    For hours, James worked with Catherine. She was vocal (presumably screaming in pain), and then she died as her son was born.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - The young James was raised in his parents' house by his grandparents (presumably the Prices).

Comments: Created by Matt Fraction, Yanick Paquette, and Karl Story.

    The narration said that Catherine was "certainly her husband's better half."
    This was definitely a fun story, and Catherine Bradley was the most interesting character in it, to me.
    There is no explanation of why she was such a skilled warrior. Presumably she mastered technology created by her husband, but she was clearly an experienced and highly skilled warrior. It makes me wonder if there was a back story to why she was so cool/tough...
    Regardless, Catherine had a very "Confederates of the Curious" feel to her, which is no surprise given that Matt Fraction wrote the story.
    Speaking of which, I'd love to see Matt Fraction and/or Ed Brubaker do further Confederates of the Curious stories...after I finish out the Iron Fist: The Living Weapon series, I'll move back to the Immortal Iron Fist series and cover everything from that.

    The story noted the X-folk were traveling from 103 years in the future, but that is topical, as the story came out in 2009. They traveled to 1906, and the length of time they traveled slowly increases with the passage of time due to the sliding timescale. 

    Great story, but 1906 (and specifically James Bradley's parents) as the whole point of the "igniting" of homo superior (mutant kind) doesn't make sense to me in the context of the Marvel Universe.

    When Nicola was dying and the Beast advised their immediate departure, the speech balloon that said, "Not. yet." pointed to Catherine, but I think it would have more likely been from James Bradley, who was positioned right behind his mother.

    According to the interweb:

"The phrase 'celestial empire,' meaning more or less 'empire ruled in accord with Heaven,' goes back a long way in China," Chuimei wrote via e-mail.

But it wasn't until the early 19th century that English and French translations began to appear in foreign publications and Chinese diplomatic correspondence.

"The plural 'celestials,' referring to citizens of the celestial empire, seems to be American in origin," he continued. "It may have been introduced innocently by newspaper writers or editors who in those days felt that good writing meant a feverish search for synonyms."

"But the usage quickly became pejorative when readers interpreted it as meaning that Chinese, absurdly in view of their obviously inferior economic and legal status, considered themselves to be superior to ordinary humans," he continued. "Calling a mere laundryman 'celestial' was an irony that even the least educated anti-Chinese white hoodlum could understand. So it rapidly became an insult for some, while others, especially journalists, continued to use it with less prejudicial intent as a synonym for 'Chinese' or 'Chinaman.' "

Profile by Snood.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Nicola Bradley should be distinguished from:
bradley_catherine-parentsbradley_catherine-parents-distantJohn & Mary Price


(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - After Nicola's passing, Catherine's parents came from Lemon Grove, California, to help her and to keep her off her feet the best they could.

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) <December 1, 1906> - When the time came, James Bradley arrived before the Catherine's parents could call for a doctor.

For hours, they prayed and stayed out of James way. They heard their daughter (presumably screaming in pain), then they heard nothing, and then heard the cries of a newborn baby.

    James emerged with the infant, telling his parents "It's a boy."

(Uncanny X-Men#512 (fb) - BTS) - The young James was raised in his parents' house by his grandparents (presumably the Prices). They were always setting off...<see Notes>.

--Uncanny X-Men#512

Note: As the time-traveling X-folk approached his parents' house, James Bradley told his associates, "It's...full. Full of stuff. My grandparents are always setting off -- there are little gimmicks everywhere. And pneumatic tubes."

    When I first read it, I took "setting off" as a term Nemesis was using for traveling and that he meant his grandparents had brought it all in there, meaning they were adventurers as well.

    In re-reviewing it, I think Nemesis was just speaking in somewhat broken fashion, and that he was trying to say that his grandparents were just setting off the equipment (which were thus presumably all Nicola's inventions).

images: (without ads)
Uncanny X-Men#512, story pg. 5, panel 3 (mostly full, with guns);
          panel 5 (face, with gun);
       pg. 6, panel 4 (face);
       pg. 8, panel 1-2 (viewer);
       pg. 10, panel 1 (close-up, with guns);
       pg. 15, panel 5 (announcing pregnancy);
       pg. 19, panel 4 (smashing rifle-bearing Hellfire Club agent with basin);
       pg. 20, panel 2 (face, full, shadowed)
       pg. 38 (last story page), panel 2 (parents, distant);
          panel 3 (parents, close-up)

Appearances:
Uncanny X-Men#512 (August, 2009) - Matt Fraction (writer), Yanick Paquette (penciler), Karl Story (inker), Daniel Ketchum (assistant editor), Nick Lowe (editor)

First posted: 11/30/2019
Last updated: 11/30/2019

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

Non-Marvel Copyright info
All other characters mentioned or pictured are ™  and © 1941-2099 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. If you like this stuff, you should check out the real thing!
Please visit The Marvel Official Site at: http://www.marvel.com

Special Thanks to www.g-mart.com for hosting the Appendix, Master List, etc.!

Back to Characters