Real Name: Eugene Milton Judd

Identity/Class: Human mutate

Occupation: Adventurer, former bouncer, government operative, construction worker, soldier of fortune, thief, bodyguard

Affiliations: Alpha Flight; formerly Beta Flight, Outcasts

Enemies: Omega Flight, Razaar

Known Relatives: Zuzha Yu (daughter, Puck, apparently deceased), Louis Sadler Jr (Major Mapleleaf, son-in-law, deceased), unidentified grandson

Aliases: Belmont

Base of Operations: Canada

First Appearance: Alpha Flight #1 (Marvel Comics, 1983)

Powers/Abilities: Puck's tissues have been compressed, leaving his body with the consistency of condensed rubber. He possesses superhuman strength (able to lift roughly 10 tons under optimal conditions), speed, durability and stamina. He is a skilled acrobat, often combining gymnastic moves such as cartwheels with his extensive martial arts knowledge to devastating effect. He is also a world class climber, skilled picklock, expert bullfighter, and is stealthy enough to sneak up on Wolverine's enhanced senses. His dense form and shortened limbs make swimming difficult. He speaks 17 languages fluently, including English, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and Tibetan, but not Sarcee. He has trained in meditation and yoga, using these to control pain and his body's autonomic functions, including breathing and temperature, enabling him to briefly survive in freezing Arctic water or feign death. He also has a limited knowledge of magic. He has a small implant in his mastoid sinus behind one ear, allowing Alpha Flight to signal him when he is needed. His right ear is misshapen due to an old boxing injury.

History: Born in 1914, Eugene Milton Judd's life has been shaped by the desire for adventure and the thirst for knowledge. He became an adventurer and soldier of fortune, traveling the world and occasionally skirting supernatural paths. In 1937 during the Spanish Civil War he befriended the partisan Inez and American writer Ernest Hemingway shortly before the Guernica massacre. Later allied with Captain Terror, Judd fought alongside the Republicans, even storming General Franco's stronghold in 1939. Barely escaping alive, Judd moved on. He was hired by crooked antiquities dealers to steal the Black Blade of Baghdad, though curiosity over claims it was supernatural motivated him more than the cash on offer. However when he touched the blade, he released the ancient sorcerer Black Razer, whose spirit had been trapped within centuries before by Persian mystics. Razer cut Judd with the blade, stealing some of his lifeforce and shrinking him six inches. Realizing that Razer had to be contained, Judd snatched the Black Blade and skewered himself, trapping it and Razer within his own body, but also causing Judd to shrink to around half his original size. Wracked with pain by Razer's attempts to break free, Judd had to relearn physical skills and augment his mental ones. Monks taught him to control the pain using meditation, and showed him how to use his new body's full fighting potential; the Hindi Dr. Srivinda tutored him in Tantric yoga; and he relearned bullfighting, though it took his friend Hemingway to convince the teacher to train him.

Judd also found his aging dramatically slowed. Only fragments of his activities over intervening years have come to light, and the exact order they happened to Judd is unclear. He climbed the Matterhorn, played chicken with the Orient Express in Afghanistan and traveled the globe, seeing parts of the world few others dreamed existed; though he crossed dark pathways more than once, after his experiences with Razer he never felt the urge to travel down them again, leaving that for those adept in the mystic arts. Nevertheless at some point he visited otherdimensional Crystalium, where he encountered Chaos creatures and befriended the realm's king. Judd became a soldier of fortune, thief, bodyguard and intelligence operative. He befriended Canadian superhero Major Mapleleaf (Louis Sadler), came close to encountering the adventurer Logan (later Wolverine) in Maracaibo, Venezuela on different sides of an unspecified conflict, and in 1967 opposed the Black Widow during a conflict in the Tonkin Gulf. Roughly twenty years ago he fathered a daughter, Zuzha Yu, but was forced to abandon her while she was still an infant. He had picked up the codename Puck, after the Shakespearean character, by the time he joined the mercenary Outcasts, who believed they lived outside society's rules and constraints, and he trained at least one of them, Cleft, to harness his full potential. Despite enjoying the camaraderie, Judd always felt he was abusing the techniques the monks had taught him, so eventually he quit. It was possibly around this time that he first met fellow mercenary Domino, who became a drinking buddy, and encountered the Chess Set, led by the teleporting Brass Bishop. A little over a decade ago Judd was living in Orloo, Eastern Ontario, working construction and staying at the Hull House orphanage, when an accident monstrously mutated the Canadian hero Chinook; Judd helped government agents Weapon X (Logan) and Weapon Alpha (James MacDonald "Mac" Hudson) defeat Chinook, then left without introducing himself to them.

A few years later Judd had fallen into a cycle of barroom brawls followed by jail. While incarcerated he was found by Heather Hudson, wife of Mac; knowing her husband was recruiting operatives for Canada's Department H, she arranged for his release. Though he had the requisite skills to join the Department's active team, Alpha Flight, his dubious past saw Judd paroled to the training team, Beta Flight. Judd promised Mac his killing days were over, and worked hard to prove himself, only to see Department H disbanded just before he was upgraded. Unemployed again, Judd became the bouncer for Corky's Bar in Toronto. Alpha Flight was soon called together again by Heather, to assist Mac (now Guardian) fighting Tundra. Judd tried in vain to reach the battlefield, and eventually caught up with the team at Mac's Ottawa home just after they had decided to stay together; having been contemplating a new title, at Judd's insistence they retained the name Alpha Flight.

When Judd's teammate Marrina's savage side was unleashed by the Master of the World, she nearly disemboweled Judd. While recovering in hospital, Judd uncovered a drugs ring headed by Dr. Craigborne. Back with Alpha Flight, he assisted the X-Men rescuing Professor X from Hydra, and subsequently alongside Modred the Mystic to stop the Brass Bishop (Benedicto de vica Severtes, no known connection to the Chess Set's Bishop) from using a new Tower of Babel to storm Heaven. Soon after Alpha Flight raced to New York to assist Guardian, who had been lured into an ambush by Omega Flight; though they overcame Omega Flight, Guardian apparently died during the conflict. Judd watched over the grieving Heather Hudson, growing increasingly attracted to her, though he hesitated to act on his feelings due to her recent bereavement and his own feelings of inadequacy over his stature. When the Collector kidnapped Marrina, Alpha Flight and Spider-Man came to her rescue; despite her injuring him during their last encounter, Judd fought valiantly to free her. Judd, Northstar and Shaman were all accidentally pulled into Crystalium by the mage Ogeode, where they helped Crystar's crystal warriors defeat the forces of Chaos, and he battled the Master alongside Namor and Marrina. Judd was temporarily healed of his dwarfism by Anodyne, a human granted superhuman abilities by the Norse god Loki's Fire Fountain, only to ultimately reject the gift feeling Loki's price was too high. After Alpha Flight defended Vancouver from the Hulk they regained their government backing when Department H was reinstated. When Deadly Ernest stole Judd's teammates' lifeforces and took Heather hostage, Judd broke his promise not to kill again. Guilt over this combined with his unrequited love shook Judd's resolve sufficiently for Razer to briefly break free; Judd was temporarily restored to his original height and true age, but soon resumed his role as a living prison. After assisting Wolverine and Vindicator against Lady Deathstrike, Judd confessed his feelings to Heather, but mistook her lack of response as rejection.

Razer briefly escaped again when Arcade lured Judd to Murderworld. Hoping to heal an ailing Northstar, the team visited the Fire Fountain, but were drawn into Faerie realms by Loki; Razer again escaped, and a full-sized Judd was separated from the team, ending up in Tibet. Feeling he had worn out his welcome on Earth and seeking new avenues of adventure, Judd sought a lamasery in Northeastern China said to contain the Doorway Between Worlds; offered a glimpse of other realities, Judd saw his teammates under attack in the Dreamqueen's realm, and rescued them at the price of being trapped there himself. The Dreamqueen tortured then healed Judd repeatedly, but he escaped after she was defeated on Earth by Alpha Flight. He wandered her realm until he encountered Alpha Flight, trapped there by Llan the Sorcerer, and helped them to return to Earth, but back in the real world the dreamstuff which had healed his torture wounds dissipated, leaving him critically ill. The Master abducted him from hospital, then experimented on him using enzymes taken from the flesh-manipulating Scramble, turning Judd into a monstrosity. Sasquatch restored him using the Scramble enzyme, though the process left Judd a dwarf again, albeit now a superpowered one. Attacked by Lady Deathstrike while socializing with Wolverine, the trio were accidentally transported back to 1937 and Guernica; Judd found himself inserted into his younger self's place, and his timeline altered to include the presence of Wolverine. Judd was briefly made Alpha Flight's chief administrator, but quickly passed the role to his new teammate Windshear. Canada passed the Super Powers bill, requiring all superhumans to register, and Judd joined the rest of Alpha Flight reluctantly enforcing it, aware that if they refused, the ruthless armored Hardliners would do so in their stead. Judd faced his past when forced to apprehend his old mercenary crew, the Outcasts. Shortly after Alpha Flight discovered the Master was secretly behind the Super Powers act, the team was suspended, then officially disbanded by the Canadian government.

Unemployed and with Heather back with her no-longer dead husband Mac, Judd felt himself a friendless laughing stock, and descending into drunken brawling; Wolverine helped him turn the corner, but it wasn't until he and Heather were coerced into a new incarnation of Alpha Flight by General Clarke that Judd pulled himself together, given new hope by Heather's recent estrangement from Mac. Initially asked to prevent the Zodiac from unleashing a chemical attack on Canada, Judd was kept on the team using a combination of brainwashing and memory wipes, but he spotted discrepancies in his recollection, alerting him to something being wrong. Sent to locate his escaped teammate Sasquatch, who had seemingly become an unthinking beast, Judd discovered it was not his old friend but a genuine "Bigfoot", but both were recaptured and Judd's recent memories were again wiped. In the aftermath of a Zodiac attack, Heather and Mac reconciled, and Clarke was replaced by the seemingly less manipulative Gentry. The Brass Bishop (Severtes) returned, again attempting to ascend to Heaven, and briefly stole Judd's soul; however Judd's spirit not only broke free, but also released the Bishop's other captive souls. Judd found it increasingly difficult dealing with Mac and Heather's renewed relationship, but when she learned the Mac she had reconciled with was a synthezoid duplicate of her real husband, Heather broke off the relationship and began dating Judd.

Unfortunately for Judd, Heather's relationship with him didn't last. Although upset by this, Judd remained with Alpha Flight, helping rescue Mac when AIM captured him, assisting Wolverine against the sorcerer Mauvais, and coming to blows with the Juggernaut when Alpha Flight were sent to retrieve a Canadian child from the X-Men's custody. Many of the team, Judd included, were captured by the Plodex, and after Sasquatch's new Alpha Flight freed them, the old team decided to take the Plodex's unhatched eggs back to their homeworld to give them a chance to grow up free of their violent heritage. A few months later, while the current Judd was still in space, another Judd was pulled into the present from the team's early days; when the original Alphans returned from space, this duplicate apparently faded away, perhaps returning to his own timeline. Alpha Flight was subsequently devastated in a battle with the Collective, and Judd was among the many casualties.

Comments: Created by John Byrne.

They should have just left him as a normal, if short, human, with excellent physical skills.

CLARIFICATIONS: Not to be confused with

Puck, his daughter

Puck, the Shakespearean faerie who is his namesake.

Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.

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