Profile: Aurora

Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, Aurora
First appearance: Uncanny X-Men #120, April 1979. Jeanne-Marie Beaubier began her superheroine career as a member of Alpha Flight.

Current status: hanging around the X-Mansion more recently.

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: multiple personality disorder, and went through a beating at the hands of Malcolm Colcord, the director of Weapon X, a character created by Frank Tieri.

What’s wrong with how this was done? The split personalities Jeanne-Marie went through are mind-numbingly ghastly, and indicative of her creator John Byrne’s odd penchant for writing a few of the women in his books as going crazy (a definite example: Scarlet Witch, whom he sent insane during his run on West Coast Avengers, and also Tigra).

She may not have been as badly written as her twin brother Northstar ended up being, but still, that’s just simply horrendous! I sometimes wonder if John Byrne, who’d once lived in Canada but is said not to have liked it there, was taking a swipe at the Francophones through characters like her. The abuse she suffered at the hands of Colcord is also despicable.