SAINT ELMO

Real Name: Possibly Elmo or Erasmus (see comments)

Identity/Class: Possible human magic user or god

Occupation: Patron saint of sailors (?); later adventurer

Group Membership: The Flight (Groundhog/Sean Benard, James MacDonald Hudson, Walter Langowski, Smart Alec/Alec Thorne, Snowbird, Stitch, Wolverine/Logan)

Affiliations: None

Enemies: Egghead, Emissaries of Evil (Eel/Leopold Stryke, Porcupine/Alex Gentry, Power Man/Erik Josten, Rhino/Aleksei Sytsevich, Solarr/Silas King, Swordsman/Jacques Duquesne)

Known Relatives: None

Aliases: The Arctic Avatar, Keeper of the Northern Lights (as referred to by himself)

Base of Operations: The Flight compound, somewhere outside the Thunder Bay area, Ontario, Canada

First Appearance: Alpha Flight Special Edition II#1 (June, 1992)

Powers/Abilities: Saint Elmo possessed the power of transillumination (the ability to temporarily transform solid objects, including himself, into light); Elmo could also project these lights from his hands as a concussive force. Given his claim to be thousands of years old, Elmo also appears to have an extremely slow aging factor by human standards.

When a nuclear missile was about to detonate, Saint Elmo converted it into light and absorbed it into his being; but although he prevented a deadly explosion, his system wasn't able to tolerate such a mass synthesis, and he apparently died in a massive, dazzling light-display.

Height: 6'8" (by approximation)
Weight: 400 lbs.(by approximation)
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Red

History:
(Alpha Flight Special Edition II#1) - After arriving at the small training center for The Flight, Sean Benard encountered Saint Elmo. Elmo took a liking to Benard, and affectionately slapped him on the back, which temporarily turned the man into light--Benard ran off in a panic through a wall, only to turn back to normal moments later.

   During a training session for the group, Smart Alec reflected Elmo's light bursts back at him with a pair of mirrors, and succeeded in hurting him.

   Shortly after, Egghead and his Emissaries of Evil (camped just on the Canadian side of the border) sent out a televised warning that they possessed a nuclear missile and demanded the President of the United States hand over leadership of the country to Egghead, or else he'd launch the missile into New York City.

   Elmo accompanied the Flight team to Egghead's location, where they battled the Emissaries, with Elmo having a hard time combating Porcupine's nerve gas.

   In the middle of the battle, Egghead triggered the detonation sequence of the missile--seeing no other way to disarm it, Elmo attempted to convert the entire weapon into light. The amount of nuclear energy was more than Elmo could normally handle, and he apparently perished in the conversion, sending a massive but harmless light-display throughout the Canadian sky.

Comments: Created by Scott Lobdell, Simon Furman, Pat Broderick and Bruce Patterson.

The Northern Lights, also known as the Aurora Borealis, are a natural phenomenon occurring in areas of Canada in which gases in the atmosphere cause brightly lit colorful displays in the air. Another phenomenon, that in which an electrical discharge can be seen emitting from a point on an object such as a ship during a thunderstorm, has been dubbed Saint Elmo's Fire.

It is unclear if Elmo is indeed Erasmus, the Italian who achieved sainthood after being martyred in 303 A.D. Erasmus was deemed the patron saint of sailors, among many other things. No substantial link between the two is ever made, and there are many things that would possibly disprove this theory. Elmo seems to be of the "god"-type nature similar to Thor and Hercules, not a two-thousand year old Christian martyr who somehow survived his disemboweling. Perhaps Elmo was an Eternal, or god whose name was later attached to Erasmus by the Catholic Church.

When he first met Elmo, Sean Benard compared him to "a young Kris Kringle"--maybe Elmo had some connection to Santa Claus (... Elmo did have a jolly, booming "HO HO!" laugh).--Ron Fredricks

This incident took place near the beginning of the "silver age" of heroes, as Benard was unaware of the then-new Fantastic Four.

I would disagree about the Fantastic Four being "then-new" at the time of this story--villains like Power Man, Rhino, and Solarr first appeared after the FF had been around for a while--maybe Sean Benard just didn't pay much attention to current events?
--Ron Fredricks

This disastrous mission is what gave Hudson the idea to split up The Flight into different levels of combat-readiness (thus, Alpha, Beta and Gamma Flights).

Ever since I first posted the entries on the members of the Flight (Groundhog, Saint Elmo, Stitch) I have had several people point out that the group of villains featured are never called the Emissaries of Evil. To be fair, they weren't. However, at one point in the book, Egghead did refer to them as "my employed emissaries". To further bolster my argument, at the beginning of the book, the two duos of Swordsman and Power Man (partners in and out of the Lethal Legion) and Porcupine and Eel (partners once led by Count Nefaria) arrived in Canada at Egghead's bequest, but apparently, Solarr and Rhino, the two men who actually were members of another line-up of the Emissaries, were already there with Egghead. To me, at least, this is pretty much an unstated way of saying that he was just adding more muscle to his team. Should we get a Thunderbolts Handbook anytime soon, I will personally force Marvel to list the Emissaries of Evil as one of Atlas's former group memberships and make this canon.

Saint Elmo would later get one other "appearance," of a sort:
Wolverine: First Class#5 (September, 2008) - In a flashback before his joining the X-Men, Department H assigned Wolverine to handle a hostage situation at La Citadelle in Quebec, and Jim Hudson ordered him to chose some fellow operatives (whose faces were displayed on a video screen) to accompany him; the faces displayed were Snowbird, Groundhog (marked RESIGNED), Saint Elmo (marked M.I.A.), Marrina, Shaman, Smart Alec, Aurora, Stitch, and Wildchild.--Ron Fredricks

Image additions by Ron Fredricks.

Profile by Madison Carter.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Saint Elmo has no known connection to:

Appearances:
Alpha Flight Special Edition II#1 (June 1992) - Scott Lobdell & Simon Furman (writers), Pat Broderick (pencils), Bruce D. Patterson (inks), Rob Tokar (editor)

First Posted: 03/18/2004
Last updated: 02/07/2021

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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