William Puceanu (Meggan's father)

WILLIAM PUCEANU

Real Name: William Puceanu

Identity/Class: Human mutant or magic-user (see comments);
presumably U.K. citizen, possibly with Russian ancestry (see comments)

Occupation: Unrevealed

Group Membership: Unrevealed (see comments)

Affiliations: Meggan Puceanu

Enemies: Sir James Jaspers, S.T.R.I.K.E. Beetles

Known Relatives: Mrs. Puceanu (wife), Meggan Puceanu Braddock (daughter), Brian Braddock (Captain Britain, son-in-law), Margaret Braddock (granddaughter)

Aliases: Daddy William

Base of Operations: Mobile around the U.K.

First Appearance: (Mentioned) Mighty World of Marvel II#7 (December 1983);
(seen) Captain Britain II#8 (August 1985)

Powers/Abilities: William possessed "crawly dolls" that were apparently terrifying, making people targeted by them wish they had never been born.

Height: Unrevealed
Weight: Unrevealed
Eyes: Unrevealed
Hair: Black

History:
(Mighty World of Marvel II#7 (fb) - BTS) - William Puceanu was a traveller.

(Captain Britain II#11 (fb) - BTS) - Either his family or that of his wife, or both of them, originally hailed from somewhere in Western Russia.

(Mighty World of Marvel II#7 (fb) - BTS) - William possessed some form of superhuman powers, whether mutant or magical (see comments) that involved terrifying "crawly dolls" with which he could make victims wish they had never been born.

(Excalibur I#44) - Mrs. Puceanu's daughter Meggan was born during a severe blizzard.

(Captain Britain II#8 (fb)) - Shortly after birth, the baby revealed herself to be a mutant metamorph when she instinctively grew fur to keep herself warm when it began snowing outside. Shocked by this and not understanding, William questioned whether his wife had birthed a changeling or wolf-child. Scared at what he might do, his wife begged him not to turn the child out, suggesting instead that they could hide her so no one else would know about her abilities. Despite the rest of the travellers overhearing this conversation and beginning superstitious rumors about the baby, William listened to his wife.

(Captain Britain and MI:13 Annual (fb) - BTS) - Meggan luckily reverted back to looking normal, but all through her childhood she kept shifting her appearance based on external inputs, including copying the appearance of actors on the television, including ones made up as aliens or monsters, or via her empathic abilities reacting to the comments and feelings of random people around her. Her most common non-human form was akin to a chiropteran-lycanthrope hybrid, ...

(Captain Britain II#8 (fb)) - a change initially shaped by the earliest superstitions voiced by her fellow travellers ...

(Captain Britain and MI:13 Annual (fb) - BTS) - and thereafter brought on by the lunar cycle.

(Mighty World of Marvel II#7 (fb) - BTS) - Despite her varying appearance, and the negativity this sometimes inflicted on the family, William and his daughter apparently established a strong, loving relationship, with Meggan fondly referring to her "Daddy William."

William and his wife kept their daughter safely hidden from the wider world for seventeen years, constantly moving around the U.K.

(The Daredevils#4 - BTS / Mighty World of Marvel II#14 (fb) - BTS) - While in London, William witnessed Captain Britain fighting Slaymaster outside the comic shop Forbidden Planet. He was impressed by the hero, feeling that he fought like a wild man, an anecdote he subsequently recounted to Meggan.

(Mighty World of Marvel II#7 (fb) - BTS) - Sir James Jaspers, secretly a powerful mutant, used his reality-warping abilities to win a general election and seize power in the U.K. He instigated security sweeps by S.T.R.I.K.E. "Beetle" agents (so named because of their armor) to round up beings with superpowers. The traveller group which included the Puceanus was stopped at a roadblock, and Meggan, then stuck in her feral form, was swiftly discovered and apprehended. William was also arrested (see comments), his crawly dolls were taken away from him, and he was locked up in a concentration camp.

(Mighty World of Marvel II#13 - BTS) - Jaspers was overthrown and the camps were pulled down, with the prisoners freed, presumably including William, though Meggan was not able to locate him or her mother again.

(Captain Britain and MI:13 Annual (fb) - BTS) - When Meggan tried to check for camp records to track down her parents, she found that in the wake of the reality warp nobody else remembered Jasper's reign of terror.

(Excalibur I#44 - BTS) - Meggan asked at various traveller camps seeking to find her parents, but between the effect lunar cycles had on her before she learned to control her powers and the residual impact of Jasper's reality warp, she couldn't even clearly recall their faces. None of the travellers she spoke to admitted to knowing her parents. When Meggan consulted the psychic Madame Zelda, she claimed to have heard of a caravan that had hidden a magical creature, which had last been reported as having gone over to France (see comments).

Comments: Created by/mentioned in passing Alan Moore, later created/visualized by Alan Davis.

William apparently had some sort of powers, based on Meggan's comments about his crawly dolls, but whether these were magical (the part of Russia the family originated from was the home of Baba Yaga, so there was magic in the region) or mutant (which would explain Meggan also being one) isn't revealed. I've seen some mentions online that the Marvel Atlas entry for the U.K. confirms him to be a mutant; I wrote that, and that's a misreading. The line in question is: "Meggan is a mutant shapeshifter; her father William possesses “crawly dolls.” Other British mutants include..." It's my fault for not spotting before print how it could be misinterpreted - "other British mutants" is referring to Meggan being one British mutant, not confirming that her father was one. He might be, in fact perhaps even probably is, but we've not got that confirmed.

We know Meggan believes her family originally hails from Russia, but we don't know on which side of the family, or how many generations back. Hence William's citizenship isn't certain.

It's not clear from the tiny handful of flashbacks we've seen of Meggan's childhood whether her parents were part of a cohesive traveller group, or moved around from one group to another; if they were part of a specific grouping, then that would be an affiliation.

Every so often some people try to make the claim that Meggan is a faerie. One of the strongest pieces of evidence against this are her parents, who look decidedly human and who certainly didn't share her powers.

We don't know for sure that William was married to Meggan's mother, and that both of them therefore shared Meggan's surname of Puceanu. If they weren't married, then of course one or other would have a different surname. I've also assumed the woman that young Meggan is seen holding hands with when out in a town market (see image below left) is her mother and not some other female associated with the family. None of these are actually confirmed, but I feel they're reasonably safe assumptions.

Since Meggan's father didn't show signs of obvious powers like his daughter, it's unclear how the Beetles identified him as having abilities. It may be that they had scanning devices or other means of testing, but I'd like to think he unleashed his crawly dolls on the Beetles that tried to arrest his child.

Madame Zelda believed she knew which caravan Meggan originally hailed from based on a rumor that it held a magical creature, whom she presumed was Meggan. However, Meggan later tracked down a caravan holding an actual magical creature (Meggan isn't magical!), so it may have been that caravan and not the Puceanu's that went to France.

To clarify for anyone not familiar with the term "traveller," it is perhaps a more PC term for what people might recognize as "Gypsy" or "Romani." Google "Traveller Gypsy" or look here for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gypsy_and_Traveller_groups

Profile by Loki.

CLARIFICATIONS:
William Puceanu has no known connections to:

anyone else called "William"

Mrs. Puceanu

(Captain Britain II#8 (fb)) - Mrs. Puceanu was a traveller.

(Captain Britain II#11 (fb) - BTS) - Either her family or that of her husband, or both of them, originally hailed from somewhere in Western Russia.

(Excalibur I#44) - Mrs. Puceanu's daughter Meggan was born during a severe blizzard.

(Captain Britain and MI:13 Annual (fb)) - Meggan luckily reverted back to looking normal, but all through her childhood she kept shifting her appearance based on external inputs, including copying the appearance of actors on the television, including ones made up as aliens; in the latter instance, this elicited a scream of terror from Mrs. Puceanu when she turned to tell her daughter to switch off the television only to see her transformed into a creature off Doctor Who. Additionally Meggan's empathic abilities caused her to change appearance in reaction to the comments and feelings of random people around her, causing problems when Mrs. Puceanu took Meggan to the market in a small town and Meggan shapeshifted in response to hearing bigots uttering racial slurs at the sight of travellers.
Meggan's most common non-human form was akin to a chiropteran-lycanthrope hybrid, ...

(Captain Britain II#8 (fb)) - a change initially shaped by the earliest superstitions voiced by her fellow travellers ...

(Captain Britain and MI:13 Annual - BTS) - and thereafter brought on by the lunar cycle.

(Mighty World of Marvel II#7 (fb) - BTS) - Mrs. Puceanu and her husband kept their daughter safely hidden from the wider world for seventeen years, constantly moving around the U.K. Then Sir James Jaspers, secretly a powerful mutant, used his reality-warping abilities to win a general election and seize power in the U.K. He instigated security sweeps by S.T.R.I.K.E. "Beetle" agents (so named because of their armor) to round up beings with superpowers. The traveller group which included the Puceanus was stopped at a roadblock, and both Meggan and William were arrested. Mrs. Puceanu was apparently not.

(Mighty World of Marvel II#11 - BTS) - Jaspers was overthrown and the camps were pulled down, with the prisoners freed, including Meggan and presumably William. Whether Mrs. Puceanu was eventually reunited with her husband remains unrevealed, but neither of them were found by Meggan.

(Excalibur I#44 - BTS) - Meggan asked at various traveller camps seeking to find her parents, but between the affect lunar cycles had on her before she learned to control her powers and the residual impact of Jasper's reality warp, she couldn't even clearly recall their faces. None of the travellers she spoke to admitted to knowing her parents. When Meggan consulted the psychic Madame Zelda, she claimed to have heard of a caravan that had hidden a magical creature, which had last been reported as having gone over to France (see comments).

--Captain Britain II#8 (Captain Britain and MI:13 Annual

images: (without ads)
Captain Britain TPB, p115, pan5 (main image)
Captain Britain TPB, p115, pan5 (Mrs. Puceanu face)
Captain Britain and MI:13 Annual, p4, pan1 (Mrs. Puceanu body, with young Meggan)

Appearances:
Mighty World of Marvel II#7 (December 1983) - Alan Moore (writer), Alan Davis (art), Bernie Jaye (editor)
Captain Britain II#8 (August 1985) - Alan Davis (writer, art), Jamie Delano (co-creator), Ian Rimmer (editor)

First Posted: 02/15/2019
First Posted: 02/15/2019

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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