Drax-Man (Guardians of the Galaxy meta character)

DRAX-MAN

Real Name: Arthur Douglas

Identity/Class: Extradimensional/alternate reality (Earth-19454) human mutate

Occupation: Photographer for the Daily Guardian;
former real estate agent, saxophone enthusiast

Group Membership: None

Affiliations: J. Jonah J'Son, Kronos

Enemies: J. Jonah J'Son, Print Press Paul, the Purpose, Thanos;
allegedly (but probably not really) Gamora

Known Relatives: May (aunt; see comments)

Aliases: Drax

Base of Operations: Daily Guardian buildings

First Appearance: Guardians of the Galaxy Season 3 Episode 14 "Black Vortex, Part 1" (May 5th 2019)

Powers/Abilities: Drax-Man possessed incredible superhuman strength and durability, as well as a "Draxsense" that tingled when an innocent life was in danger somewhere in the vicinity; when it activates, the world around him becomes blurry, at least while he is wearing his glasses. These glasses seemed to disguise his true identity; while wearing them, people (or J'Son at least) believed he was Drax rather than Drax-Man, even being fooled if Drax put them on in front of him. Drax-Man could most definitely NOT fly.

Height: 7'4" (by approximation; see comments)
Weight: 1,050 lbs. (by approximation; see comments)
Eyes: White
Hair: None

History: (see comments)
(Guardians of the Galaxy Season 3 Episode 14 "Black Vortex, Part 1" (fb)) - Drax-Man#32: "The Secret Origin of Drax-Man": One night real estate salesman/saxophone enthusiast Arthur Douglas was driving home to Burbank from a concert in Las Vegas when an alien spacecraft suddenly appeared, piloted by the mad Titan Thanos. For no discernible reason Thanos attacked, firing a missile that destroyed Drax's vehicle. Though thrown clear of the explosion, Douglas was badly injured and barely alive. As he lay dying in the desert night, his astral form was pulled from his physical body and was instantly transported across the galaxy into the presence of the eternal being Kronos, who gave Douglas a powerful new body, transforming him into the living weapon of vengeance, Drax-Man.

Drax-Man adopted a new identity as mild-mannered photographer for a major metropolitan newspaper the Daily Guardian, cunningly choosing the alias Drax so no one would know he was really Drax-Man. Needing to ensure no one would recognize him in his secret identity, the massively tall and muscular Drax-Man cunningly disguised himself totally by donning a pair of spectacles (and also a sleeveless sweater and tie, but since people still recognize him as Drax-Man while in these clothes, the disguise is really only the glasses). Finding that running stories about the elusive costumed vigilante Drax-Man sold newspapers, Drax's editor-in-chief, the ever angry J. Jonah J'Son, constantly demanded Drax bring him pictures of the crime-fighter, who J'Son invariably painted as a menace.

One of Drax-Man's arch enemies was not Gamora, but the narrator claims she was.

Drax-Man#219 - Drax-Man's memory was erased, but he doesn't remember it. As a result he no longer remembered that Gamora was his enemy, because she wasn't, and this was all the narrator's fabrication.

(Guardians of the Galaxy Season 3 Episode 14 "Black Vortex, Part 1" (fb) - BTS) - Drax-Man defeated the Purpose in battle. A photograph from their fight was used on the front cover of the Daily Guardian edition that reported Drax-Man's victory, and that front page was later framed and displayed on the walls of the Daily Guardian offices, immediately to the right of J. Jonah J'Son's office door.

(Guardians of the Galaxy Season 3 Episode 14 "Black Vortex, Part 1") - The Guardians of the Galaxy's Drax woke to find himself living Drax-Man's life, complete with an unseen narrator regularly interrupting events to fill him in on Drax-Man's backstory and powers. Having fallen asleep at his desk, Drax was woken by the angry shouting of J'Son, as he argued with someone over the phone, insisting that Drax-Man was not a hero, but was up to no good. J'Son then stormed out his office and demanded Drax get him fresh photos of Drax-Man. After J'Son returned to his office, Drax got up to take a closer look at the mounted photos of Drax-Man on the wall, and, noticing the resemblance to himself and the fact that the hero's cape was visibly hanging out of his civilian identity's pants, began to suspect he might be Drax-Man.

Just then Drax's Draxsense began tingling, alerting him that an innocent life was in danger somewhere nearby. Removing his glasses as the Draxsense made things blur, Drax was caught off guard as J'Son unexpectedly exited his office. The editor reacted in shock to see Drax-Man in the offices and started shouting for someone to get a camera, but while J'Son was looking around for assistance Drax slipped his spectacles back on. Glancing back at him, J'Son angrily berated Drax for just standing around while Drax-Man was in the building, and demanded he go get photos of the intruder. Testing a theory Drax removed his glasses while J'Son was staring right at him; immediately J'Son recoiled in shock, proclaiming that Drax-Man had appeared out of thin air, then he began screaming for security. While he was dancing around shouting, the incredulous Drax placed the glasses back on his face, and a second later J'Son stopped shouting to again berate Drax because "Drax-Man shows up here twice, and you don't get a single picture." Enraged, J'Son fired him.

Suddenly recalling that someone was still in danger, Drax ducked into a supply closet to transform into the incredible Drax-Man, and sprang into action, crashing through the exterior wall of the skyscraper housing the Daily Guardian offices. Once outside, he discovered that he definitely couldn't fly, and plummeted to the distant ground far below, "breaking" his fall by landing on a car. Luckily he was sufficiently durable to survive this without serious injury to anything but his dignity. Now at street level, Drax-Man heard a woman calling for help, and confronted a would-be purse snatcher just as the criminal was about to flee. Drax-Man didn't even need to try to stop the crook, because having just succeeded in wresting the purse from its owner's grip, the man turned to flee at speed unaware Drax-Man had walked up behind him, and literally knocked himself over running into the hulking hero. As Drax-Man handed the purse back to the woman, she thanked him for his heroics, and for a few moments he basked in the adulation of a hastily gathered crowd of fans.

This was interrupted as Drax's Guardians of the Galaxy teammate Gamora managed to contact him, as she had just escaped her own fictional reality trap. The narrator immediately tried to insist that Gamora was Drax-Man's arch enemy and lying to him. After the police arrived and took away the purse-snatcher, Gamora's disembodied voice warned Drax he was in danger and needed to get away from wherever he currently was. Drax-Man fled until he literally hit the edge of the comic, and the narrator then attacked him with the pages themselves. Smashing through the pages (or fourth wall, as Drax described it), Drax transited through the comic's advert pages before returning to the story pages, where he arrived in a room full of printing presses (for the Daily Guardian?). To his confusion, the presses were printing out copy after copy of human size pictures of the purse-snatcher in a variety of colors. Then the pictures stood upright and started to pull free of the pages, revealing themselves to be the duplicate desperado Print Press Paul. The army of Pauls attacked Drax-Man, who easily struck down the first few to accompanying visible sound effects, but was sent flying when a Paul finally landed a solid blow. Grabbing a "Wham!" sound effect, Drax used it as a club and began swatting the Pauls away, but the printing press continued to create more faster than Drax-Man could destroy them, and they soon threatened to overwhelm him. Retreating to a wall, Drax-Man reasoned that the press could not print without ink, and yanked free one of the large ink supply pipes coming down the wall, unleashing a torrent of black fluid on the Pauls, who started melting the moment it made contact with them.

Though the Pauls were destroyed and Drax-Man had taken refuge atop some equipment, the rising ink began to fill the room until it threatened to engulf the hero too. Using a twig taken from another Guardian teammate, Groot, and now dipped in the ink flood, Drax found he could draw solid objects in the air and blocked a few remaining Pauls who tried to join him on his raised platform, drew himself a boat to ride the rising tide, and then a door to escape this fictional reality prison.

Comments: Created by David McDermott.

Drax-Man appeared in the Guardians of the Galaxy cartoon when the Guardians were sucked into the Black Vortex and each ended up temporarily trapped in a fictional realm based on a given type of animation - so, for example, Gamora found herself effectively trapped as a Disney Princess. In Drax's case, in the world he landed in he was a sort of hybrid of Spider-Man and Superman. So, why cover Drax-Man as if he were a character in his own right, rather than just a tiny segment of cartoon Drax's history? Because other examples of such scenarios has taught us that anything that is fictional in one segment of the multiverse is real in another. Drax found himself living the life of one of his actual alternate reality counterparts. The fact that Drax-Man's origin more or less matches 616 Drax's origin, and that his costume matches the version the comics Drax originally wore, would seem to support this. For GotG Drax, being a human who was killed by Thanos but resurrected by Kronos is fiction, but not for other versions of Drax across the multiverse.

In the episode GotG Drax was finding the setting he had been dropped in confusing and hard to believe, and was facing a narrator who kept modifying the story to try and keep him trapped. However, for the purpose of this profile, I'm going to assume that what we learned about Drax-Man's reality, no matter how nonsensical or whether it might have been getting manipulated by the narrator, was accurate. The history above only considers the stuff that Drax-Man experienced as being "real." However, since the viewers were watching Drax react to the oft-ludicrous situations Drax-Man was in, it's all but impossible not to mention at least some of that, so where the history is discussing things the "real" Drax did that Drax-Man would not have, I've put it in italics.

Since Drax-Man seems to visually match the overly muscled look the 616 Drax had while in the Infinity Watch, and is seen towering over others in his reality, I'm ASSuming Drax-Man shares that iteration of 616 Drax's physical stats.

Drax-Man apparently has an Aunt May, as when Drax wakes up in this reality the first thing he sees is a calendar with a date ringed and annotated with the reminder "Aunt May."

This profile was completed 8/10/2021, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 20^th anniversary 's celebratory event.

Profile by Loki.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Drax-Man is an extradimensional counterpart to:

Drax (Arthur Douglas) of Reality-616 @ Iron Man I#55
Drax of the MCU / Reality-199999 Guardians of the Galaxy @ Guardians of the Galaxy
Drax of the Guardians of the Guardian cartoon, who briefly experienced Drax-Man's life @ Guardians of the Galaxy Episode#1
and any number of other alternate reality Arthur Douglas or Drax characters

but has no known connections to:

Draxon, former dictator of Morvania @ Incredible Hulk II#133
or any other "Drax" characters

J. Jonah J'Son

The editor-in-chief of the Daily Guardian, the ever angry and cynical J. Jonah J'Son ran regular stories about the mysterious crime-fighter Drax-Man, invariably painting the hero as a menace. When J'Son's mother called him and happened to call Drax-Man a hero, J'Son promptly began a heated shouting match with her, which ended with him telling her "Yeah, well, same to you. Mom."

Storming out his office, J'Son demanded his photographer Drax get him "fresh, new, incriminating photos of that bare-chested menace on my desk by four o'clock." J'Son then returned to his office, but a few minutes later he re-emerged just after Drax had removed his glasses. The editor reacted in shock to see Drax-Man in the offices and started shouting for someone to get a camera, but while J'Son was looking around for assistance Drax slipped his spectacles back on. Glancing back at him, J'Son angrily berated Drax for just standing around while Drax-Man was in the building, and demanded he go get photos of the intruder. Drax removed his glasses while J'Son was staring right at him; immediately J'Son recoiled in shock, proclaiming that Drax-Man had appeared out of thin air, then he began screaming for security. While he was dancing around shouting, Drax placed the glasses back on his face, and a second later J'Son stopped shouting to again berate Drax because "Drax-Man shows up here twice, and you don't get a single picture." Enraged, J'Son fired him.

Comments: J. Jonah J'Son is a combination of Spidey's J.Jonah Jameson and Star-Lord's father J'Son, with a touch of Perry White (he says "Great Caesar's ghost" at one point, which is Perry's catchphrase).

Ever quick on the uptake, Drax deduced that J. Jonah J'Son could not be "Quill's father," because "J'Son of Spartax does not have gray in his hair. Also he is not alive."