Meltdown, or Tabitha Smith, had a very bad childhood. Her mother left and her father beat her. So Tabitha ran away and lived on the street, doing what she could to survive. When she was training with the original X-Factor, she took on the name Time Bomb. After a while she joined the X-Terminators and started calling herself Boom-Boom. She later joined the New Mutants, becoming the teams loud mouth. Her power to create and detonate time bombs gave her confidence. She had no real teacher until Cable came along and because of that she developed an inmense loyalty to him. She became good friends with her teamate rictor and in an amusing situation where part of the team was captured by the MLF Cannonball kissed their captor to get the key and Boom-Boom decided to kiss him as well. Ever since then she and Sam have had this romantic relationship. When the team changed over to become X-Force she stayed with them because of Cable and Sam. On X-Force she got more training in her powers and even recieved some nifty plasma launchers at one time. Her name also changed after a while. She started calling herself Boomer. She stayed on X-Force after Sam joined the X-Men, but their relationship has been put on hold since then. Shortly after Sam left, Sabertooth, whom she had befriended, broke free of the mansion having tricked her. This upset her greatly and after spending some time locked in her room and blowing things up, she cut her hair and took on the new name Meltdown. Her attitude was tougher and she became even more headstrong. She has been the loose cannon of the team for quite some time, and although she could be annoying at times she was also fun. She is a character that has always been extremely loyal. She seemed to admire Cable quite a bit, but when the team split, she went with them. But even loyalties don't do anything to curb her wildness. In X-Force #79 the team went to a wild bash in the desert, where she and Sunspot kissed. They both realized they had feelings for each other, but she wanted to take it slow. But when her boyfriend Sam showed up things had to change. She wanted to explore her feeling for Bobby, but she didn't want to hurt Sam. The dilema got worse when Sam started talking about coming back to X-Force. But he caught his girlfriend and his best-friend kissing and that was the end of that. He took off in a huff leaving them with guilt over their actions. She still stayed close to Roberto, even when the team went to stay with Skids for a while, but tried to pull away a bit to think more before they got really involved. She's been thinking about this a lot now. Bobby seems to be returning to his usual arrogant self from the New Mutants now that he got his trust fund back and the Reignfire mess cleared up. Maybe she's begining to feel some regret?
I have always liked Tabitha, even through all those name changes and her sometimes annoying attitude. I'm not really quite sure why but she has always been lots of fun to read. I was kind of disapointed when she went to visit her father recently but that visit was cut short and she didn't go back. I believe there are to many unfinished story lines for this character and all I can say is SOMEBODY BETTER DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT! Her recent change in relationships shows that this character is still growing. I like the way she seems to have pulled away a bit from Sunspot, even though they are exploring their feelings for each other. She has been hurt so often by men that she should be hesitant about a new relationship. What I really want to see though is her getting in touch with Sam again. They just can't leave things as they are. She does feel guilty about hurting him, and sooner or later she'll have to deal with it. With Cannonball's return slated to happen in a few weeks, maybe we'll see her deal with this.
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