Smart Alec

Origin

Not much is known about Thorne's life before he was contacted by James Hudson to join the then-fledgling Department H. Alec Thorne was one of James MacDonald Hudson's first recruits to join the fledgling Alpha Flight, where, in their first mission, he and his team-mates stopped the terrorist known as Egghead and his cadre of American super-human terrorists from launching a thermo-nuclear missile at the United States1.   

Creation

Smart Alec was created by John Byrne in 1983 and first appeared in Alpha Flight # 1. 

Story Arcs

Later, after Hudson divided the team into three tiers, Thorne (under the mantle of Smart Alec) began training in Gamma Flight, and continued to train with them before Department H was shut down2. Later, he was contacted by Jerry Jaxon to join Omega Flight in a bid to extract vengeance against Hudson, but was defeated when he tried to look in Shaman's magic medicine bag. This mental shock caused him to become a mindless husk, so the Shaman shrunk him and stuck him in his bag3.

The next appearance of Smart Alec's body was shortly after the death of Snowbird, when Walter Langkowski's mind - having been freed from his body after Snowbird was forced to kill him to vanquish the Great Beast, Tanaraq, who co-inhabited his body4 - entered Thorne's miniaturized body in an attempt to regain the human world. Thorne's body was killed when Langkowski merged his mind into the Box robot to defeat Pestilence, whose freed mind had inhabited the body of Snowbird - who was in the form of Sasquatch at the time - before Langkowski took over the Sasquatch body. 

Powers & Abilities

Powers: Super-intelligence, He was the man with a computer brain, an intellect unsurpassed, a genius, who was said to be not only the smartest man in Canada, but as he said, "in truth, I am the smartest man in the world! It's just that Reed Richards gets all the press while I'm stuck here." While he wears his helmet his intelligence is increased to an even higher degree.

Ecephalo-Helmet:Smart Alec created the helmet that he wore to augment his already high IQ to an unknown level. The helmet has audio-visual scanners that let him hear on every frequency and see on every wavelength. From light, radiation, ultra-violet, infra-red, etc.